Guys all have this issue but let's not go into this here in this thread. I'm very happy all that has been said here and feel Ron's Original post has been Answered and a help to him and all.
Much of this power line noise , issues , concerns is complex in many ways. As such it's too deep to go into here.
Transformers will affect the sound of the entire system when plugged in the vicinity of that
system, wether or not a component is plugged in or not to that line. Depending on the quality of the product, balanced or not, your mains situation and your electronics the end result can go either way no guarantees that the sound won’t be worse using a transformer.
My experience with AC regenerator has always been negative, great to use them on a separate line for turntable motors but not for other components. Of course if ones using colored audiophile power cords and cables the distortion introduced by these units is just another addition into mix adding to the flavor of things .
David, Could you elaborate a little? What has been negative from your experience? Not all regenerators are the same. The modern Ps audio units (P12,15 and 20) have extremely low impedance and distortion specs. I checked out a recommended Eaton battery regenerator, and they didn't even quote impedance, which seems to me to be a critical factor in whether any power conditioner damps dynamics.
And are you saying you like a regenerator only for sources (including digital) or only for turntable motors?
I am running my set power amp, pre amp and class d speaker amps and all sources from the P12. This is only using 37% of the P12's capacity. It all goes to a dedicated line to a low resistance earth ground.
I may experiment with the amp going to another dedicated wall line just to see if dynamics were to improve, but it sounds dynamic now to me.
In my experience sufficiently star grounded systems remove all problems associated with problems of power from the provider. Noisy transformers are rendered quite as an example. In fact sometimes I doubt cables(Hi end) really are needed.A well designed pro type cable might do as well as long they are well shielded. I have come to the conclusion that a dedicated 10’awg line is sufficient...less is better.
DC on the line, isn’t that a problem at the panel? A good electrician should be able to fix.
One thought I have from time to time is should we simply assume we have line noise that should be addressed? I had my line noise measured by someone in the pro audio world who knows what they are doing and he said it was in the top 5% of the many lines he has tested. Granted he runs into a lot of terribly noisy lines in studios...
In any case, using a unit similar to the Powervar Power Probe Model PP115, it measured about 85 mV Line to Neutral and 15 Neutral to Ground on my line. My Voltage never drops below drops below 120 or above 126 going into the P12. So the question I have is should I even worry with the P12? Maybe at some point I'll take it out and plug everything into dedicated lines to see if there's a sonic loss or gain.
On Star Grounding: I'm not sure I completely understand what that means. Does it mean all components are going into a single unit like a high quality multi outlet power strip and then to a dedicated outlet which leads to Earth Ground?
Or can the same be established with everything going to some number of dedicated wall lines which also also lead to Earth Ground?
David, Could you elaborate a little? What has been negative from your experience? Not all regenerators are the same. The modern Ps audio units (P12,15 and 20) have extremely low impedance and distortion specs. I checked out a recommended Eaton battery regenerator, and they didn't even quote impedance, which seems to me to be a critical factor in whether any power conditioner damps dynamics.
And are you saying you like a regenerator only for sources (including digital) or only for turntable motors?
I am running my set power amp, pre amp and class d speaker amps and all sources from the P12. This is only using 37% of the P12's capacity. It all goes to a dedicated line to a low resistance earth ground.
I may experiment with the amp going to another dedicated wall line just to see if dynamics were to improve, but it sounds dynamic now to me.
wil, I use regenerators for two reasons, one having so many different tts with different voltages and frequencies is a must but other reason that I would use one anyway is that motors and controllers generate noise plugging them into a regenerator stops the noise from getting into the mains. Never for any component that creates, passes or amplifies a signal.
