There are some subjective impressions dressed in hyperlatives posted all over the net. There have been very few controlled, double-blind ABX tests. Thus all the claims about power cords or conditioners supposedly improving the sound of the nc400 are in the "somebody on the internet claimed that..." category. I am sure Elvis is alive and well, and having a great party with Bigfoot too.
It has been shown, over and over again, that a lot of audiophile "improvements" are based on the Tinkerbell effect. That doesn't stop people believing in them, and as long as you believe in them, they do work, so if that's what you enjoy, go for it, it's your money...
Visited the audio show in Munich this weekend. Hypex was represented in some setups. Grimm Audio which I believe uses UcD modules. Very transparent, open sound with the best depth at the show. They used high quality recordings too. Unfortunately it sounded a bit on the cold side which never made me relax and it lacked the bass many of the bigger systems had. Does anyone know if Grimm speakers are tuned with an almost flat response?
Mola Mola was also being used. Together with Lansche Audio speakers and garden snakes..... This sounded great and had a nice balanced tonality as well as a great bass and low midrange response. One of the best setups I heard at the show.
Mola Mola was also being used. Together with Lansche Audio speakers and garden snakes..... This sounded great and had a nice balanced tonality as well as a great bass and low midrange response. One of the best setups I heard at the show.
Last edited:
The Grimm speakers are designed for professional monitoring where "what you hear is what you get" is especially important. I would be surprised if they were not designed to be as flat as possible. One of the partners in the organization is a recording engineer-the others being Putzeys and Tent, two of Europe's most accomplished designers. Regards
Yes. In their data sheet it looks like are tuned flat, but since they have an actice crossover they have of course the option to change it easily.
I was wondering if the lack of warmth and maybe a somewhat anemic presentation was due to a very flat response. It would expect that or they may have had some cancellations.
Personally I don't think a ruler flat response works well for listening. The Bruel & Kjær curve works however pretty good.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Sure, but fact remains that if you look up the SMPS600 datasheet you will see a topology diagram of the circuit and before rectification you see "Fuse & Mains filter". Since hypex has already built in solutions to such problems it is unlikely that adding an additional conditioner would improve anything. And if it somehow still was a problem isn't it more likely that Bruno and the rest of Hypex already would have improved the built in mains filter to solve it?
I'm as skeptic as James Randi himself. I wouldn't buy into something before I understand how it could be possible. Here's what is known...
1. Other electronic components and errant electromagnetic waves cause EMI in the power signal which negatively affect sound.
2. The SMPS600 has built in line filtering to combat EMI in the power signal.
3. The NC400 has cleaner specs than the NC1200.
4. It is widely agreed that the Veritas with NC1200 sounds better than the NC400 in systems that can reveal the difference.
5. Hypex says the NC1200 would only sound better than the NC400 due to the use of a different power supply.
6. A different power supply would improve the sound only by providing a cleaner signal to the amp module.
7. Evaluates to: A cleaner signal can be had than the SMPS600 provides which makes for an audible difference in systems that can reveal the difference.
8. Cable skin affect mathematically reduces frequency waves, beginning with upper frequencies at short cable lengths and into lower frequency waves with longer cable lengths.
9. Cable skin affect has potential to reduce EMI in power cords.
10. People who have tried power cables that are specifically constructed to induce skin affect to reduce EMI in the power signal report improved sound with the NC400.
11. There are discussions in agreement without hyperlatives among seemingly intelligent and experienced listeners.
This is enough for me to spend a hundred bucks to at least try it. Four things could happen...
1. It is an improvement.
2. It is not an improvement.
3. It is an improvement but my system is not capable of revealing the difference.
4. It blows up my entire system and my house goes down in flames.
1. Other electronic components and errant electromagnetic waves cause EMI in the power signal which negatively affect sound.
2. The SMPS600 has built in line filtering to combat EMI in the power signal.
3. The NC400 has cleaner specs than the NC1200.
4. It is widely agreed that the Veritas with NC1200 sounds better than the NC400 in systems that can reveal the difference.
