Hi!
This thing have bugging me for some time.. I wonder if there is a benefit in turning the power chord plug right..? + - so to speak. It is AC but some have told me that the sound gets a bit more settle if you have done this right. I have a hard time hearing this in my system.
How do you plug in your amps? Random or by science? 😀
Cheers!
This thing have bugging me for some time.. I wonder if there is a benefit in turning the power chord plug right..? + - so to speak. It is AC but some have told me that the sound gets a bit more settle if you have done this right. I have a hard time hearing this in my system.
How do you plug in your amps? Random or by science? 😀
Cheers!
In that particular instance I would say that "by science" = "random". I'm not surprised you can't hear a difference. If you could hear a difference I'd be worried for you!
There can be influences, due to two mechanisms:
1) Magnetic coupling. Transformer stray fields on side-by-side or stacked components may reinforce or partially cancel depending on mains phasing.
2) Hard or capacitance coupled ground currents may appear or again reinforce or partially cancel depending on mains phasing, usually due to mains filters in components having capacitors from both the live and neutral line to earth. Depending on how earth is coupled to ground, thece sapacitors can end up conducting a small current from live to neutral with the earthed parts (usually metal enclosures) somewhere 'inbetween' (the often felt 'buzz' effect when lightly touching or stroking a metal part of the enclosure. This usually happens when the earthing is not very good or completely absent.
1) Magnetic coupling. Transformer stray fields on side-by-side or stacked components may reinforce or partially cancel depending on mains phasing.
2) Hard or capacitance coupled ground currents may appear or again reinforce or partially cancel depending on mains phasing, usually due to mains filters in components having capacitors from both the live and neutral line to earth. Depending on how earth is coupled to ground, thece sapacitors can end up conducting a small current from live to neutral with the earthed parts (usually metal enclosures) somewhere 'inbetween' (the often felt 'buzz' effect when lightly touching or stroking a metal part of the enclosure. This usually happens when the earthing is not very good or completely absent.
Reinforce or cancel with what? If there is anything to reinforce or cancel with it is surely subject to the same phase influences as the supply. Source material is completely decoupled from supply phase and thre will be no autocorrelation.
One trix is to use a "phase pen" and measure to lowest phase appearance in the chassis. And leave it so on every unit. Does this make any sense?
Did I not just say reinforce or cancel with adjecent or stacked components, i.e. transformers within them? Also ground currents coming from other components. It's fine to look at an amp as a black box but it doesn't do anything useful without a source. It is possible to get some effects of how you plug in the mans plug in a single component (usually to do with how the transformer is constructed - if done properly there should be no difference) but from what I have experienced, 9 out of 10 cases were down to interactions between multiple components and out of those 9, 8 were down to ground/earth issues.
This block has no real ground in the walls. Will the water element do? Seems risky! Any guides on that?
"Phase pen" is for electricians to see which wire is neutral. It is of no use to audiophiles. Audiophiles should keep away from the subject altogether, to avoid getting killed or in insurance trouble.
You are thinking along the right lines, Viper_user. Although those who are into double-blind tests and measurements will probably not agree. 😀
However, only those in countries where the mains plug simply has 2 parallel lugs can simply "turn the power plug right" - the rest of us who have an earth prong ... can't do this. 😉 So I have to make sure the power transformer is oriented correctly, relative to the input IEC lugs (which means soldering).
As I understand the theory (and there was a seminal article in "BoundforSound" many years ago, plus Clark Johnsen wrote about it in his book "The Wood Effect"), it is important to get the power transformer primary oriented the right way round.
This is because there are parasitic capacitance effects at play in the primary winding of a power transformer - which have an effect on the sound of the component powered by the transformer. The BoundforSound article explained how to measure whether the primary is connected the right way round.
Regards,
Andy
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