One Sage To Another....
Thankyou, Frank - that's why my signature reads - "I believe not to believe in any fixed belief system."
I have my ideas why insulation materials both impart and subtract sounds, but I don't really care why very much - I prefer to just enjoy the results.
Eric.
fdegrove said:Hi,
That's what sets engineers apart, Eric...being able to look beyond the textbook.
May I congratulate you for being able to free yourself from conventional wisdom.
That, my friend is what true intelligence is all about.
Cheers,
Thankyou, Frank - that's why my signature reads - "I believe not to believe in any fixed belief system."
I have my ideas why insulation materials both impart and subtract sounds, but I don't really care why very much - I prefer to just enjoy the results.
Eric.
Peter Daniel said:It is my understanding that power cord acts as a filter or a tuning device. It doesn't matter what's on your AC line is, the cord just adds coloration, similar to the capacitor in speaker's crossover (or interconnects and speaker cables) and sometimes you like it, and sometimes not. So the length of the wire from the power station to your room doesn't have to do anything with a power cord. Am I on a right track?
Hi Peter, I agree that the final power lead can act as a final filter that selectively allows particular spectrums through, and attenuates other spectrums, with consequent affect on the system sonics.
Frank's practice of running the same type of cable all the way from the meter-box and into the equipment is a very valid one, provided you like the sonic characteristics of the cable used.
Most users do not have this privelige, so the final power cable becomes the final arbiter in system power sound, and this sonic EFFECT can be very clearly aparent.
AC Polarity into each piece of equipment is another consideration here - one day I will build a power conditioning/distribution box with switchable polarity for each of the AC outlets and seee what effect this can make.
Eric.
power
as brian donaldson tried to say was...forget the small powercord and get the important stuff right first - the gain is very substansual...at least.
peter, how do you power your system ?
do you have separat powerlines from your fuseboxes or do you just use the walloutlets in your house...?
troels
as brian donaldson tried to say was...forget the small powercord and get the important stuff right first - the gain is very substansual...at least.
peter, how do you power your system ?
do you have separat powerlines from your fuseboxes or do you just use the walloutlets in your house...?
troels
I wired my house myself, including changing fusebox for 200A one.
I'm running 2 separate dedicated 30A lines (both phases on ea) to my main system. The amps run on one phase (separate lines for L and R) and source components run on another phase.
After I changed the lines, the difference was noticable right away, with better defined bass and better focus all ariund. There is also a power transformer on a pole, right beside my house, so I think it's also a sort of advantage as the line coming to my house is cleaner (beeing fed directly from transformer) and not polluted as much.
Having said that, I still here a difference when I use power conditioner or isolation transformer with my equipment.
I didn't bother much with too many fancy cords. I'm using same cable as in wall for my amps (actually lower gauge, I have 10 ga in wall and the cords are 12 ga).
For my sources I'm using Audioquest type 4 speaker cable as it sounds quite good.
I'm running 2 separate dedicated 30A lines (both phases on ea) to my main system. The amps run on one phase (separate lines for L and R) and source components run on another phase.
After I changed the lines, the difference was noticable right away, with better defined bass and better focus all ariund. There is also a power transformer on a pole, right beside my house, so I think it's also a sort of advantage as the line coming to my house is cleaner (beeing fed directly from transformer) and not polluted as much.
Having said that, I still here a difference when I use power conditioner or isolation transformer with my equipment.
I didn't bother much with too many fancy cords. I'm using same cable as in wall for my amps (actually lower gauge, I have 10 ga in wall and the cords are 12 ga).
For my sources I'm using Audioquest type 4 speaker cable as it sounds quite good.
I have 3 neighbor that I share a pole transformer with. And I've looked at all times of day and suspect the distortion I see is also on the high tension lines upstream of the pole transformer. I have to go to work or I'd post a pic. All of you looking at this thread with a scope, make a voltage devider and have a look at the wave distortion on your domestic power. I'd like to compare, Maybe the trash is local.
As for speaker cables and interconnects, they carry signal and can easily influence sound. Power cords only carry the power to run the amps, etc. Substandard house wireing and power cords can cause extra supply droop, I would say that is the limit to their influence unless you have a very poorly designed or built power supply.
As for speaker cables and interconnects, they carry signal and can easily influence sound. Power cords only carry the power to run the amps, etc. Substandard house wireing and power cords can cause extra supply droop, I would say that is the limit to their influence unless you have a very poorly designed or built power supply.
