P.I. Audio Group UberBUSS Power Conditioner Preview

See the complete review for the P.I. Audio Group UberBUSS Power Conditioner.

The P.I. Audio Group UberBUSS is a power conditioner with eight receptacles. I am going to determine what it can do to improve the electricity feeding my components. Will it make any noticeable improvement?

Power conditioners. How do they work? Do they even work? These are questions I have not given much thought to over the years, mostly because they are purely questions to answer. I’ve always considered power treatment (and, to be frank, room treatment) the last inches to perfection in the quest for sound reproduction perfection, and I just haven’t arrived there yet.

Sure, I have enough sense to use an inexpensive APC power-conditioning device in my system that will sacrifice its life in the event of an electrical surge. But I’ve never had the money available for a device from the big boys, like Nagra, PS Audio, Shunyata, and so on.

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But recording engineer Dave Elledge knows my pain. He’s the one person behind P.I. Audio Group, LLC, and he is out to prove that extraordinary power conditioning can be had for a not-extraordinary price. P.I. Audio Group sells bespoke power solutions, and Elledge will build for you a device that provides the best possible AC current to exactly your supply devices. Contact Elledge, tell him how many digital and analog components you want to power and what they are, and he’ll build exactly a device to power those components for you. And you’ll get one designed with the plugs and current flow of your own particular country.

Elledge calls each one of his devices a BUSS, and there are several configurations: UberBUSS, MiniBUSS, and even a DigiBUSS if you’re living a purely digital lifestyle. And there’s a EuroBUSS for our friends overseas.

For my review, Elledge sent me a one-size-fits-all UberBUSS. It features eight modified 20A Pass & Seymour 5362A power receptacles and a Furutech inlet rated at 15A @ 125VAC. It’s all housed in a black box made from non-metallic materials to prevent eddy currents. And it sells for $1195.

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I’ve got a wide variety of components to power with the UberBUSS: solid-state amps, tube amps, preamps, turntables, and a 4K TV. I’ll plug them all into the UberBUSS and report back.

See the complete review for the P.I. Audio Group UberBUSS Power Conditioner.

Gene Hopstetter

Gene Hopstetter has been collecting records since 1981, when he walked into a record store and spent all of his allowance money on every AC/DC album he could find. In the mid-1980s he worked as a stock-boy in a neighborhood hi-fi emporium, which is when his obsession with sound quality began. He has always had a record player and vinyl in his life. Gene was born and raised in New Orleans, where music and food were invented. In the 1980s and 1990s he was active with two university radio stations, KLSU in Baton Rouge, and WTUL in New Orleans, where he got involved with local music promotion and album production. He earned degrees in Creative Writing and Journalism from LSU, which he somehow manages to use in his current career as an IT professional. When he is not listening to music, reviewing components, or updating his collection on Discogs, Gene enjoys restoring vintage Garrard turntables and cleaning LPs with his ultrasonic cleaner. His most prized vintage hi-fi components are a pair of McIntosh MC30 tube amps, a Garrard 301 cream grease bearing turntable with two tonearms, and a Thorens TD124 turntable. Gene is also interested in contemporary developments in hi-fi, such as Raspberry Pi DACs and streamers, amplifiers with Gallium Nitride transistors, and phono preamplifiers with digital output.