ExactPower EP15A
	Most of you know how much I believe in power conditioning. I have had multiple VansEvers units on my system for many years now. I use aftermarket power cords and I replaced my wall outlets with hospital grade ones. In my opinion, as with most things, garbage in – garbage out. I clean my electricity so that my gear has something good to work with from the get go. Many will argue that the equipment will do this job adequately, I simply do no believe that. As usual, there are many schools of thought on this subject you will need to experiment for yourself to find what works for you. When Mark Schifter called me and told me he was sending along to me a new power related product I told him that I was covered already and I wasn't interested in removing my VansEvers products from my path. He said…no, no, no Mike, just plug Mike VanEvers fine stuff into this new device and let us know what you think. I agreed and a few weeks later the ExactPower EP15A was on my doorstep.
	What is the ExactPower EP15A you might ask? Well it is a reference quality power cleaner and power stabilizer. It delivers a solid 120 volts / 15 amps from its 8 full contact receptacles. These outlets hold tight and have a greater contact area with the plugs. What the unit does is to correct power fluctuations and provide a constant 120 volts (+ - 1%) voltage to all the equipment plugged into it. But...what good is all that power if it is dirty? The EP15A also cleans the beefy power that it delivers. Squeeky clean in fact. From the ExactPower website...."The EP15A takes wall socket AC and steps it down to approximately 106 volts. Then it continuously analyzes the signal to determine what kind of electrical "junk" is riding on the 60 Hz AC you want. A differential comparator creates an exact "mirror" (or inverse) of the unwanted interferences and adds it to the signal. The result? The "junk" gets cancelled and you're left with squeaky-clean 60 Hz AC. No grunge. No "nasties." No interferences. After that, a super-efficient amplifier drives a precision transformer to produce the constant 120 volts your components need. So the EP15A's output is virtually independent (see the specs) of the voltage coming from your wall socket! The beauty of this approach is that you're not reinventing the wheel! In most cases, the EP15A boosts AC from 106 volts to 120 volts - it doesn't have to recreate (or regenerate) the full 120 volt signal. That's why we like to refer to this technique as "intelligent regeneration." There's no brute force approach here. And no brute force inefficiencies, either. BUT DOES IT REALLY WORK? Honestly, I wasn't expecting too much, after all I had some of the most highly regarded power conditioners already, what good could this do? But Mark really wanted me to give this a spin, and he is the man behind the Diva and Rocket speakers and the Perpetual Technology DACS, so I was intrigued. I slipped the unit into my rack, plugged all my VansEvers units into it and then fired up the system. MUSIC I got significantly tighter bass and some clearer midrange from the audio system but these changes were not overly dramatic. The LFE subwoofer, however,  really did tighten up quite a bit, I guess the amps powering the sub benefited greatly from the constant power source. When a big explosion hits there is no sign of running out of juice at all and the dynamics of the LFE were much improved. As I listend more and got used to what was going on I can honestly say that the changes this afforded my audio (non subwoofer) system were subtle, delicate and delicious. Now remember, I was already using some great power conditioners and I kept them in the current path. Those of you with no power conditioning products in your current path at all must take this into account. There was not a huge    improvement in my audio but the changes I experienced were indeed improvements.  The good the ExcactPower did my already tweaked system would be a strong ndicator that it would do some major good for a system with no power conditioning in it presently.  The 8 outlets on the ExactPower unit would not be enough for my whole system so I did not experiment by removing the VansEvers pieces entirely.   After a conversation with Walter over at AV123 I decided to try plugging the ExactPower into the VansEvers unit instead of vice versa. The theory was to filter the power first and then regulate it rather than applying the filters to the pure, strong, stable power the Exact puts out. It did make a slight improvement in the audio when I did this, so this would be the recommended procedure if you already have some power conditioners you would like to keep in line. I have slaved many hours with my audio and  for a device to have any impact at all it must be doing something right, this unit made some noticable positive changes in my audio path and I had my system tweaked to near perfection to begin with. VIDEO  Now here is where we get some really amazing results, and I have a neat story to go with it. Solid, un-wavering blacks and deeply saturated colors appeared on my RPTV (Mitsubishi WS-65857). Beautiful even color across the entire screen. The TV likes the constant voltage….it really , really likes it.  