Description
The science of AC power delivery is not a simple one; it demands focus, and the devil is in the details. In fact, the great increase in airborne and AC-line-transmitted radio signals, combined with overtaxed utility lines and the ever-increasing demands from high-definition audio/video components, has rendered our utilities’ AC power a somewhat antiquated technology.
Where Alternating Current (AC) is concerned, we’re relying on a century-old technology created for incandescent lights and electric motors—technology that was certainly never meant to power the sophisticated analog and digital circuits used in today’s premium audio/video systems. To properly accommodate the promise of today’s ever-increasing bandwidth and dynamic range, we must achieve extraordinarily low noise across a very wide range of frequencies.
Further, today’s power amplifiers are being taxed for instantaneous peak-current demand, even when they’re driven at modest volumes. Although we have seen a substantial increase in dynamics from much of our audio software, the loudspeakers we employ to reproduce them are often no more efficient than they were two to four decades ago. This places great demands on an amplifier’s power supply, as well as the source AC power supplying it.
Our systems’ sensitive components need better alternating current—a fact that has resulted in a host of AC power conditioning, isolation transformer, regeneration amplifier, and battery back-up system topologies. Through differential sample tests and spectrum analysis, it can be proven that up to a third of a high-resolution (low-level) audio signal can be lost, masked, or highly distorted by the vast levels of noise riding along the AC power lines that feed our components. This noise couples into the signal circuitry as current noise and through AC ground, permanently distorting and/or masking the source signal.
Given that the stakes are so high, all sincere attempts to solve this problem must be applauded.
Once the audio/video signal is gone, it’s gone forever…
For AudioQuest, honoring the source is never a matter of simply using premium “audiophile-grade parts” or relying on a proprietary technology—common approaches within our community. For years, we have all been witness to the same, seemingly endless audiophile debates: valves versus transistors; analog versus digital; can cables really make a difference?; and on and on. While we, too, can brag about our many unique technologies, we realize that true audio/video optimization is never a matter of any one secret or exotic circuit. When it comes to noise filtering for AC power, many approaches can yield meaningful results. However, these approaches may also impart ringing, current compression, and non-linear distortions that can render the cure worse than the disease!
The Niagara 3000 features our patented AC Ground-Noise Dissipation, the widest bandwidth-linearized AC filter in the industry, and our unique passive/active Transient Power Correction Circuit. Boasting an instantaneous current reservoir of over 55 amps peak, the Niagara 3000 is specifically designed for today’s current-starved power amplifiers. Many AC power products featuring “high-current outlets” merely minimize current compression; the Niagara 3000 corrects it.
Though it’s easy to tout a given technology, it’s quite another thing to create a solution that is consistent, holistic, functional, and that honors verifiable science. It’s not enough to reduce AC line noise and its associated distortions at just one octave, thus leaving vulnerable the adjacent octaves and octave partials to noise, resonant peaking, or insufficient noise reduction. Consistency is key. We should never accept superior resolution in one octave, only to suffer from masking effects a half-octave away and ringing artifacts two octaves from there. This is the principal criterion for AudioQuest’s Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System.
The Niagara 3000 represents over 20 years of exhaustive research and proven AC power products designed for audiophiles, broadcast engineers, and professional-audio applications. Every conceivable detail has been addressed: In the Niagara 3000, you’ll find optimized radio-frequency lead directionality, capacitor run-in forming technologies developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratories and NASA, and AC inlet and outlet contacts with heavy silver plating over extreme-purity copper, assuring the tightest grip possible.
A great system is built from a solid foundation, and that foundation starts with power. With an AudioQuest Niagara 3000, you’ll experience for the first time the clarity, dimensionality, frequency extension, dynamic contrast, and grip your system has always been capable of delivering—if only the power had been right!
We welcome you to experience the Niagara 3000 and hear firsthand the remarkable results of highly optimized power management: startlingly deep silences, stunning dynamic freedom, outstanding retrieval of ambience cues, and gorgeous delineation of instruments and musicians in space. Once you’ve experienced it, it may seem so elegant, so logical, and so obvious that you find yourself wondering why it hadn’t been done before.
WHAT IS A POWER CONDITIONER AND WHY IS IT NECESSARY?
For some, a power conditioner is merely a device that provides enough outlets for the entire audio/video system while also protecting the connected devices from electrical storms and wiring faults. Yet, for the discriminating listener, many power conditioners can make an audio/video system perform far worse.
Yes, a home or building may have dimming lights or an occasional brown-out, and the utilities’ AC sine wave is always far from perfect. However, where incoming power is concerned, there are two reasons an audio/video system does not perform up to its full potential:
1) The current transients that supply the power amplifier are compressed, and
2) The ever-increasing levels of radio-frequency noise are masking (covering up) the system’s low-level signal content.
When compared to or measured against a Niagara Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System, a simple power bar or a dedicated AC wall outlet can lose up to a third of the low-level audio information that contain much of a recording’s harmonics, imaging, high frequencies, and bottom-end grip—and once that information is gone, it’s gone forever.
The products in AudioQuest’s Niagara Series are meticulously handcrafted, and their technologies are unique amongst all power products—whether they’re isolation transformers, AC regenerators, battery backup devices, re-clocking devices, or other types. Far surpassing most other technologies that cover only a narrow range of noise frequencies and do nothing to address the increasingly prevalent noise on AC ground, Niagara’s Level-X and patented Ground-Noise Dissipation (GND) Technology work evenly, or linearly, across a far wider range of induced noise frequencies.
Additionally, Niagaras 3000, 5000, and 7000 feature Transient Power Correction, which supplies a current reservoir to greatly bolster the performance of any power amplifier.
With an AudioQuest Niagara Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System, music lovers can finally experience the clarity, dimensionality, frequency extension, dynamic contrast, and grip their A/V systems have been capable of delivering—if only the power had been right!
Niagara Noise-Dissipation Systems do not ship with an AC cable. Why?
The cable that feeds any power product is the most important AC cable in the audio/video system. For any power product to maximize its ability to dissipate noise, the attached AC cables must be Direction-Controlled to drain induced radio-frequency noise. AudioQuest AC cables include ZERO-Tech for uncompressed current transfer and optimal Noise-Dissipation. Further, our patented GND-Tech (Ground-Noise Dissipation) pulls RF noise out of any product it’s attached to.
When partnered with a Niagara power product, our Direction-Controlled AC cables create a complete Noise-Dissipation System, ensuring the most effective and efficient dissipation of RF noise.
We allow our customers to select the appropriate length of cable for their systems and to decide how completely they’d like to optimize their Niagaras.
SPECIFICATIONS
| Linear Noise-Dissipation Technology |
Level-X More than 21 octaves differential-mode filtering |
| Patented Ground-Noise Dissipation |
3 banks (all outlets) |
| Non-Sacrificial Surge Protection |
Sonically Non-Invasive; Withstands multiple AC surges and spikes up to 6000V/3000A without sustaining damage |
| Transient Power Correction |
55 amps peak; Provides a current reservoir for any power amplifier (up to 25mS) |
| Maximum RMS Current |
15 Amps (RMS) @ 220-240v |
| Outlets |
7 total: (5) Source (including video), (2) High-Current |
| Power Cable |
Power cable not included - For optimal results use a cable that features ZERO and GND Technology |
| Dimensions |
445mm W x 88mm H x 386mm D (2-RU rack mount kit included) |
| Weight |
11.3 kg |
