More than a year ago, Robert Hay, AudioQuest‘s Marketing Director for Europe, suggested that I should do a review of one of their Niagara power conditioners. Then it took a little while until some updates were incorporated into general production. Finally, we planned a really comprehensive exploration of AudioQuest's power supply products: it was worth the wait!

As I have so far strictly separated the power conditioning for digital and analogue sources in my system – whereby the preamplifier is added to the latter – and supply the power amplifier(s) directly from the mains, it was obvious not only to replace a mains filter or regenerator with an AudioQuest solution, but to include all components in the test and to evaluate an overall concept. Of course, Robert Hay and I gradually replaced each individual component from the previous power supply with the new one and also evaluated each individual step in terms of sound. A colleague, whom I had told about this exercise, would also have liked to know how AudioQuest's power conditioners behaved in comparison with my old ones if my power cables were not replaced. But unfortunately, a Niagara 7000 or 5000 does not replace my PS Audio P5 with its downstream multiple-socket-strip in one go, nor does the Niagara 1000 replace the old Sonic-Line filter for the digital sources. By the way, Audioquest doesn't have simple multiple-socket-strips in its range: The AudioQuest method is that all devices should be connected directly to the power conditioners.

In order to supply the power amplifier directly from one of the three wall sockets (the other two host the PS Audio and the Sonic Line filters), I use a SunLeiste with a long supply cable, and from there, very high-quality power cables lead to my power amp or two mono amplifiers. Robert Hay, however, had a six-meter-long "Tornado High Current" cable made for the connection of Einstein's The Poweramp, so that the power amplifier could use one of the four "High Current Low-Z Power Correction" outputs of the Niagara 7000. The cable for the Studer was available in the required length only in the Thunder version, but not in the Tornado version. In short: due to the different configuration of the existing and the AudioQuest power supply, and due to the lack of all cable qualities in the different lengths required, we would not have been able to hear all conceivable combinations – not even taking the time expenditure into account. Since Garth Powell, the developer of the new power cables and conditioners, will also be speaking in detail, I will have to create this article as a two-part.

When AudioQuest Founder/CEO Bill Low decided that his company should look more closely at power supplies, he chose the same approach as he had used to enter the headphone and the mobile D/A converter markets. For these product groups, he had secured the collaboration of proven specialists: Steve Silberman and Gordon Rankin for DACs and Skylar Gray for the headphones. Good decisions, as the success of the Dragonflys and NightOwls show. Garth Powell was Bill Low's dream candidate for the development of power technology, because he had made a name for himself with Furman, a manufacturer that is well established on the professional market. My colleague Bert Seidenstücker tried out a Furman power conditioner in his system years ago and was so convinced that he bought it spontaneously.