I don't have a technical explanation nor have I heard a convincing one from anyone as to why some high end systems are so sensitive to even a change in the IEC of the power cord. What I know is that the numbers you quoted mean very little and nothing to do with resulting sound quality. Just to give you an example I have several different grounding schemes in place for the listening room and the one with highest resistance by far is the one that sounds best, go figure. IME any type of mains conditioning or regenerating device I've come across changes the sound of a system by adding a distinct signature/distortion/coloration or whatever you want to call it vs your average mains quality even without dedicated lines and are totally ineffective when the mains is really bad, the congestion and distortion caused by very bad mains will come through no matter what product I use. These AC management components or at least the so called better ones including high end power cords are all designed to do something to the sound and change different parameters, the problem is that you can't regulate how much or at what frequency, they run wide open and paint over everything with the same brush so every recording is covered with that coloration and presentation. This is very obvious if one has a system with enough resolution to play back different recordings hearing differences of each, both good and bad. I know I'm gong to get slack for this but you wont have real resolution using many of the high end power cords, cat litter boxes, some tweaks, footers, racks, etc. and certainly not a computer or tablet as source, in these cases you're just equalizing, adding or replacing one coloration/distortion with a new one. Look at this devices as capacitors.
david
Disclaimer, I'm expressing views based on my own values for a high end system and how it should sound.
unpopular opinion: effects are 100% dependent on the location and can't be solved on a universal basis
I tried removing my Torus for a cheap Isobar strip as well as a fancy Audioquest power bar - neither worked well at all. I was bummed as I went in to the trial wanting to remove a heavy box.
What's ironic is to talk about distortion from power conditioners, but everyone is using gear without low distortion. Power conditioners have very little effect on THD. But there is a type of distortion that no one is referencing to because people aren't so clear on what's going on - they may be hearing it but describing it as other things. I hesitate to call it distortion because it isn't an apt description when referring to AC where everything is, eh, a bit loose on the quality of signal. None the less there is often "linear distortion" occurring. Most will refer to it as "current restriction" if what they are describing is actually even related to power quantity. It tends to soften from somewhere in the mids, to the highs, and overall presentation a bit. Sometimes it happens during transients only. You might hear it in the bass but actually this is typically very rare to be perceptive of it. What is occurring is saturation of certain parts of the device (if it's the guilt of a power device). When saturation occurs from the amount of current flowing, it is the voltage that takes a hit. That's more problematic than maybe it sounds, given that current and voltage already tend to be a little out of phase on our power (power factor). What isn't happening is current reduction (the physics of current reduction aren't really in the realm of audio products until something literally burns through and severs the connection entirely). This is all, of course, barring the your amplifier isn't clipping (soft clip, not the hard one you noticed big time).
Ground, safety ground, is not a drain. Fundamentally it's important to know that electrons flow toward hot, towards positive. So you can't just "dump" everything off onto something, because the absolute fundamental first most basic thing about electricity makes it impossible. Ground in general is one of the most complicated subjects there is... it cannot be as simple as Roger is implying. Star grounding is a simple way to try and solve problems but ultimately isn't the final word. Things are more complicated than that, and real engineering knows that. I don't believe at all that you can "solve everything" by grounding because it doesn't address ten zillion things like PSRR and sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more. There's a lot of engineers that design some pretty great circuits and still don't full get some grounding problems in some cases. The likelihood that just any pedestrian off the street can solve their situations by saying "star ground" is basically zero.
Ground with more resistance sound better? That's actually entirely plausible because resistance contrary to popular belief isn't necessarily bad in the least, but rather not a very economical way of dealing with anything. Resistance burns off lots of power, that's the biggest problem with it. But it can also dampen certain things, including a lot of noisy trash on ground that is in frequency ranges that don't play by your ordinary rules and tends to be rather devious.
What's funny here is I agree that most powercords and things don't work well, they don't sound right. However I strongly encourage power conditioning. What conditioning? Now that's a very challenging question. I like my own the most and there isn't a commercial version yet. So it's very hard to recommend something. If you have disastrously bad power you might as well get anything that will fix it. I can say this, the regenerators disturb me a little in that the powercord going into them has a massive effect on sound...
Trying to pick out why you hear everything you do when you start using power conditioning is rather hard. They do often reveal other flaws in a stereo. They may thoroughly open up your stereo to sounding like that one note wonder you get from lots of estranged cords and other things. But you also potentially run into other problems like incompatibility with devices. I would venture to say that's a major contribution to DDK's findings. I say this because maybe he isn't thinking about, but does know... Lamm uses a "widget" on the input of their ML3 PSU (and probably others). These filters don't necessarily play very nicely with other things all the time. I'm not a fan, but I believe they're using ones that are mil-spec because the average IEC filter is absolute garbage - and the mil-specs are decent.