5. Hypex says the NC1200 would only sound better than the NC400 due to the use of a different power supply.
6. A different power supply would improve the sound only by providing a cleaner signal to the amp module.
7. Evaluates to: A cleaner signal can be had than the SMPS600 provides which makes for an audible difference in systems that can reveal the difference.
8. Cable skin affect mathematically reduces frequency waves, beginning with upper frequencies at short cable lengths and into lower frequency waves with longer cable lengths.
9. Cable skin affect has potential to reduce EMI in power cords.
10. People who have tried power cables that are specifically constructed to induce skin affect to reduce EMI in the power signal report improved sound with the NC400.
11. There are discussions in agreement without hyperlatives among seemingly intelligent and experienced listeners.
This is enough for me to spend a hundred bucks to at least try it. Four things could happen...
1. It is an improvement.
2. It is not an improvement.
3. It is an improvement but my system is not capable of revealing the difference.
4. It blows up my entire system and my house goes down in flames.
Let's not confuse "known" and "stipulated"...
in some situations, in some systems.
Widely agreed? Where? By whom? Do we have any controlled, blind listening results?
To be precise, I think they are only saying that that would be the only difference. I don't think they are stating that the nc1200 actually sounds better, even with another power supply.
This is pure speculation. What do you base that claim on?
Speculation.
Sorry, but that sentence makes no sense to me. A cable doesn't do mathematics. What are "frequency waves"?
Do you have anything to support that claim? How much? At what frequency?
How many people? Is it statistically significant? Do we have anything
except hearsay?
Fair enough - it's your hundred bucks, and if you believe it will help, it is more likely that it will.
There is a fifth one - one that should always be taken into account:
5. It is not an improvement in an absolute, objective sense, but you feel there is an improvement, so it improves your subjective experience.
Some of these statements are nonsense, some are incorrect and some are both.
From 6moons reporting from the Munich show:
6moons industry features: High End Munich 2012 with Marja & Henk
an some very good pics from the Munich show at the Chinese my-hiend forum:
??????? 2013??????High End???????: Munich High End Show - ?11?
and Grimm Audio:
http://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthr...實況報導-Munich-High-End-Show&p=196001#post196001
??????? 2013??????High End???????: Munich High End Show - ?11?
and Grimm Audio:
http://www.my-hiend.com/vbb/showthr...實況報導-Munich-High-End-Show&p=196001#post196001
Last edited:
400mV^2/4 ohm=40mW. should be obvious...
it's a little bit ironic to think of the lengths the anti-class D brigade is willing to go in order to prove that "it's bad for ya".
while, at the same time, some of them believe in DC-coupled amps that can burn your expensive woofers in seconds.
I thing it's Bruno who said it: the dome has to move in order to produce intermodulation. at 400kHz it doesn't. it just takes ~2 seconds of thinking what intermodulation is and where it comes from in speaker drivers. less than the time required for a DC-coupled amp to turn your voice coils into ash
people should really appreciate design for usage in a real world, not an ideal one.
and since there was a bit of talk on cables... looking at the Munich show pics I can't help but think... did anyone ever imagine that an electrical connection would become the No. 1 designer audio item and there seems to be some kind of contest on whoever comes up with the biggest/heaviest solid aluminum/wooden 'thing' at the end? I mean, MOST of the cables in the pics have those things. the guy who first came up with the idea should've patented it: 'impressive looking cable terminator device with remarkable audio-snob-attracting capabilities'. he would be rich now.
and the most amazing thing is that, while all products are built to inspire luxury, most are UGLY AS HELL and prove (at least to me) that either these guys have no connection with the real world or all buyers are billionaires from Dubai.
have you ever asked yourself... how come the best instrumentation gear in existence (that would put audio to shame noise and linearity-wise) manages with the crappiest cord? maybe it has to do with the fact that those guys actually know their stuff when it comes to RFI susceptibility and fix those issues the right way (shielding etc), not the best looking one? there are books on EMI/RFI and some people make a living out of it. I'm not sure many audio makers ever read those books.
regarding LessLoss and the "majority" of satisfied customers. here's a theory: they're everywhere! their ads seem to pop-up on every audio page I click on. could that be it?
