Dedicated powerlines, how many?

[opus112]

Loan him the equipment necessary and explain how to make the measurement you want.

 

[amirm]

Loan him the equipment necessary and explain how to make the measurement you want.

My company is a dealer for SurgeX and I know the company principals so I don't need his help on anything. I am instead asking him to explain what filtering he thinks the device is doing that is relevant to audio.

 

[opus112]

That's a reasonable question, quite unlike the one I just responded to about 'db noise reduction'.

 

[Folsom]

Oops, I forgot to add Amir to my ignore list... done.

 

[Yuri Korzunov]

He doesn't believe in either. The noise he believes in can't be heard as noise, nor measured! Indeed, noise is now being used as the explanation of any subjective improvement regardless of it makes any sense from engineering or scientific way. Every tweak seemingly reduces noise and the cycle can continue to infinity!

You and I consider that nonsense of course but that is the position Folsom, etc. take.

Amir, If only one tool (ears, as example) involved to estimation of result, there probability of error is increased. I always try check one result by several ways.

Measurement tools is easier and faster way of interference cancellation, than ear control.

When we try improve noise floor of system by electrical hum (subject of this topic) need look for especial harmonics and strange signals at spectrum rather than total noise level even.

I know how work electronic systems enough, practically worked with cancellation interference in past times and don't observe there any esotheric.

 

[FrantzM]

Oops, I forgot to add Amir to my ignore list... done.

Yep!

Better to ignore if one cannot answer the questions asked.... with facts.

 

[microstrip]

(... ) Noise isn't related to what comes out of the speakers when nothing is playing. Noise CHANGES the music itself. (...)

Surely - but you are addressing subjective noise, as we perceive it, but remember some technically oriented people will not accept such broad definition.

IMHO most of the time power lines and conditioner performance is related mainly to electrical noise - at less it is the only way to understand the effect of the last (or first, depending on perspective, as referred by the Shunyata people) six feet of power cable and connectors in audio systems.

High-end audio systems and mains distribution systems have many variables and we can not have an universal receipt for the best way of carrying power to a system. Anecdotal evidence from members will be mostly circumstantial - although some rules can be suggested for particular situations as Caelin Gabriel did in post #2 http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?22740-Dedicated-powerlines-how-many&p=441904&viewfull=1#post441904 - IMHO the best answer to the OP.

 

[amirm]

Amir, If only one tool (ears, as example) involved to estimation of result, there probability of error is increased. I always try check one result by several ways.

Measurement tools is easier and faster way of interference cancellation, than ear control.

When we try improve noise floor of system by electrical hum (subject of this topic) need look for especial harmonics and strange signals at spectrum rather than total noise level even.

I know how work electronic systems enough, practically worked with cancellation interference in past times and don't observe there any esotheric.

We are in full agreement Yuri.

I was explaining how Folsom thinks. Not how I think.

 

[Folsom]

Yep!

Better to ignore if one cannot answer the questions asked.... with facts.

There's no point when the person who just antagonistically asks questions to be antagonistic doesn't understand facts from engineering and assumes everything is untested theory.

Surely - but you are addressing subjective noise, as we perceive it, but remember some technically oriented people will not accept such broad definition.

IMHO most of the time power lines and conditioner performance is related mainly to electrical noise - at less it is the only way to understand the effect of the last (or first, depending on perspective, as referred by the Shunyata people) six feet of power cable and connectors in audio systems.

High-end audio systems and mains distribution systems have many variables and we can not have an universal receipt for the best way of carrying power to a system. Anecdotal evidence from members will be mostly circumstantial - although some rules can be suggested for particular situations as Caelin Gabriel did in post #2 http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?22740-Dedicated-powerlines-how-many&p=441904&viewfull=1#post441904 - IMHO the best answer to the OP.

Well perhaps these people should inject noise into their AC at all the frequencies from 1 to 10,000,000,000 to cover all the bases, and write down subjective results for a better understanding; and note any anomalies electrically. Any technical person can understand just how much noise can find it's way into equipment through many paths.

