Power Conditioners and DoubleThink

Nowadays, just about everything you plug your equipment into is touted as a Power Conditioner so long as it does something to the AC. Sometimes it's even touted as a Power Conditioner if it does nothing to your AC, but that's another story! In any event, without too much effort, you'll find people who've gotten tangible benefits such as a reduction of hum or a cleaned up picture on their TV. Also, without too much effort you'll hear things like my soundstage opened up, there was more air, microdynamics were improved, and the usual suspects.


However, what happens when the explanations given by various manufacturers contradict each other? Well then you have what George Orwell in 1984 called DoubleThink. Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. Usually, manufacturers are pretty careful not to tread on other's claims. That might mean they'd have to get into a pissing war. So usually, you have this implicit understanding that manufacturer A won't say B's product or claims is bull$hit because then B would say the same thing.


Anyways, let's look at two products from two different manufacturers: PSAudio's P1000 Power Plant and ExactPower's UltraPure AC Line Purifier. PSAudio states,
Quote:
OK, fine, let's go with that. They're saying that if your system has noise and harmonics that'll affect the resulting sound in an adverse way. Therefore, a product that reduces this would have a positive impact on a user's experience. Conversely, a product that either did nothing or exascerbated noise and harmonics should be detectable as having a negative impact. Now ExactPower's UltraPure AC Line Purifier, apart from being a balanced unit is also supposed to clean up the AC. So, we would expect that any measurements of this product with respect to the AC should show a rather uniform reduction of harmonics and noise. No? Well, this product was recently reviewed by Secrets at http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...06-part-1.html I found of particular interest the following graph,
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...fier-graph.gif


Now, if we're to take PSAudio's comments and the design intent of the ExactPower to heart, how does one explain the rather substantial worsening of the AC when this product is used? Wouldn't it not be reasonable to assume that using the ExactPower unit should result in negative audible consequences? Or should we just assume that any benefit the product has comes from the fact that it's balanced and would serve to attenuate hums as a result of connecting two products that have chassis leakage? Or is it just a matter of DoubleThink where we can accept one explanation as valid and rationalize the performance of the other which is diametrically opposite. Certainly someone is selling bull$****, no? Bad boys, bad boys. Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?