Funniest snake oil theories

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#621
DF96 said:
You forgot the flavour mixing matrix elements and the neutral currents, so it won't work too well. Still, not a bad attempt for a mere chemist.

I think you should write up your ideas, such as they are, for a proper audio journal (not that Dutch engineering comic). You might find that nice Dr. Sokal will be happy to act as co-author.
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I'm often amazed at how SY really pushes the boundaries of knowledge out there and applies them to his equipment. I agree that he should expand his writings away from that rag. But I'm still not sure if I need shorter or longer cables but will begin the experiments in earnest to get some improvement in my own system.
 
#623
Steve Eddy said:
No, it's not. It's representing the same thing that it represents in figures 4 and 5 on the same page, and that is the transformer of the AC mains system. Not the bloody transformer inside the equipment.
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Let’s take an initial look at the problem shown in Figure 1. There is a 120V isolation transformer with a common RF filter typical of many types of equipment.
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How you get from this to interpreting it as a pole transformer (and in the Figure 5 caption, he explicitly says "isolation transformer") is beyond me.
 
#624
godfrey said:
Yes, agreed, regarding the first picture. Unfortunately the coherency doesn't last long.

Half way down the first page he starts muddying the waters by talking about reactive power and harmonic currents. By page 6 he's convinced himself that "balanced power" eliminates these, thus automatically correcting power factor.
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True enough. But I was only concerning my arguments with that first schematic. After reading all of Bill Whitlock's pieces about interchassis leakage currents, it made perfect sense to me and I was rather surprised that SY dismissed it as "complete nonsense."

se
 
#625
SY said:
How you get from this to interpreting it as a pole transformer (and in the Figure 5 caption, he explicitly says "isolation transformer") is beyond me.
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I don't see any mention of "isolation transformer" with respect to figure 5.

There is mention of "isolation transformer" with respect to figure 1, but it's only for illustrative purposes. What it represents is what is represented in figure 4, which is described as "a typical 120 volt residential power supply applied to any impedance load..."

The whole raison d'etre of "balanced" power is to address the "ills" of our unbalanced 120 volt AC mains system vis a vis chassis leakage currents. And in that context, the schematic in figure 1 makes perfect sense with the transformer representing that 120 volt AC mains system.

se
 
#626
nezbleu said:
"Lets take an initial look at the problem shown in Figure 1. There is a 120V isolation transformer with a common RF filter typical of many types of equipment."

It's supposed to represent the secondary side of an isolation xformer.
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What it's supposed to represent is the unbalanced nature of our 120 volt AC mains system. And in the real world, that comes off the transformers up on the poles.

se
 
#627
rdf said:
Not much, it's used by many professional studios. Great idea that's not always compatible with safety standards.
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That may be true in Canada but balanced power for equipment is allowed and at the 120 volt level in the USA based on NEC current standard. What is stressed is that the safety ground need to be at the reference 0 voltage ground or earth reference . The ground and neutral are bonded at the main circuit breaker panel not at the meter. In many places the meter base may or may not be boned to the main circuit breaker panel. In sub panels the ground and neutral are separated and only connected together at main panel .
 
#629
kevinkr said:
Neutral tied to chassis could turn quite interesting or lethal if connected to a miswired outlet with a faulty or no ground..
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Bonded neutral is the standard in the USA for some good reasons. Neutral is not meant to be tied to the chassis for the very reason you cite. Ground is allowed to be tied to the chassis. In either event, a short from hot to ground or from hot to neutral trips the breaker. That's the idea. It's not perfect, but it's what we've got.

If you like, I can send you a rather good presentation about it. Alas it's too big to attach here.
 
#630
Do we care if reactive currents flow back into the power system? Yes we do or at least should. When we feed power to the amplifier, preamplifier and CD player, the equipment uses most of the energy to function as designed. The remainder ‘rattles around’ in your power system as reactive currents (noise and grunge) on your ground including cable shields and component chassis. Significant noise pollution has been introduced through a backdoor directly into your most sensitive electronic circuits. "These reactive currents complete the circuit back through sensitive signal-circuit electronics, looping in a matter of speaking through whatever grounding or signal path is available. This is noise commonly called hum. But as one might imagine, the harmonic structure can be infinite so all sorts of ‘sonic qualities’ in the noise are possible."
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The guts of the issue. A chap called Ott wrote a whole book about this sort of thing, but why should he know anything worthwhile about such matters ... ?
 
