This is a review written by Terry Ellis July 2024.

For my video review please see my YouTube channel link here

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Over a decade in

In this review I am likely to be quite excite about two new to me HiFi mains conditioning products from IsoTek. I know not everyone will be as excited as me about this topic and that’s fine however as you read through you will see this is really a 10 year review and when do you ever see that.

Before I get started I want to ask you a question, with your hifi system would you say you have any key fundamental components in it that have stayed as the core of the system as other things have changed around them? I am sure many of you do.

I have three and a half of them. The half is my room as I have been listening in the same room for around 16 years but it didn’t always look like it does now. You can check the very first video I ever uploaded to youtube back in August 2012 and you can see I used to have to share this room with the family and we even dried our clothes in here. Eventually we built an extension to the back of the house and that gave me my listening room all to my greedy self.

The room of course matters but it doesn’t really count does it, but in the room I have had acoustic treatment  99.99% all from GIK Acoustics since around 2012. I have about 50 different treatments or panels or bass traps in this room which is a hell of a lot for a small room, but this has been a massive foundation for everything audio for me for more than 12 years.

The next two things have been two of the hifi racks you see me use, I have had them for 12+ years too. Mmore importantly for this review one of my key core system components has been IsoTek mains conditioning products. I bought my first Isotek in June 2014, I bought a Titan and to prove this is true you can see it in a I posted back in 2015, long before I ever thought about being a HiFi Youtuber mid 2017.

Why is any of this important well I think its all very important review context a decades worth.

V5, what happened to V4?

The two IsoTek products I have here to review are the latest Titan in its version 5 or V5 iteration and also the latest Sigmas also in its v5 iteration. If you are familiar with these products the first thing you notice about the V5 is how much nicer looking these latest models are. If you look at the EVO3 and V5 Titan side by side you can see the form factor has massively changed and the styling is just much nicer on the V5. I did have both the black and silver finish Titan here and the silver finish rocks in my opinion, even though it is a touch bling. What I noticed straight away is how the V5 Titan and Sigmas visually match much better than ever before.

There are a number of changes internally with some new things going on here too with seemingly the least significant being a change to the feet going from a cone to a rubber foot. At first I wasn’t sure I liked the change until I realised it would stop the Titan sliding around when your trying to push a stiff power cable into a power socket.  Something I have to do multiple times a day sometimes so call me happier now.

The Sigmas V5 is much closer in styling to the EVO 3 Nova which is no bad thing and you can see the obvious progression in the design language. Some of you might miss the screen of the Nova but I never had that on anyway as I found it distracting.  I have to applaud IsoTek for finding a new way to make a very industrial all about function product have a sleek and stylish aesthetic.  One thats nice enough the wife might even say yes to, if you don’t tell her how much you paid for them the same trick as always.

Why?

But why do I use mains conditioners in my system and why would you want one. You can look up the technical explanations of the problems IsoTek say are there with the mains supply that effect the sound quality of a HiFi system.  You can then read the solutions IsoTek are using to solve these problems all on their website. In the most basic explanation IsoTek use a number of different passive devices and unique design technology to improve the mains electrical power quality going to all of your HiFi components allowing all of them to perform at their best at all times.  I use them because I think every piece of HiFi I have used in the last 10 years has sounded better powered from an IsoTek unit them rather than plugged straight from the wall and I already have a dedicated mains ring just for my HiFi installed so I have done the best I can before the IsoTek and they still make it better.

Secondly why do I use two of them and what are the differences. IsoTek stands for isolation technology and their designs are all looking to isolate or separate each HiFi system component from each other so each HiFi product doesn’t negatively interact with each other from an electrical and mains noise point of view.  It doesn’t matter that the electricity that powers your HiFi might start 10km away from your home the problem starts in your system and home. The HiFi system itself can create its own problems according to IsoTek and many other manufacturers I have spoken to over the years.   IsoTek also take into account a medium current device like a source component such as a streamer or CD player etc has a different electrical requirement compared to a high current device like a power amplifier.

The Titan is designed specifically to meet the needs of high current devices like amplifiers and subwoofers and you can now power three devices from it rather than two. So maybe an integrated amplifier and two subwoofers or two mono block amplifiers and leave a space in the middle is how I would do it.

