Black Lion Audio PG-XLM Rackmount Power Conditioner

I live in an almost 200 year old house and the power is not good. I need stable clean power for my recording gear, office workspace and TV and video game setup. I've worked hard to get cool gear for work, music nad fun so I don't want to plug it into a power strip or cheap power conditioner. I posted pics of all of the outer boxes so you can see that a lot of thought goes into these all the way to the double (in this case triple) boxing. I've had other power conditioners and I wish I had gotten these sooner. Had a couple large TVS blow out because of bad power conditioners because of surges, spikes, nasty power etc. I love the Black Lion PG-XLM because I could see/hear immediate results. With my little studio setup I've got multiple devices that are synced digitally for audio and MIDI. When my power would dip or spike, the audio signal would drop out or everything would lose sync with the computer. It's a drag when you're getting a really good performance and you have to do it over because your power fluctuated. Saw the same results with skype on my computer. I was getting a lot of noise and my coworkers and clients were getting frustrated. Added in the PG-XLM and everything's clean, quiet and stable now. I have several of these PG power conditioners and I will get several more!

The unit functions great for power distribution but the lights on the front are so dim they are pretty useless.

You get so so so much more for your money

It does the job well but the premium price does not really equal premium quality. The pull out lights are pretty flimsy and the color of the LEDs is high Kelvin (cool, probably 6500K) which is a color temp for absolute psychopaths. 3500K is as high as any sane person should go and honestly 2700-3000K is probably the most agreeable to the eyes. The voltage monitor readout stays on even when the unit's power is switched off. Waste of electricity and kind of annoying. The power cord is only 5 feet. I suppose I could have spotted that in the specs before I purchased but I've had a few different power conditioners over the years and never had one with a cord less than 9 feet so I wasn't really expecting anything less. Kind of a slap in the face to buy a $200 power conditioner and have to add an extension cord right out of the box. I would have gladly paid $210 for a usable length power cord I don't know why they would have tried to pinch a few pennies over a couple extra feet of cord. Normally this would be an automatic return but I already mounted and set it up and anyone who fiddles with rack mount gear knows it's a pain to take apart. You win today Black Lion Audio but I will never purchase from your company again. EDIT: makes a significant buzzing sound when the power is switched off. Started a return.

As for operational details, this is a very nice product. I did note the AC receptacles are a little light on "grip" of the plug. Then again this is a rack mount product that can probably take only so much push and pull. Okay. I very much appreciate the layout of the rear receptacles that provide ample opportunity to hang a wall-wort or two or more with minimum fuss. Very nice... thanks. So let's focus a bit on the decades old EIA-310 rack standard. The previous power product (from Amazon) that I returned before purchasing this item, had rack holes that laughably did not line up with the rack rail holes. Interestingly the product photos show correct hole placement, but not on the delivered version. Ug. Refund in place, I decided to up the game and throw some money at a better product. I found this and purchased it with the knowledge surely it will fit into the table top rack I purchase from SW previously. First, the rack holes line up fine, so thank you Black Lion Audio for getting this correct. Here's the problem. The rack standard mandates the actual rack have a minimum opening (dimension C in the attached figure) of 19.031 inches. A rack mount item that is exactly 19 inches will never have a problem in any rack that complies with this. My new rack enclosure is 19-1/8 inch wide... so good to go. When I put the power conditioner in the rack, the ears were wide enough to not quite slide in. "OMG not again" I thought. With a bit of shove, and a tiny bit of horrid scraping sound, I did manage to coerce it in with reasonable legitimacy. Whew. I grabbed the measuring tape and found the power conditioner rack ears measure 19-1/8 inch... too wide and not by a little. All the other items in my rack enclosure fit fine in comparison. So another rack dimensional standard compliance fail from my second attempt at a power solution for my project. It's in, I'll use it as is, but, really, these deviations in our industry from some pretty basic/simple rack dimensional standards are starting to get ridiculous.