I made a vow to stop reading reviews and 'subjective' forums. not because I think that everything that needs to be known is about THD, but because those guys don't do aything but make confusing things more confusing. I remember a discussion about "speaker driving capability" on one such forum. turned out that what they clearly defined and isolated as driving inability was impossible to define in clear, human language. it's like me telling you that I'm sure it's cold outside and at the same time being unable to tell you what temperature the thermometer reads. there you go, subjective forums and reviews. I could swear to the fact that many things you read on forums are BS, hear-say or wishful thinking (applies to this topic too, partially). just try to listen before buying and do as many comparisons as possible, that's it.
Last edited:
I only saw ads for Hobby King, Fly Zone and the Bixler until switching to SRWare Iron + Ghostery. Welcome to Google World.
It is not, because impedance is frequency dependent and at 400kHz it can be 40Ohm for one speaker and 1Ohm for second. In the EMI application note Hypex states that impedance of 8 Ohm tweeter (type is not specified) is more like 30 Ohm. But this might not be true for different kind, e.g. electrostatic membrane.
Not quite true, because intermodulations can be created by non-linearity of speaker magnetic field. But these are expected to be outside of audio spectrum.
Also some type of heavy power cords can attenuate RFI incoming from powerline better than common LC filter, which does not work for >100MHz signals (Hypex EMI application note talks about this). But this might be more relevant for devices with transformer than for SMPS.
Footnote: these are opinions of more knowledgeable people, I'm just a messenger.
of course.
but at 30 ohms it's even less of a problem. and it's only the resistive part of impedance that dissipates heat.
my calculation was an unrealistic worst-case.
I'd like to see one electro-dynamic speaker with 1ohm impedance at 400kHz.
that's basically what I said.
what the Hypex paper says is "at high frequencies the filter becomes a CL high pass filter! Indeed, some not-so-well-designed class D output filters have virtually no attenuation in the 100MHz range."
they are talking about the output filter, and you're bringing up power cords.
???
those >100MHz are caused by the output stage switching and are not related to mains crud.
and I'd like to think that they're not writing papers exposing their own incompetence.
really, I'm not a Hypex/class D fanboy but I'm trying to be objective.
and, again, all the above is coming from someone who used a UCD-based amp with 4 different speakers for some 7 years, sometimes at insane levels, and not with Rebecca Pidgeon type of music. and no TV reception problems (with 2 different models of nearby TVs) until I changed by DAC. yes, you read that right, a DAC did cause TV reception problems while a class-D amp didn't.
Last edited:
No need to argue, I agree with you mostly, although I don't like some of your over-simplifications.
The LC low pass filter is in the most cases well enough, but I've tried unsuccessfully explain that 1.5 metre length of proper low-pass power "tube" can have similar effect like common LC filter on the input of power supply. And it is possible that for spikes (very high frequencies) it could be even better.
I bit off much more than I realized I'd have to chew..
This assumes confusion caused me to state "known". I understood the difference when I made the statement. Whether something is known by someone or not, it can still be known by others.
More specifically...
4. Everyone who reported to have listened to both thus far report NC1200 as sounding better, with differences ranging from just noticeable to very significant.
When I stated "widely agreed", I was referring only to the consensus in the discussions among just those people, not to include other people like myself who have not heard both. As far as where, the reports indicate to me they were in their homes because most of them described the systems in which comparisons were made as their own systems. By whom, I meant those who have reported to have listened to both thus far. I had not found any controlled, blind listening results. However at least in the cases in which there were significant differences reported, the explanations of the differences coincide among unrelated reports and are descriptive and sensible enough for me to consider as relevant to an analysis.
If the NC1200 sounded better to those who've listened to both, the Hypex statement would indicate the difference being only the result of the different power supply.