Different people balance the sound of systems differently. So the variables involved are almost endless in some regards. Some may like the sound of what the naked AC sounds like. I think it's the fastest way to fatigue... but others will call the attributes dynamic. When you have better quality AC you often find out that albums are a little different than you may have previously believed. I would say an incorrect way to judge them is say with a single album because if you were getting closer to the real sound of the album, you could misjudge the characteristics of the album as the characteristics of the change in AC power. But that's what I see people doing all day long. And I'm 100% sure that some people just don't hear fatiguing attributes like I do - to them it is not -, and I think for some it's age related.
There's nothing wrong with just not using any of it. It's subjective. But IMO you can't get the quality of music possible without conditioning. The percents detected on the line aren't important, the sound you hear is what matters and even people with 3% have found drastic improvements. Our gear can often share noise with other gear, too. There's an awful lot of variables and that's the same reason why most companies get power conditioning utterly wrong. It probably sounds like I'm rejecting it and praising it at the same time, I am. That's why I had to invent my own stuff.
Yes power and it’s effect on the audio signal is pretty involved. I focus only on SCIN, current leakage and common mode noise and it’s effect on the audio signal which deals with the technical ground.
Power conditioning to me seems like putting the horse before the cart. But I know that others disagree.
I know several techniques to do it, I do not need to search. Just wanted to know and perhaps talk about the specific one you are recommending. No system is perfect, there are no single best solution, all audio issues have compromises.
IMHO DC in the mains affects systems more than most people consider.
Ground, safety ground, is not a drain. Fundamentally it's important to know that electrons flow toward hot, towards positive. So you can't just "dump" everything off onto something, because the absolute fundamental first most basic thing about electricity makes it impossible. Ground in general is one of the most complicated subjects there is... it cannot be as simple as Roger is implying. Star grounding is a simple way to try and solve problems but ultimately isn't the final word. Things are more complicated than that, and real engineering knows that. I don't believe at all that you can "solve everything" by grounding because it doesn't address ten zillion things like PSRR and sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more. There's a lot of engineers that design some pretty great circuits and still don't full get some grounding problems in some cases. The likelihood that just any pedestrian off the street can solve their situations by saying "star ground" is basically zero..
I agree with most of above but aside from running dedicated lines or some type of isolation transformer grounding is one the only things we can do at the consumer end of the power grid. It's not a cure all but if done right it can at least help with ground loops which are very common and strangely it can also have a profound affect on overall sound quality and tonality, doesn't mean it's always a positive. A lot of situations limit what one can do with grounding and then there are other variables if the client is using balanced power for example there can be grounding techniques specified by the transformer manufacturer that one must follow, and do you bond it to the main building ground or use it as an independent "isolated" scheme, lots to consider. Whatever the limitations of ground schemes it still is a powerful tool and lot of good can be accomplished with proper grounding.
Ground with more resistance sound better? That's actually entirely plausible because resistance contrary to popular belief isn't necessarily bad in the least, but rather not a very economical way of dealing with anything. Resistance burns off lots of power, that's the biggest problem with it. But it can also dampen certain things, including a lot of noisy trash on ground that is in frequency ranges that don't play by your ordinary rules and tends to be rather devious.
What's funny here is I agree that most powercords and things don't work well, they don't sound right. However I strongly encourage power conditioning. What conditioning? Now that's a very challenging question. I like my own the most and there isn't a commercial version yet. So it's very hard to recommend something. If you have disastrously bad power you might as well get anything that will fix it. I can say this, the regenerators disturb me a little in that the powercord going into them has a massive effect on sound....
Unfortunately I haven't found anything that works with disastrously bad electricity, I struggle with the effects of summer electricity every season and after years I still know very little of the cause or how to manage it.