Peter Daniel said:
Hi Peter,
Using dedicated audio power wiring is a very good idea. However, splitting your audio system so that the amps are on one transformer leg and the signal sources are on the other is not optimal from a hum rejection standpoint.
The power input transformers in audio equipment have capacitive leakage from both sides of the incoming power line to the chassis. For RFI suppression there are often capacitors added from one or both sides of the power line to chassis. This means there is always some leakage of AC current to the chassis. If the capacitance from each side of the power line to chassis is balanced then the source voltage behind the leakage impedance is about one half the power line voltage or 60 volts.
If all audio equipment is connected to the same power leg, then these leakage currents will be in phase with each other, and the difference in potential between chassis will be greatly reduced (to zero if the capacitive coupling is balanced in all pieces of gear).
On the other hand if two pieces of interconnected audio equipment are run on the opposite transformer legs then the leakage currents will create opposite polarity potentials on the chassis which will then add rather than cancelling out.
When you have chassis voltage differentials between the ends of a shielded cable, the result is AC current flowing through the shield which will induce hum in the audio signal. You should experiance a reduction in hum in your system by powering the amps and signal sources from the same transformer leg. I would suggest putting any lighting controls (dimmers etc) on the opposite transformer leg since they can create serious power pollution, but all of your audio and video gear should be on the same transformer leg.
Phil
mrfeedback said:
To make a polarity switcher you would need to use switches, right? Switches are never as good as hard-wired cables. I wonder if this might not (theoretically at least) degrade the performance. Of course, it could be nice to be able to easily experiment with changing the phase, but in a final assembly (after you're done experimenting) I believe it would be best to leave the polarity switcher out.
Maybe the polarity switcher should be a plug-in module, or rather, something you connect along the way. Imagine a little box with a male power connector in one end that you connect to your filter/distributor and a female in the other end. It contains the switches to reverse polarity. You could plug this in when you want to test different polarities, and when you've found which one works best, then you could disconnect this box. What do you think?
Maybe I wasn't clear enough of what I was thinking - I should have been considering that we're talking about lethal mains power here.pinkmouse said:
The idea is to have a closed box, not too unlike the filter box (but probably smaller) that is completely closed. The only way you can interface with it is through the plug that goes to the filter and the socket that you plug the connection into, and the polarity switch. Thereby it should be as "safe" as a filter (safe if it has been built properly by someone who knows what he's doing - this is nothing for beginners! - and considering that we _are_ dealing with mains power).
Was that better Pinkmouse?
Oscar said:
Yup, but my main worry is that by reversing the polarity of the mains lead you lose any protection you have from internal fuses, leading to a fire risk.
You also have the chance of someone who is unfamliar with what you have done getting a belt, as what was at neutral inside an piece of kit, is now live. You also risk putting mains voltage across EMF/spike caps that are not rated safely for this.
To re-iterate, the only proper way of doing this is to have a switch that swaps over the primary leads into the traffo. There is no other safe way.
Hi,
Erratum humanum est...or something like that.
Well, having that out of the way, the only reason for going down that path is assuming that perfect symmetry would be achieved....it won't hurt but I hope ML had made his orderbook for their xformer stating a pefectly symmetrical xformer as well.
I can think of some other reasons to choose that path but none of them would have anything to do with safety...
Cheers,
Erratum humanum est...or something like that.
Well, having that out of the way, the only reason for going down that path is assuming that perfect symmetry would be achieved....it won't hurt but I hope ML had made his orderbook for their xformer stating a pefectly symmetrical xformer as well.
I can think of some other reasons to choose that path but none of them would have anything to do with safety...
Cheers,
Peter -- take 6 feet of power cord, any power cord and measure L, C and R and tell me how much filtering can take place ? Perhaps there is some new metaphysics of poles and zeroes operative in this case.Peter Daniel said:It is my understanding that power cord acts as a filter or a tuning device. It doesn't matter what's on your AC line is, the cord just adds coloration, similar to the capacitor in speaker's crossover (or interconnects and speaker cables) and sometimes you like it, and sometimes not. So the length of the wire from the power station to your room doesn't have to do anything with a power cord. Am I on a right track?
Take a look at my posts on "What's on your power line" -- when you look at the spectrum as a time series -- i.e. snapshots of the FFT over the course of a day -- you will see that when appliance activity is low the distortion line crud and birdies are pretty low. Unfortunately it doesn't coincide with the time at which you want to listen.
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