The Sigmas is different, its designed to be a whole system power conditioner in one box. It has four dedicated power outlets designed for medium current devices like CD players and streamers and lots of other components. The Sigmas also has three outlets designed for high current devices like amplifiers, but the technical design and performance here for these high current outlets is only a light version of what’s in the Titan, I assume due to space and cost limitations.  Why that is a little bit of a bummer the Sigmas has enough outlets for me to power the whole system I have here now with with at least one outlet spare so it would be about enough for me.

You can take the IsoTek mains isolation and improvement concept further by having two or more units linked together and with the V5 models there is said to be a better continued star earth when you do this which I now know is a very big deal improvement here.  But of course this sounds like a ploy to sell more boxes but of course you don’t have to, you can buy one and be happy.  Some audiophiles will want to go further depending on their system size and their sound quality aspirations, of course it can always keep getting better the same as with everything, well that is the theory what about in practice.

The build up

Back to history for a second, for over 6 years I had in my HiFi system an Original Titan and an original Nova which is like a Sigmas but designed for medium current devices only.  I used them up until late 2019 / early 2020 when IsoTek sent me the new EVO3 versions of the Titan and Nova and I have them here still.

The reason I used the original Nova in my system was because it made my digital source components, DAC and other products sound cleaner, smoother and more pleasing, it was as simple as that for me. The Titan was different, I loved the Titan because everything I plugged into it sounded bigger and more expansive and therefore more expensive and more grand, but also cleaner smoother and more pleasing. So to me these were no brainer products and if someone would have asked me what they should get first I would have said get a Titan, start there because its effect is so large and diverse.

When I compared the originals to the new at the time EVO3 Titan and Nova the biggest difference I can remember, bearing in mind this was a few years ago now was the music sounded similar, still big and grand and smooth and pleasing but with a tighter clearer more focused delivery.  A sound that was less mushy and more clear and precise and I went back and forth a number of times testing between them and it was obvious the EVO 3 sounded better and they stayed in my system for 4 years.   You can see them in every one of my review videos for the last 4 years or you can see IsoTek products in every product review video I have made.  I think that says a lot for my feeling about them.

When IsoTek asked me to review the V5 models you would think I would jump through a small hoop but instead I was pretty reluctant. These are not easy products to review, you have to keep powering down and breaking down the whole system to unplug everything, then when rebuilt you have let it warm up again and rinse and repeat multiple times so it takes a long time and is a lot of moving of big heavy things.  I am not getting any younger to keep moving 40Kg Gryphon amplifiers about.

But I am really glad I did this review in the because the V5 effects were not what I was expecting at all. I was of course expecting more of the same sound improvement from the original to the EVO3 so a clearer and more focused sound and that would have been fine of course. I do think if that is all they did I might have found it very hard to recommend them as an upgrade to the EVO3 products owners. Different if your starting from new, but if you have already spent the money once to spend it a second time it needs to be even extra worth it.

Comparing

To do this review I spent about 6 weeks listening to the same HiFi system, the same turntable and analogue setup the same speakers digital source and mostly the same amplifier on purpose so I was properly dialled into how the system sounded.

I then changed the IsoTek EVO3 products to the V5 models and all the main sound of the music was of course all very similar, more focused and clearer and the bass was a fair bit tighter but the big difference was to what was behind the music. Where the sound was coming from, the background or the noise floor maybe seemed much quieter, massively quieter but more impressive is what that did for the sound stage. It created the super impressive HiFi effect I call the wide opening of the window where you see through the speakers on to the music.  You can see through your ears of course the music being played or happening in space beyond the speakers. The sound stage could take a step or two back out too which was great to hear from the SVS Titan speakers because I didn’t think they had that in them. I criticised them for this in their review, my bad.