Process of elimination. A power supply could not improve sound by sending a noisier signal. Therefore if a power supply improved sound, it would be a result of a cleaner signal from the power supply.
Logical conclusion evaluated from 1-6.
No need to apologize here. Wave frequency is the period of a signal's modulation. The higher the frequency, shorter the wavelength. For instance the A/C power line has a frequency of 60 Hz. A 60 Hz A/C signal travelling at the speed of light goes 5,000,000 meters with each alternation of the current.
A cable does not evaulate mathematics, the cable follows the laws of physics which mathematic models predict. There are several mathematic equasions that model skin effect.
Re-posting everything would probably be off topic for a thread about the NC400. I'll just re-post some of the more general information that might be helpful...
What is skin effect? - Definition from WhatIs.com
"...it increases the effective resistance of a wire for AC at moderate to high frequencies, compared with the resistance of the same wire at direct current ( DC ) and low AC frequencies. The effect is most pronounced in radio-frequency ( RF ) systems, especially antennas and transmission lines. But it can also affect the performance of high-fidelity sound equipment by causing attenuation in the treble range (the highest-pitched components of the audio)."
Note that attenuation in power lines before equipment is beneficial because it attenuates signals above 60 Hz that cause distortion.
In-line module for attenuating electrical noise with male and female blade terminals - Nartron Corporation
"...the use of a special engineered alloy wire or preferentially an alloy coated wire. The alloy of choice will have higher bulk resistance than the main core of the wire, thus the net wire resistivity is low for the relatively low frequency motor currents and/or signals which use the entire cross-section of the wire for electrical current conduction, but the higher frequency RFI noise signals will be attenuated by the higher bulk resistance of the conductive wire coating predominantly due to the electrical currents traveling primarily on the surface of the conductor wires (refer to "skin effect")."
Inductor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The resistance of a wire to high frequency current is higher than its resistance to direct current because of skin effect."
Conductors for high frequency transission of communication networks commly use methods to mitigate high frequency attenuation from skin effect...
Inductor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"At higher frequencies, resistance and resistive losses in inductors grow due to skin effect in the inductor's winding wires."
"To reduce resistance due to skin effect, in high-power inductors such as those used in transmitters the windings are sometimes made of a metal strip or tubing which has a larger surface area, and the surface is silver-plated."
Skin effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"A type of cable called litz wire (from the German Litzendraht, braided wire) is used to mitigate the skin effect for frequencies of a few kilohertz to about one megahertz. It consists of a number of insulated wire strands woven together in a carefully designed pattern, so that the overall magnetic field acts equally on all the wires and causes the total current to be distributed equally among them. With the skin effect having little effect on each of the thin strands, the bundle does not suffer the same increase in AC resistance that a solid conductor of the same cross-sectional area would due to the skin effect.[5]
Litz wire is often used in the windings of high-frequency transformers to increase their efficiency by mitigating both skin effect and proximity effect. Large power transformers are wound with stranded conductors of similar construction to litz wire, but employing a larger cross-section corresponding to the larger skin depth at mains frequencies.[6] Conductive threads composed of carbon nanotubes[7] have been demonstrated as conductors for antennas from medium wave to microwave frequencies. Unlike standard antenna conductors, the nanotubes are much smaller than the skin depth, allowing full utilization of the thread's cross-section resulting in an extremely light antenna.
High-voltage, high-current overhead power transmission lines often use aluminum cable with a steel reinforcing core; the higher resistance of the steel core is of no consequence since it is located far below the skin depth where essentially no AC current flows. In other applications, solid conductors are replaced by tubes, completely dispensing with the inner portion of the conductor where little current flows. This hardly affects the AC resistance but considerably reduces the weight of the conductor.