Trying to pick out why you hear everything you do when you start using power conditioning is rather hard. They do often reveal other flaws in a stereo. They may thoroughly open up your stereo to sounding like that one note wonder you get from lots of estranged cords and other things. But you also potentially run into other problems like incompatibility with devices. I would venture to say that's a major contribution to DDK's findings. I say this because maybe he isn't thinking about, but does know... Lamm uses a "widget" on the input of their ML3 PSU (and probably others). These filters don't necessarily play very nicely with other things all the time. I'm not a fan, but I believe they're using ones that are mil-spec because the average IEC filter is absolute garbage - and the mil-specs are decent.
Lamm has a built in mil-spec AC filter and adding more filtration isn't advised but my experience isn't limited to Lamm everything I mentioned I hear in many other systems too.
Different people balance the sound of systems differently. So the variables involved are almost endless in some regards. Some may like the sound of what the naked AC sounds like. I think it's the fastest way to fatigue... but others will call the attributes dynamic. When you have better quality AC you often find out that albums are a little different than you may have previously believed. I would say an incorrect way to judge them is say with a single album because if you were getting closer to the real sound of the album, you could misjudge the characteristics of the album as the characteristics of the change in AC power. But that's what I see people doing all day long. And I'm 100% sure that some people just don't hear fatiguing attributes like I do - to them it is not -, and I think for some it's age related.
There's nothing wrong with just not using any of it. It's subjective. But IMO you can't get the quality of music possible without conditioning. The percents detected on the line aren't important, the sound you hear is what matters and even people with 3% have found drastic improvements. Our gear can often share noise with other gear, too. There's an awful lot of variables and that's the same reason why I don't most companies get power conditioning utterly wrong. It probably sounds like I'm rejecting it and praising it at the same time, I am. That's why I had to invent my own stuff.
I don't have a technical explanation nor have I heard a convincing one from anyone as to why some high end systems are so sensitive to even a change in the IEC of the power cord. What I know is that the numbers you quoted mean very little and nothing to do with resulting sound quality. Just to give you an example I have several different grounding schemes in place for the listening room and the one with highest resistance by far is the one that sounds best, go figure.
IMHO no one has a plausible explanation for such phenomena - first we should have a psychoacoustic model for understanding the so called "small differences" in stereo systems and then a model for mains induced noise and distortion in audio electronics.
But your question on resistance has an easy answer - resistance per se is not enough to characterize a ground connection, we are not discussing safety. Impedance and non-linear phenomena can have a great importance here. Ranking ground connection sound quality by depth or miliohm is ridiculous. At the level we are debating we can not think about electrons, we must think about electromagnetic waves with an extremely large bandwidth.
IME any type of mains conditioning or regenerating device I've come across changes the sound of a system by adding a distinct signature/distortion/coloration or whatever you want to call it vs your average mains quality even without dedicated lines and are totally ineffective when the mains is really bad, the congestion and distortion caused by very bad mains will come through no matter what product I use. These AC management components or at least the so called better ones including high end power cords are all designed to do something to the sound and change different parameters, the problem is that you can't regulate how much or at what frequency, they run wide open and paint over everything with the same brush so every recording is covered with that coloration and presentation.
I can't understand how the congestion and distortion caused by very bad mains will come through if I use, for example, a battery operated regenerator like a Stromptank 5000. Unfortunately our definition of bad mains is mains that makes a system sound bad, no one here has seriously technically addressed such issue. So, it is a circular debate.
This is very obvious if one has a system with enough resolution to play back different recordings hearing differences of each, both good and bad. I know I'm gong to get slack for this but you wont have real resolution using many of the high end power cords, cat litter boxes, some tweaks, footers, racks, etc. and certainly not a computer or tablet as source, in these cases you're just equalizing, adding or replacing one coloration/distortion with a new one. Look at this devices as capacitors.
I also can't understand the analogy of the capacitor. Some people consider them audio enemies and try to suppress them everywhere, but I do not share such belief. Designers successfully use capacitors to fine tune their equipment.
I agree with most of above but aside from running dedicated lines or some type of isolation transformer grounding is one the only things we can do at the consumer end of the power grid. It's not a cure all but if done right it can at least help with ground loops which are very common and strangely it can also have a profound affect on overall sound quality and tonality, doesn't mean it's always a positive. A lot of situations limit what one can do with grounding and then there are other variables if the client is using balanced power for example there can be grounding techniques specified by the transformer manufacturer that one must follow, and do you bond it to the main building ground or use it as an independent "isolated" scheme, lots to consider. Whatever the limitations of ground schemes it still is a powerful tool and lot of good can be accomplished with proper grounding.
