Furman Elite 15i Power Conditioner

What a Power Conditioner Actually Does

A power conditioner doesn't add anything to your system's sound. What it does is two specific, measurable things: it reduces high-frequency noise riding on your AC line, and it protects your equipment from surges and voltage extremes. The Elite-15i does both, in a single rack space with seven filtered outlets.

How much sonic difference you'll hear depends entirely on how noisy your line is to begin with. In a house with a lot of dimmers, LED lighting, and switch-mode supplies, the noise reduction can be clearly audible as a quieter background. In a home on clean power with well-designed components, the filtering may make little audible difference — and the protection is still worth having.

Linear Filtering Technology (LiFT)

Most inexpensive filters attenuate noise unevenly, and some actually add noise back onto the line through resonant peaking in the filter itself. Furman's approach is a linear attenuation curve — noise reduced evenly across the band rather than dumped in one region and amplified in another.

The published figures: more than 40 dB of differential-mode attenuation from 10 kHz to 100 kHz, and more than 80 dB from 100 kHz to 1 GHz, holding that linear curve across a 0.05 to 100 ohm line impedance range. Those are the numbers to compare against other conditioners.

Series Multi-Stage Protection That Doesn't Wear Out

This is the part of the Elite-15i that justifies itself regardless of what you hear. Conventional surge protectors use sacrificial MOVs that degrade with every surge they absorb — quietly, with no indication they've stopped protecting — and shunt surge energy to ground, where it can contaminate the ground reference your components share.

Furman's Series Multi-Stage Protection is non-sacrificial: it doesn't consume itself absorbing normal surges, and its zero-ground-contamination circuitry keeps surge energy off the ground line. Extreme Voltage Shutdown disconnects your equipment entirely if line voltage swings dangerously high or low, and a high-current TVZ-MOV handles the large transients. No protection scheme survives a direct lightning strike, but for the routine spikes a grid produces daily, this is a serious design.

Practical Rack Features

Ultrasonic bi-filtering isolates digital and video components from your analog gear, so noise generated by one doesn't feed back into the other. A digital voltmeter on the front panel shows you what your line is actually doing — useful for diagnosing whether you have a voltage problem at all. Twelve-volt triggering lets the conditioner power up with the rest of your system, with a bypass option for gear you want always on.

Two retractable LED lamps pull out to light a dark rack, which is more useful than it sounds when you're tracing a cable behind a cabinet. Rack ears are included; the chassis occupies one rack space.

Before You Order

Check your current draw. The Elite-15i requires a 15-amp circuit and delivers 11 to 15 amps RMS continuous across all outlets combined. That's ample for a typical home theater or two-channel system, but a large power amplifier or a pair of high-current monoblocks may need more headroom than this model provides.

This is a filter and surge protector, not a voltage regulator. It will not correct a chronically low or high supply voltage — it will shut down to protect your gear if voltage goes to an extreme. If you have a genuine voltage regulation problem, that's a different product, and we can point you to it.

Specifications

• Outlets: 7 linear-filtered
• Input requirement: 15 amp circuit
• Output capacity: 11–15 amps RMS continuous, all outlets combined
• Noise attenuation: Differential mode, greater than 40 dB from 10 kHz–100 kHz; greater than 80 dB from 100 kHz–1 GHz
• Attenuation curve: Linear across 0.05–100 ohms line impedance
• Surge protection: Series Multi-Stage Protection (SMP), non-sacrificial, with high-current TVZ-MOV
• Overvoltage protection: Extreme Voltage Shutdown (EVS)
• Additional filtering: Ultrasonic bi-filtering, zero ground contamination circuitry
• Metering: Digital AC voltmeter
• Control: 12-volt triggering with bypass option
• Line protection: Telco in/out, three pairs universal coaxial connectors
• Lighting: Two retractable LED lamps
• Power consumption: 6 watts for display and control circuits, independent of load
• Form factor: Single rack space, rack ears included
• Voltage: 120V

Frequently Asked Questions

Will this improve my sound?
Honestly, it depends on your electrical situation. The noise filtering addresses a real problem, but the size of the improvement scales with how much noise is on your line — which varies enormously house to house and even hour to hour. The surge protection, by contrast, is a fixed benefit regardless. We'd suggest buying it primarily for the protection and treating any sonic improvement as a bonus rather than the other way around.

Is it big enough for my system?
For most home theater and two-channel systems, yes — seven outlets and up to 15 amps covers a receiver or integrated amp, sources, a display, and a subwoofer. If you're running large separate power amplifiers, check their current draw against the 15-amp total, and consider plugging amplifiers into a dedicated circuit while the Elite-15i handles your source components.

How is this different from a surge strip from the hardware store?
Two ways that matter. A conventional strip's MOVs degrade every time they absorb a surge, and there's no indication when they've stopped protecting — Furman's SMP is non-sacrificial and doesn't wear out from normal events. And a conventional strip shunts surge energy to ground, which can contaminate the ground reference your components share; the Elite-15i's circuitry keeps it off the ground line.

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