Audioquest Niagara 5000

The field of AC power delivery is intricate and far from straightforward; it requires meticulous attention to detail. The significant increase in both airborne and AC-line-transmitted radio signals, along with the strain on utility lines and the growing demands of high-definition audio/video components, has made our utilities’ AC power somewhat outdated.

Concerning Alternating Current (AC), we are relying on a century-old technology initially designed for incandescent lighting and electric motors—technology never intended to power the advanced analog and digital circuits found in today’s premium audio/video systems. To adequately fulfill the potential of today’s expanding bandwidth and dynamic range, we must achieve exceptionally low noise across a broad range of frequencies.

Furthermore, modern power amplifiers face challenges related to instantaneous peak-current demands, even when operating at modest volumes. Despite the substantial increase in dynamics from much of our audio software, the loudspeakers we use to reproduce them are often no more efficient than they were two to four decades ago. This places considerable demands on an amplifier’s power supply and the source AC power that feeds it.

Our system’s sensitive components require higher-quality alternating current, leading to the development of various AC power conditioning, isolation transformer, regeneration amplifier, and battery backup system designs. Through differential sample tests and spectrum analysis, it can be demonstrated that as much as a third of a high-resolution (low-level) audio signal can be lost, masked, or severely distorted due to the considerable levels of noise present on the AC power lines that feed our components. This noise infiltrates the signal circuitry as current noise and through AC ground, causing permanent distortion and/or masking of the source signal.

Given the high stakes, all sincere efforts to address this problem deserve commendation.

Once the audio/video signal is lost, it’s gone forever…

For AudioQuest, respecting the source goes beyond simply using premium “audiophile-grade components” or relying on proprietary technology—common approaches within our community. For years, we have all been part of the ongoing debates in the audiophile world: tubes vs. transistors, analog vs. digital, can cables truly make a difference?; and so on. While we can certainly highlight our numerous unique technologies, we understand that genuine audio/video optimization is not a matter of any single secret or exotic circuit. When it comes to noise filtering for AC power, many approaches can yield meaningful results. However, these approaches may also introduce ringing, current compression, and non-linear distortions that can make the situation worse than the problem itself!

The Niagara 5000 features our patented AC Ground-Noise Dissipation, the industry’s most wide-bandwidth linearized AC filter, and our unique passive/active Transient Power Correction Circuit. With an instantaneous current reservoir of over 90 peak amps, the Niagara 5000 is expressly designed for today’s power-hungry amplifiers. Many AC power products boasting “high-current outlets” merely minimize current compression; the Niagara 5000 corrects it.

While it’s easy to promote a particular technology, creating a solution that is consistent, holistic, functional, and grounded in verifiable science is a different challenge. It’s insufficient to reduce AC line noise and its associated distortions in just one octave, leaving adjacent octaves and octave harmonics vulnerable to noise, resonant peaks, or insufficient noise reduction. Consistency is crucial. We should not accept superior resolution in one octave only to suffer from masking effects half an octave away and ringing artifacts two octaves beyond. This is the primary criterion for AudioQuest’s Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System.

The Niagara 5000 is the result of more than 20 years of extensive research and proven AC power products designed for audiophiles, broadcast engineers, and professional audio applications. Every conceivable detail has been considered: the Niagara 5000 incorporates 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 extremely pure copper, ensuring the most secure connection possible.

A great system is built on a solid foundation, and that foundation begins with power. With an AudioQuest Niagara 5000, you will experience, for the first time, the clarity, dimensionality, frequency extension, dynamic contrast, and control that your system has always been capable of delivering—if only the power had been right!

We invite you to try the Niagara 5000 and hear firsthand the remarkable results of highly optimized power management: remarkably deep silences, stunning dynamic freedom, exceptional retrieval of ambient cues, and beautiful differentiation of instruments and musicians in space. Once you’ve experienced it, it may appear so elegant, logical, and obvious that you’ll wonder why it wasn’t done before.

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