First my friend system is fantastic, few can buy, many may dream. With or without stromtank.
Before stromtank, I was surprised that how silent was his system. With all these amplifiers, 2 piece of mono blocks, 2 pre amplifiers, 4 box vivaldi, 2 tower subwoofers and very unconventional spekars etc...You wont expect a noisy system but, not that kind of silent one too. After stromtank, I realized what realy silence means. IMHO, a system at this level(Dedicacted room, sound treatments made by mbl, full nordost odin cables, top tier electronics etc. ) should not perform that kind of different(of course in good direction).
One of my friend using two stromtank with, MBL Radialstrahler mbl 101 X-treme, two pair of tad m600 mono, tad c2000 pre, full stack vivaldi, aurender w20, techdas af1, ypsilon phono stage. All can say is, his system was fantastic before stromtank, and after stromtank it becomes a different thing. If your system worth this kind of investment, i think it works flawlessly...
I do not understand how only two Stromtanks (I am assuming "pure" Stromtanks and not the hybrid ones) have the current capacity to power without constriction all of this equipment.
I still think the Stromtank could be and should be the best way to power a phono preamp.
I do not understand how only two Stromtanks (I am assuming "pure" Stromtanks and not the hybrid ones) have the current capacity to power without constriction all of this equipment.
I still think the Stromtank could be and should be the best way to power a phono preamp.
My experience with regenerators & batteries has been very negative and this includes a large off the grid project. Electricity can and will affect the sound of a system like any other component. You already spent a lot of money on your electrical plant at home, you should wait and see how it performs before throwing in other variables into the mix.
I do not understand how only two Stromtanks (I am assuming "pure" Stromtanks and not the hybrid ones) have the current capacity to power without constriction all of this equipment.
I still think the Stromtank could be and should be the best way to power a phono preamp.
My experience with regenerators & batteries has been very negative and this includes a large off the grid project. Electricity can and will affect the sound of a system like any other component. You already spent a lot of money on your electrical plant at home, you should wait and see how it performs before throwing in other variables into the mix.
Those who are fortunate to have good quality mains can not imagine what poor mains can do to a system. I can live without any mains conditioner - my house is 50 meter away from the distribution transformer in a residential zone, I have a stable, low distortion mains feed.
However I have good audiophile friends who live in zones with have unstable, high distortion mains, sometimes dropping to almost -20% nominal mains - one of them lives in the last house of a long distribution line, nearby a factory that has large electrical ovens! For these people regenerators or other type of power conditioners are a must. As one of them told me after getting an old ExactPower SP15A - the system started sounding as sunday afternoon every time!
IMHO, each case is a separate case. It depends on mains quality, but also on the audio equipment. And probably on your neighborhood uses!
. . . You already spent a lot of money on your electrical plant at home, you should wait and see how it performs before throwing in other variables into the mix.
Thank you, David. But don't worry -- I am not buying anything else. As I already will be introducing many new variables into the system I am not going to arbitrarily add more.
I was impressed by the improvement in sound when the people at Avantgarde switched the preamp we were listening to from AC to internal battery. I am suggesting only that putting a phono preamp on battery power makes theoretical sense to me.
If it were me I would not run the amplifiers on a battery system. The amplifiers can be made quieter by using a chassis grounding device such as a Tripoint. The battery system will lower common mode noise,but chassis grounding will do that also.
I do not understand how only two Stromtanks (I am assuming "pure" Stromtanks and not the hybrid ones) have the current capacity to power without constriction all of this equipment.
An issue with two of them is that their switching clocks are not synchronized. So if one is running at 200 KHz and the other at 200.1 Khz, you will run into a beat frequency of 1000 Hz right in the audio band! For multi-unit use they need to have a clock synchronization cable to avoid this.
If it were me I would not run the amplifiers on a battery system. The amplifiers can be made quieter by using a chassis grounding device such as a Tripoint. The battery system will lower common mode noise,but chassis grounding will do that also.
You don't know what you're talking about. You need to read up on some real electronics books. Chassis grounding (safety ground) is the primary path for common mode noise, and Tripoint isn't a ground (it's something, but not a ground, even if it's connected to what is grounded).
If it were me I would not run the amplifiers on a battery system. The amplifiers can be made quieter by using a chassis grounding device such as a Tripoint. The battery system will lower common mode noise,but chassis grounding will do that also.