Solid or tubular conductors may also be silver-plated to take advantage of silver's higher conductivity. This technique is particularly used at VHF to microwave frequencies where the small skin depth requires only a very thin layer of silver, making the improvement in conductivity very cost effective. Silver or gold plating is similarly used on the surface of waveguides used for transmission of microwaves. This reduces attenuation of the propagating wave due to resistive losses affecting the accompanying eddy currents; the skin effect confines such eddy currents to a very thin surface layer of the waveguide structure. The skin effect itself isn't actually combated in these cases, but the distribution of currents near the conductor's surface makes the use of precious metals (having a lower resistivity) practical."
Inductor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Litz wire: To reduce skin effect losses, some coils are wound with a special type of radio frequency wire called litz wire. Instead of a single solid conductor, litz wire consists of several smaller wire strands that carry the current. Unlike ordinary stranded wire, the strands are insulated from each other, to prevent skin effect from forcing the current to the surface, and are braided together. The braid pattern ensures that each wire strand spends the same amount of its length on the outside of the braid, so skin effect distributes the current equally between the strands, resulting in a larger cross-sectional conduction area than an equivalent single wire."
EMI Shielding Companies
"Skin Effect - The propensity of high frequency current to travel close to the outside of an electric conductor rather than through its cross section. At high frequencies, the effective resistance of a wire is increased by skin effect."
Yahoo search for Skin Affect Attenuation...
+"skin effect" attenuation frequencies - Yahoo! Search Results
+"skin effect" attenuation frequency - Yahoo! Search Results
As far as how much attenuation occurs and at what frequency is dependent on many factors including the wire gauge, number of wires in the cable and how it's wound, or if it's solid, the frequency at which attenuation is measured, the length of the cable, and the wire material. A paper by Beldon I came across simplified this with a chart that compared 20KHz attenuation of equal length solid wires of various AWG. I recall 16 Gauge retaining 100% of the 20 Hz signal, and 10 Gauge losing 32%. Of course the 10 gauge would provide more amperage but it's skin affect attenuated the 20 Hz frequency by 32%. There are various methods to increase or decrease skin affect attenuation for a given wire gauge. 32% attenuation could be increased by using a skin effect enhancement method.
I've read reports on this very thread about this. Search this thread and Yahoo/Google. There's also a lot of discussion about this on the Audiogon forums.
Good point. I'm aware of this dynamic and I'd have someone else give it a listen without knowing anything.
For my own experiment, I'd have someone else do the wire swapping without telling me which is hooked up.
I've found that this statement is both.
Such gear employ active filtering. Attenuating power cords are simply passive filtering. I don't think Hypex would recommend good power cord if crap power cord made no difference. Shielding only reduces EMI local to the wire, but does not help with EMI already accumulated in the signal before the wire.
I haven't bothered to read ANY reviews from Lessloss as they could be biased. I didn't even read reviews for LessLoss elsewhere, except for what was posted in this thread regarding the NC400. The reviews I sought were regarding the general use of power cables that utilize skin affect to attenuate noise in the power signal, and how it affected the sound. I happened upon LessLoss in many discussions, and incidentally some of those who've spent thousands on LessLoss say they can get 90% of the effectiveness with similar but less pretty inexpensive cable, but all much better than standard cable.
I have a magic gizmo on sale that filters out bad reviews. Seriously though, I find some credibility in some circumstances, particularly when they experience an expensive components as being little better, no better, or worse, than a lessor expensive component. Just about everyone in this thread has take some degree of leap of faith based upon what others have expressed. There are no NC400 showrooms.
This assumes confusion caused me to state "known". I understood the difference when I made the statement. Whether something is known by someone or not, it can still be known by others.
More specifically...
4. Everyone who reported to have listened to both thus far report NC1200 as sounding better, with differences ranging from just noticeable to very significant.
When I stated "widely agreed", I was referring only to the consensus in the discussions among just those people, not to include other people like myself who have not heard both. As far as where, the reports indicate to me they were in their homes because most of them described the systems in which comparisons were made as their own systems. By whom, I meant those who have reported to have listened to both thus far. I had not found any controlled, blind listening results. However at least in the cases in which there were significant differences reported, the explanations of the differences coincide among unrelated reports and are descriptive and sensible enough for me to consider as relevant to an analysis.