#631
For those of you not familiar with domestic electrical distribution in the the USA, it's already balanced power. At 220-240V, that is.

The "pole pig" transformer that supplies our houses has a center tapped secondary. You can see this if you look at one. That center tap becomes our neutral line, and is tied to ground at the pole and at the house.

Since we generally use 120V for our audio and other household electronics, we become unbalanced, going between the grounded neutral center tap and one or the other side of the pole pig's secondary. If we used 240V we'd be balanced. Each leg being 120V above ground, but opposite in phase. The balanced power we hear about for audio simply puts in another center tapped transformer to give us 60-0-60. No big mystery.
 
#632
don't know if there is more recent but I found this a while ago

jcx said:
Google is your friend, the above threads gave enough leads to get to this NEC commentary:

ART. 647 — SENSITIVE ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
An Article covering the wiring requirements for “Technical Power” or “Balanced Power Systems” was added to the 2002 NEC. Technical power is a separately derived, 120V line-to-line, single-phase, 3-wire system with 60V to ground from each ungrounded conductor. Technical power systems reduce objectionable noise in sensitive electronic equipment locations. They are restricted to commercial and industrial occupancies under close supervision by qualified personnel [647.3]. You cannot install them in dwelling units.

Intent: Technical power has been permitted in the NEC since 1996. However, it was located in Art. 530 — Motion Picture and Television Studios and Similar Locations, so its use was limited to these applications. By locating the requirements in a separate Article, its use can be greatly expanded.
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equitech has some articles, explanations pushing the idea

Index of Technical Articles About Balanced Power
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we seem to still be getting away with line freq trans/rect/cap linear supplies in audio - but switching supplies are used in some processing, source equipment - what do they look like with "balanced power"?
 
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#633
As a simple explanation of what the Felicia "solution" is for those unaware, the intent is to be able to use readily available transformers to create balanced mains power, by using back to back normal power transformers of sufficient VA rating, the secondaries are linked, and where the primary of the output unit is centre tapped, and linked to ground. If hard to get a unit with centre tapped primary, then 4 transformers can be used.

The nice bit is that then all sorts of interesting filtering add-ons can be easily inserted into the secondary to secondary link ...
 
#636
Then look at TN-C-S

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=tncs%20system&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&ved=0CEsQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Felectrical.theiet.org%2Fwiring-matters%2F16%2Fearthing-questions.cfm&ei=LqWMUfDJKJG20QXk8YCwAg&usg=AFQjCNHkByhVoLPP17u6iUD-LDMf2OWlEg


Its used in UK ...it was called PME...(Cost cutting less cables required for the same as TNS)

Then your going to say well the earth and Neutral are the same cable..
Then your going to say well what about noise on the earth..then your going to say that RF filtering in a mains cable or other can't make a difference...🙄
Then of course you will think well what happens if the combined neutral and earth goes open circuit on the incoming supply...

Then you will think about cap coupling to supply components and filtering... 😀

Regards
M. Gregg
 
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#637
back from the sin bin, looks like my sigs aren't appreciated much.

I hear there's a request for funny theories. so here's one:
guy says he can hear what software was used to rip CDs to a PC.
yeap, you read that right. you make 2 flacs from the same disc with 2 different ripping applications. the resulting files are bit-identical. yest the guy says he can hear which is which 🙂
 
#638
It is not a trivial thing to understand. nor to explain briefly, but it's not a matter of conduction modulation (which is simple in comparison), but truly the coherence of the charge density functional. See, for example, my original paper on the subject, "Interrelations among x-ray scattering, electron densities, and ionization potentials," where the concepts of charge density functionals are quantified within the Hartree-Fock formalism.
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SY, I think you missed your true calling in life.😛
 
#639
mr_push_pull said:
looks like my sigs aren't appreciated much.
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Yeah, check the rules - politics has been a touchy subject ever since.... well, nevermind.

mr_push_pull said:
guy says he can hear what software was used to rip CDs to a PC.
yeap, you read that right. you make 2 flacs from the same disc with 2 different ripping applications. the resulting files are bit-identical. yest the guy says he can hear which is which 🙂
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IIRC, there was a rather heated discussion about that here a couple of years ago. They went so far as to upload the files to an internet server so other folks could download them and judge for themselves. Sure enough the true believers still heard a difference. Oddly enough, renaming the files in an attempt to do some sort of blind test affected the sound quality of both files so badly that it was no longer possible to tell which was which.
 
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