You don't know what you're talking about. You need to read up on some real electronics books. Chassis grounding (safety ground) is the primary path for common mode noise, and Tripoint isn't a ground (it's something, but not a ground, even if it's connected to what is grounded).
btw I'm not talking about safety ground. I'm talking a strapping chassis to provide a separate pathway for common mode noise,a separate path from the audio signal. The safety ground remains in place.
"Chassis grounding in audio is no different than for any other circuit sensitive to noise. Keeping a good chassis ground relatively independent of signal ground can do anything from nothing to profound improvements in the noise floor depending on the circuit design and implementation. You generally want the "noise" path to ground to be different than the signal return path, and often that means a heavy chassis ground to provide the lowest impedance path for noise while the signal return goes through the signal cables.
Like many things, conceptually simple, straight-forward good engineering practice, but not well known or recognized and can be unexpectedly difficult to implement well. There are numerous texts and courses teaching noise control."
Rane article link see Chassis ground vs Signal ground
No Roger, I've got some reading for you. (800+ pages)
Tripoint and other devices are not a complete circuit, so they're not a path for ground. Besides, if it came in on cables and went back to the ground device (doesn’t) the damage is essentially done.
I'm glad your enthusiastic but you're a ways away from providing accurate information.
No Roger, I've got some reading for you. (800+ pages)
Tripoint and other devices are not a complete circuit, so they're not a path for ground. Besides, if it came in on cables and went back to the ground device (doesn’t) the damage is essentially done.
I'm glad your enthusiastic but you're a ways away from providing accurate information.
My experience with regenerators & batteries has been very negative and this includes a large off the grid project. Electricity can and will affect the sound of a system like any other component. You already spent a lot of money on your electrical plant at home, you should wait and see how it performs before throwing in other variables into the mix.
Can you provide more details about your AC regen and battery experience? My power is so bad at most times, these are the only two options available to me now.
It must be a San Diego thing... Our power here, that we thought was OK, it's actually horrible. 5%+ distortion coming in!
We've played with the PS Audios, and while good, they do constrict dynamics and the sound as a whole... We've used them at shows, as the benefits of using it far outweight the losses...
Recently, we've been using IsoTek products, specially the Mosaic Genesis. It's a hybrid, so it has conditioning for the heavy duty stuff (amps) as well as regeneration for sources and preamps.
You're welcome to stop by the store and check them out!
No Roger, I've got some reading for you. (800+ pages)
Tripoint and other devices are not a complete circuit, so they're not a path for ground. Besides, if it came in on cables and went back to the ground device (doesn’t) the damage is essentially done.
I'm glad your enthusiastic but you're a ways away from providing accurate information.
Folsom, mighty reference cited here. I appreciate you sharing this reference, thank you. In the meantime, this discussion seems to have drifted from discussing the viability and performance of the Stromtank. I guess I see several options depending on how far you want to go out to your power supply in the street. And there is the question of peak current demands, their patterns and supply or responsiveness from a battery based system to meet the subtle peak demands of current made by music/audio signals. I haven't seen any measurement data on the performance or owner commentary in this area. On the other hand here in Saudi I would certainly like to remove myself from the grid...as I see workers walking around inside our supply box client room freely with screw-drivers...I've been in there too no guards, no protection, exposed high voltage wiring etc.
I'm not sure how to possibly understand why any of that matters. I can't see or know what you refer to, to understand the significance. If the power there is bad, sure, find a way off of it, but I don't have any reason to believe it is based on that odd observation (of something). I personally think being on grid is the biggest blessing, to have access to such a higher performance circuit for overall power (filtration capability, speed capability, overall amount of power capability). For some people it's a burden, I understand, but usually it offers the best possibilities. If you're worried about damage there's great options to prevent it that don't require being off grid.
I wonder if there are any new happy or unhappy users of Stromtank here. I’ve just tried the entry model (S1000), and I am quite impressed. I only used it for the sources. It injected some tubelike glow to the sound of the system, which I miss now, when the unit is gone. Another positive impact was on the soundstage. My only concern is that I perceived a slight loss of dynamics, while listening to digital with my phono stage on.
Has anyone compared Stromtank to PS Audio or Torus Power products?
