The elephant in the room, the one no one talks about, is wire. Yes, wire. Our homes are connected to the outside world through lots of it. Why is that a problem? It's the double edged sword dilemma.
Let us return to our water analogy. Our homes are connected to the source of water through pipes, and it is those pipes that both supply and restrict. No pipe, no water. But, once connected there's a finite amount that can flow to our homes, determined by the size of the pipe. We've all seen the water pressure drop when the sprinklers turn on, just like we've all witnessed the lights dim down when a hair dryer switches on. The very pipes that deliver resources to our home also restrict the amount we can access. It's true for water as well as power.
When your power amplifier pushes a couple of hundreds watts into your speaker to reproduce the whack of a bass drum, or the air resonating through a twenty foot tall pipe organ, the supply of AC power dips in level, and this is exactly what you do NOT want to happen. And to make things worse, if you put a filter in line with the source of power (or water) you make the situation worse. You restrict the flow even more. And this is one of the key reasons to be careful adding power conditioning to your system - you must make sure whatever the restriction, it is as low as possible and offers, in exchange, benefits that outweigh loss. ALL power conditioners with AC cords and outlets, series or parallel, restrict the power to some degree.
This dynamic loss of electricity affects everything in the system - and one way to lessen its damage is to draw less power, which is one reason people tend to like high efficiency loudspeakers; they draw less power from the amplifier.
Tomorrow let's have our cake and we'll eat it as well.