Now for the story. In preparation for a meet we had at my place several weeks ago I tuned up my TV. I did all the calibrations in the video essentials and Avia menus and I had it dead on. This was about a week before the meet. Then I got the Exact Power unit a few days later. I put it in the rack and immediately noticed a huge difference in the image quality...especially the blacks and color saturation. How solid they were!! No milky greys in the screen center. And the full color fields didn't have the hot spots as bad as it once did. I was impressed. The meet was now 4 days away. The day of the meet, Kenny Gunlock and Robert George arrived early and we went to my place to goof around with the equipment before all the others arrived. Since they both are not used to the look of my set, they both noticed a contrast problem right away and commented on it. I know from experience that the best way to get a good image on your set is to have other people look at it with you and discuss it. Enthusiasts look at our own sets all the time and often we become accustomed to a "look" that may be just barely off but easily seen by someone that does not watch the set everyday. That was the case here. We pulled out the discs and sure enough the contrast needed to be lowered a couple of notches (a good thing for your CRT's by the way). After the re-calibration the set looked better than it has ever looked before. Max Yokell had arrived by now and even he commented on how spectacular the image was on the set, and he has a very similar set himself. But something bothered me. Why did the settings change? I had just adjusted them a week prior and I have done those adjustment so many times I could do it in my sleep, I know they were right...what had happened? About a week later it dawned on me! I had not re-calibrated my television since I had put the ExactPower unit on line. I called Robert right away and told him what I had discovered. The ExactPower  EP15A had actually allowed me to reduce the contrast level of my set. This will result in less tube wear and definitely improves the image quality. UH-OH  MACRO I use macros on my system, this enables my kids and wife to operate an admittedly overly complex system. The ExactPower unit caused a slight problem with the macro implementation. When my amp (Outlaw 770) would turn on, the ExactPower unit would shunt to the wall to accomodate the large current requirement the amp produced during the turn on stage. This is a clever design in the ExactPower unit as it keeps the unit from just shutting down completely (as other units do when called upon to deliver power out of thier limits) when more power than the Exact can produce is call for. But it just so happens that my DTC100 (HD receiver) would be in the turn on mode when the Exact unit would click over to wall power. The RCA didnt like that and would boot up in a set-up menu or not at all. This is not a good thing for the kids and after several instances where I had to get out of my computer chair (I am a lazy SOB) to make the system work I decided that something needed to be done. I wound up routing the Outlaw into a seperate VansEvers unit and then directly into the wall. Problem solved and all is well. I also could have chosen to route the DTC100 directly into the wall or perhaps even just placed some extra delays on the remote between macro commands. Anyway, it was a simple fix and not anything to worry about   For the video end of my system this thing is a major kick in the pants. I would say that it produced astonising  improvements that anyone could (and did) see immediately. The audio was less effected, but this is on a system that is tweaked well beyond what most people would do anyway. The subwoofer dynamics were improved quite a bit and the overall sound quality improved as well. This is not an inexpensive unit, it retails for 1,800 bucks so it is not intended for Home Theater in a Box systems, however considering the prices of some of the other comparable units (some in the 4K range with much less power delivery capabilities) on the market this is a considerable value. As usual you should base the purchase of any item on the entire investment in your rig. Most of the "Power Conditioners" out there are really just glorified surge protectors and often do more harm than good. You can spend 400 bucks for one of them, or you can step up to the plate and get a unit that actually improves many of your systems attributes. The ExactPower unit was a great asset to my subwoofer system, a positive benefit to my general audio and a major asset to my video system. You can get one of these by following this link AV123 ...or just follow the banner ad at the top of one of our forum pages and select ExactPower from the products fly-out menu. This is an example of another fine product that can make your system sing. Highly recommended.

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