This effect or improvement to the sound stage was caused by a thinning out of the sound, which can trick you into believing there is more “space”. That is not better sound its worse. It was the opposite the big warm and full sound of the Titan speakers which is the reason why they are still here was still there and actually the sound stage expanded forwards to me at the listening position too. So the whole sound stage was not bigger because of the small size of my room but it felt bigger and more spacious within the limited space I have. When you add this to the overall clearer and more see through sound too and the fact this change or improvement has come  from the just mains power quality is massive. It was almost like having new speakers or other new components. I know that sounds cheesy and like bullshit except its not, I have this kind of sound in this room this year from much more expensive components.  Earlier in the year I had the the German Physiks Borderland MK1V speakers £36,000 and the Marten Parker Trio Diamond also around £35,000 and they still sound better of course but the £5k SVS were now much closer to them in terms of opening the window and allowing me to listen through them.  I can only imagine what the moire expensive speakers could have delivered with the V5 Titans in my system.

The V5 was a massive overall presentation difference and not at all what I was expecting, but there is a lot of money being asked here for these two IsoTek products. The V5 Sigmas costs £4795 and the V5 Titan costs about the same so these are getting on for 10 thousand pounds and that’s a huge amount of money.  Especially for something that is not speakers or not an amplifier not a DAC or something in the signal path and that might mess with your noodle some and I would understand why. At the same time I know there will be many of you who would have played with IsoTek products and you might already understand more where this is all coming from.  But unless you have played with the V5 range you cant possibly fully know what I mean and I would hope that would excite you to experience them.

Mix and match

Given the very high total cost I thought it made sense to test the Sigmas on its own, powering the whole system to see if I could recommend it as a great way to get started or maybe it would be enough on its own without the Titan. I have got to say I really liked the sound of the system powered from just the Sigmas. It was not as big sounding, not nearly as big in the bass or as fully wide open window or as expansive sounding, but it was super smooth and super pleasing and still with a very good sound stage and the system just sounded really nice.  Had I not heard the Titan before I think I would have been very happy just with the Sigmas on its own. Putting the Titan back in and the window opens up, the sound gets bigger and grander in scale with more bass so it showed to me again that Titan effect is always there but I do notice the system become more resolving so it’s a little more fussy too and that is something to think about.

I also wanted to test a mix and match to see if someone owns the EVO 3 range and wants to upgrade where should they start. For me the biggest difference maker here was the Sigmas so I would start the V5 upgrade there and keep the EVO 3 Titan and upgrade that later when the funds are there. It makes sense when you look at how many changes have been made to the Sigmas it gets a lot of new things here.  Following the review I discussed this with IsoTek and they told me why I experienced this from a technical point of view so its good advice to take note of.

What I found when comparing the EVO3 and V5 Titan is you listen to medium production quality dance music the difference between them might not be massive. The V5 will sound clearer and bass tighter but if you listen to music thats been produced with more spatial cues  like Princes Avalanche.  The big piano and the vocal from the EVO3 Titan the sound stage and spatial aspect all behind the speakers is muddied some and it feels a bit suppressed and sat on overall.  The V5 Titan allows more of the specific music detail and sound stage spatial information to form with more clarity, it sounds more three dimensional and there is a noticeable uptick in small dynamic shifts which when your listening to a piano there is a lot of these shifts.  The EVO3 does a great job and is still a great product but the V5 offers you more and its the more that once you have had it you will miss it when it goes away.

In summation

The summary of this review is very easy if you own the original Titan, Nova, Sigmas or Aquarius and are considering the upgrade to V5 it should be massive for you with improved everything and more which is a wonderful prospect and one to get very excited about.

If you are an EVO3 product owner considering the V5 upgrade you should get a significantly improved sound stage as well as a noticeable uptick in the other key areas that these products have benefited your system like clarity and smoothness and enjoyment factor. So while this is not as extreme of an upgrade coming from the original products its still one you can be very excited about.

If you own none and still don’t care for mains products, no problem I wouldn’t expect this review to change your mind, but hopefully you have taken into account my opinion is been formed from over a decade of continued use and testing for myself of the products.

I know some audiophiles will think £10k will be better spent buying new speakers or a better amplifier or better DAC and I totally understand that, but you should ask yourself does it make sense buying better speakers, amplifier or a DAC if you not even getting the best from the ones you own now – I will leave you with that cryptic thought.

Special Performer Award is Pursuit Perfect Systems highest accolade and is in recognition of exceptional product performance regardless of price

For the full specification of the IsoTek V5 Titan and Sigmas see their website linked here