If the NC1200 sounded better to those who've listened to both, the Hypex statement would indicate the difference being only the result of the different power supply.
Process of elimination. A power supply could not improve sound by sending a noisier signal. Therefore if a power supply improved sound, it would be a result of a cleaner signal from the power supply.
Logical conclusion evaluated from 1-6.
No need to apologize here. Wave frequency is the period of a signal's modulation. The higher the frequency, shorter the wavelength. For instance the A/C power line has a frequency of 60 Hz. A 60 Hz A/C signal travelling at the speed of light goes 5,000,000 meters with each alternation of the current.
A cable does not evaulate mathematics, the cable follows the laws of physics which mathematic models predict. There are several mathematic equasions that model skin effect.
Re-posting everything would probably be off topic for a thread about the NC400. I'll just re-post some of the more general information that might be helpful...
What is skin effect? - Definition from WhatIs.com
"...it increases the effective resistance of a wire for AC at moderate to high frequencies, compared with the resistance of the same wire at direct current ( DC ) and low AC frequencies. The effect is most pronounced in radio-frequency ( RF ) systems, especially antennas and transmission lines. But it can also affect the performance of high-fidelity sound equipment by causing attenuation in the treble range (the highest-pitched components of the audio)."
Note that attenuation in power lines before equipment is beneficial because it attenuates signals above 60 Hz that cause distortion.
In-line module for attenuating electrical noise with male and female blade terminals - Nartron Corporation
"...the use of a special engineered alloy wire or preferentially an alloy coated wire. The alloy of choice will have higher bulk resistance than the main core of the wire, thus the net wire resistivity is low for the relatively low frequency motor currents and/or signals which use the entire cross-section of the wire for electrical current conduction, but the higher frequency RFI noise signals will be attenuated by the higher bulk resistance of the conductive wire coating predominantly due to the electrical currents traveling primarily on the surface of the conductor wires (refer to "skin effect")."
Inductor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The resistance of a wire to high frequency current is higher than its resistance to direct current because of skin effect."
Conductors for high frequency transission of communication networks commly use methods to mitigate high frequency attenuation from skin effect...
Inductor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"At higher frequencies, resistance and resistive losses in inductors grow due to skin effect in the inductor's winding wires."
"To reduce resistance due to skin effect, in high-power inductors such as those used in transmitters the windings are sometimes made of a metal strip or tubing which has a larger surface area, and the surface is silver-plated."
Skin effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"A type of cable called litz wire (from the German Litzendraht, braided wire) is used to mitigate the skin effect for frequencies of a few kilohertz to about one megahertz. It consists of a number of insulated wire strands woven together in a carefully designed pattern, so that the overall magnetic field acts equally on all the wires and causes the total current to be distributed equally among them. With the skin effect having little effect on each of the thin strands, the bundle does not suffer the same increase in AC resistance that a solid conductor of the same cross-sectional area would due to the skin effect.[5]
Litz wire is often used in the windings of high-frequency transformers to increase their efficiency by mitigating both skin effect and proximity effect. Large power transformers are wound with stranded conductors of similar construction to litz wire, but employing a larger cross-section corresponding to the larger skin depth at mains frequencies.[6] Conductive threads composed of carbon nanotubes[7] have been demonstrated as conductors for antennas from medium wave to microwave frequencies. Unlike standard antenna conductors, the nanotubes are much smaller than the skin depth, allowing full utilization of the thread's cross-section resulting in an extremely light antenna.
High-voltage, high-current overhead power transmission lines often use aluminum cable with a steel reinforcing core; the higher resistance of the steel core is of no consequence since it is located far below the skin depth where essentially no AC current flows. In other applications, solid conductors are replaced by tubes, completely dispensing with the inner portion of the conductor where little current flows. This hardly affects the AC resistance but considerably reduces the weight of the conductor.
