Over the years I’ve tried a number of different power products in my studio. Originally I wanted to move away from a power conditioner and find something that just offers surge protection for my system. The problem with most power conditioners, at least the more inexpensive ones, is that they round off transient peaks with the filtering they employ. This can be readily heard on a resolving system. I find that far outweighs the benefits of the filtering they provide.
Eventually I ended up with a simple surge protector from ZeroSurge. This unit did the least harm compared to plugging gear straight into the wall. Eventually I came across the ADD-Powr Sorcer 4x at a studio in LA. I had the chance to experiment with it there and ended up ordering one for my studio. These units are only used by a handful of the best studios such as Becker Mastering.
One of the amazing benefits is that it runs entirely parallel. Nothing is plugged into it like with power conditioner. This means that it has no effect on limiting transient peaks. The unit simply has a power connector and a power switch with an LED indicating that it’s functioning properly.
The Sorcer 4x provides a night and day difference on my system. Tonally things are pretty much the same but there’s an added layer of realism to the soundstage and increased width. It interestingly pushes certain elements in a mix forward with a warm sound similar to how tube amps behave. This is done entirely in parallel on the power grid in the studio.
The Sorcer affects gear in 2 ways. The first is any gear plugged into the power in the house. Right now the unit is in my studio but I’ve connected it directly to the main breaker panel in the house and the effects were still audible in my studio. The second way which it affects gear is with coils similarly to the Add-Powr Symphony units. These coils radiate EMF into the area around the unit. Any gear that’s in close proximity to the unit is sonically affected.
In terms of how the unit works, I only understand it to a certain degree. There is plenty of information on the ADD-Powr website but much of it is not clear. I’ve been told that the unit behaves like dither for your power. The idea is that it generates low frequencies into the power line that mask unwanted harmonics of 60Hz which are normally present. This in turn affects how power supplies behave. The Sorcer 4x generates the most in this regard and is able to affect a number of studio rooms in a facility.
In a quest to limit the number of cables and wires in my system, I incorporated my Sorcer into a power unit I built. This unit includes surge protection from ZeroSurge, the Sorcer, and 6 duplex outlets all in a single box. This puts the Sorcer in close proximity to all of the outlets used in my system and eliminates cables connecting to the ZeroSurge unit. Making the transition to this unit did result in improved sonic qualities. Some of the duplexes I used previously were replaced with cryogenically treated ones but I’m not sure if that made any sonic differences.
In terms of other ADD-Powr units, I’ve also tried the Electraclear and the Symphony. Both provide sonic improvements but in my system already with the Sorcer 4x, I found them to not be necessary. The Symphony is particularly interesting to use around mic preamps.
One thing to keep in mind with the Sorcer units is that they can’t be used on balanced power systems. Certain power conditioners and transformers will create a balanced power line which this will not work on. I’ve also heard that the Sorcer units don’t play well with the PS Audio PowerPlants. At some point I would like to try out a PowerPlant to see if the benefits they provide outweight the benefits of a Sorcer but those are significantly more expensive for a high wattage system. The beauty of the Sorcer is that by it being in parallel, there’s no need to be concerned with what sort of load it can support.