Unfortunately I haven't found anything that works with disastrously bad electricity, I struggle with the effects of summer electricity every season and after years I still know very little of the cause or how to manage it.
Lamm has a built in mil-spec AC filter and adding more filtration isn't advised but my experience isn't limited to Lamm everything I mentioned I hear in many other systems too.
IMHO no one has a plausible explanation for such phenomena - first we should have a psychoacoustic model for understanding the so called "small differences" in stereo systems and then a model for mains induced noise and distortion in audio electronics.
But your question on resistance has an easy answer - resistance per se is not enough to characterize a ground connection, we are not discussing safety. Impedance and non-linear phenomena can have a great importance here. Ranking ground connection sound quality by depth or miliohm is ridiculous. At the level we are debating we can not think about electrons, we must think about electromagnetic waves with an extremely large bandwidth.
Yes, reading white papers and electrical engineering books on different grounding schemes worked on reducing resistance to near zero but resulting sound was negative but I think it was the execution rather than the resistance that yielded the negative sonic results.
I can't understand how the congestion and distortion caused by very bad mains will come through if I use, for example, a battery operated regenerator like a Stromptank 5000. Unfortunately our definition of bad mains is mains that makes a system sound bad, no one here has seriously technically addressed such issue. So, it is a circular debate.
They don't all come with backup batteries and there are different types of distortion and congestion, one is mains related and I find all these machines ineffective to deal with that when it's bad or even ground hum is still heard in some situations when they're plugged into the wall. The other type of distortion or coloration depending on your choice of words is created by the unit itself, one might like the results but you end up with a very homogenized sound.
I also can't understand the analogy of the capacitor. Some people consider them audio enemies and try to suppress them everywhere, but I do not share such belief. Designers successfully use capacitors to fine tune their equipment.
It is why I will not address the sources ...
I meant exactly what you said, designers have to choose capacitors carefully to achieve the right sound for their design, many of these regenerators, conditioners etc., like capacitors are basically storage devices and seem to affect the sound in a similar fashion only with them no actual designer spec'd it, someone built in isolation without any particular amp, pre, phono, etc. in mind so the results aren't idea.
I’ll just add when applying a single point ground system. To optimize it correctly the size which turns out to the lowest resistance cable will deliver more positive SQ. Adding multiple small gauge cables is wholly inefficient. The owner of the system must be patient as the circuit performance is like adding the best cables made. Though the increase can far surpass expectations.
Quote DDK: “The other type of distortion or coloration depending on your choice of words is created by the unit itself, one might like the results but you end up with a very homogenized sound.”
Homogenozed sound is a rap I’ve heard about regenerators.
Simply speaking from my experience with the P 12, that is far from the case. In my system, with a very transparent Lampizator Dac and 107 dB Horn speakers, every recording is a world unto itself. As a matter of fact, sometimes I wish the system was less transparent, because there are some really crappy recordings out there!
Quote DDK: “The other type of distortion or coloration depending on your choice of words is created by the unit itself, one might like the results but you end up with a very homogenized sound.”
Homogenozed sound is a rap I’ve heard about regenerators.
Simply speaking from my experience with the P 12, that is far from the case. In my system, with a very transparent Lampizator Dac and 107 dB Horn speakers, every recording is a world unto itself. As a matter of fact, sometimes I wish the system was less transparent, because there are some really crappy recordings out there!
Quote DDK: “The other type of distortion or coloration depending on your choice of words is created by the unit itself, one might like the results but you end up with a very homogenized sound.”
Homogenozed sound is a rap I’ve heard about regenerators.
Simply speaking from my experience with the P 12, that is far from the case. In my system, with a very transparent Lampizator Dac and 107 dB Horn speakers, every recording is a world unto itself. As a matter of fact, sometimes I wish the system was less transparent, because there are some really crappy recordings out there!
.