Solid or tubular conductors may also be silver-plated to take advantage of silver's higher conductivity. This technique is particularly used at VHF to microwave frequencies where the small skin depth requires only a very thin layer of silver, making the improvement in conductivity very cost effective. Silver or gold plating is similarly used on the surface of waveguides used for transmission of microwaves. This reduces attenuation of the propagating wave due to resistive losses affecting the accompanying eddy currents; the skin effect confines such eddy currents to a very thin surface layer of the waveguide structure. The skin effect itself isn't actually combated in these cases, but the distribution of currents near the conductor's surface makes the use of precious metals (having a lower resistivity) practical."
Inductor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Litz wire: To reduce skin effect losses, some coils are wound with a special type of radio frequency wire called litz wire. Instead of a single solid conductor, litz wire consists of several smaller wire strands that carry the current. Unlike ordinary stranded wire, the strands are insulated from each other, to prevent skin effect from forcing the current to the surface, and are braided together. The braid pattern ensures that each wire strand spends the same amount of its length on the outside of the braid, so skin effect distributes the current equally between the strands, resulting in a larger cross-sectional conduction area than an equivalent single wire."
EMI Shielding Companies
"Skin Effect - The propensity of high frequency current to travel close to the outside of an electric conductor rather than through its cross section. At high frequencies, the effective resistance of a wire is increased by skin effect."
Yahoo search for Skin Affect Attenuation...
+"skin effect" attenuation frequencies - Yahoo! Search Results
+"skin effect" attenuation frequency - Yahoo! Search Results
As far as how much attenuation occurs and at what frequency is dependent on many factors including the wire gauge, number of wires in the cable and how it's wound, or if it's solid, the frequency at which attenuation is measured, the length of the cable, and the wire material. A paper by Beldon I came across simplified this with a chart that compared 20KHz attenuation of equal length solid wires of various AWG. I recall 16 Gauge retaining 100% of the 20 Hz signal, and 10 Gauge losing 32%. Of course the 10 gauge would provide more amperage but it's skin affect attenuated the 20 Hz frequency by 32%. There are various methods to increase or decrease skin affect attenuation for a given wire gauge. 32% attenuation could be increased by using a skin effect enhancement method.
I've read reports on this very thread about this. Search this thread and Yahoo/Google. There's also a lot of discussion about this on the Audiogon forums.
Good point. I'm aware of this dynamic and I'd have someone else give it a listen without knowing anything.
For my own experiment, I'd have someone else do the wire swapping without telling me which is hooked up.
I've found that this statement is both.
Such gear employ active filtering. Attenuating power cords are simply passive filtering. I don't think Hypex would recommend good power cord if crap power cord made no difference. Shielding only reduces EMI local to the wire, but does not help with EMI already accumulated in the signal before the wire.
I haven't bothered to read ANY reviews from Lessloss as they could be biased. I didn't even read reviews for LessLoss elsewhere, except for what was posted in this thread regarding the NC400. The reviews I sought were regarding the general use of power cables that utilize skin affect to attenuate noise in the power signal, and how it affected the sound. I happened upon LessLoss in many discussions, and incidentally some of those who've spent thousands on LessLoss say they can get 90% of the effectiveness with similar but less pretty inexpensive cable, but all much better than standard cable.
I have a magic gizmo on sale that filters out bad reviews. Seriously though, I find some credibility in some circumstances, particularly when they experience an expensive components as being little better, no better, or worse, than a lessor expensive component. Just about everyone in this thread has take some degree of leap of faith based upon what others have expressed. There are no NC400 showrooms.
I may have said it before but I think that whoever popularized skin effect in audio is a genius. and if you think how such a cash cow remained undiscovered for so long...
what makes me skeptical is that what they claim on their website (filtering) would be pretty easy to prove with measurements. but, as usual, none are shown.
Talking about the powersupply:
The Mola Mola power supply looks more like the smps1200/700 available from hypex...
Would it be possible to use this supply for the ncore400 also, to improve the sound?
The Mola Mola power supply looks more like the smps1200/700 available from hypex...
Would it be possible to use this supply for the ncore400 also, to improve the sound?
- Status
- Not open for further replies.