I have to ask, did you assume talking about noise meant noises like someone tapping on the wall? Because the answer to that is no, no one's talking about that. It's all electrical, even if it was somehow induced by vibrations.

 

[amirm]

Well perhaps these people should inject noise into their AC at all the frequencies from 1 to 10,000,000,000 to cover all the bases, and write down subjective results for a better understanding; and note any anomalies electrically. Any technical person can understand just how much noise can find it's way into equipment through many paths.

Injecting noise into an AC line is tricky business so I am confident as useful as this can be, it is not a test you have run.

There is no assurance of clean AC lines in our homes. As such any high-performance audio system would take care of the noise that impacts its performance to limits of its specifications. It is of no need of a handful of filter components external to it in another box. I know I will shoot an engineer who charged me $10,000 for an amp or DAC and expects me to then put yet another box outside of it to help it do what it says it does! The filtering in the audio device is application specific and as such can be far more effective. For example I can band limit an amplifier so that it doesn't care about high frequencies. That is a heck of a lot easier to do on a low level input signal than 15 amp, 120 volt AC mains.

It is not like there is some fancy trick used to filter noise in an SPD anyways (surge protection device). What is in there can be replicated 1:1 if needed inside any audio equipment.

Note that SurgeX is a series mode device. As such it will introduce losses of its own in the AC path. In other words, power coming out of it is less than power coming into it. You also introduce bunch more sockets and cords into the equation. As such it would not be a device that I would plug any of my power amplifiers into.

If you need surge protection for which SurgeX is designed, then my recommendation is to do that at your electrical panel. That is where you have the strongest shunt to the ground. Doing it tens of feet later is not as effective. If you do want to put it next to the equipment then SurgeX is a better choice than MOV based SPDs. And that is their claim to fame, not any filtering.

 

[amirm]

I have to ask, did you assume talking about noise meant noises like someone tapping on the wall? Because the answer to that is no, no one's talking about that. It's all electrical, even if it was somehow induced by vibrations.

Everyone here knows what tapping on the wall sounds like. No one here knows what the noise you are talking about sounds like. That is the problem. You have taken a term, noise, which has proper meaning to both engineers and lay people, and bastardize it to mean any subject thing you perceive it to be. Worse yet, you then proceed to recommend remedies such as filtering which are for the classic and proper use of the term noise.

If you are going to invent problems, then invent solutions too. Don't use the solutions meant for the real thing, as a cure for an problem that you perceive of entirely different nature.

 

[microstrip]

There's no point when the person who just antagonistically asks questions to be antagonistic doesn't understand facts from engineering and assumes everything is untested theory.

Well perhaps these people should inject noise into their AC at all the frequencies from 1 to 10,000,000,000 to cover all the bases, and write down subjective results for a better understanding; and note any anomalies electrically. Any technical person can understand just how much noise can find it's way into equipment through many paths.

I have to ask, did you assume talking about noise meant noises like someone tapping on the wall? Because the answer to that is no, no one's talking about that. It's all electrical, even if it was somehow induced by vibrations.

Even if you manage to contaminate the mains with external noise you would be dealing only with part of the problem - cables must deal with the noise generated by the equipment. And yes, mechanical vibrations in walls can generate electrical noise - for example just consider that if you have a ground loop created by dedicated lines it will behave like an electrical sensor to these vibrations, particularly if the other wires are free to move in their tubing. Theoretically we should twist the neutral and hot wires inside tubing and run the ground wire away from them to minimize magnetic coupling in mains wiring.

 

[stehno]

... It's all electrical, even if it was somehow induced by vibrations.

Actually, Folsom, I postulate that you have it bass ackwards.

It's all mechanical energy (vibrations), including those of an electrical nature.

 

[Folsom]

You can generate noise and connect it where ever you want.

In the USA it's extremely uncommon to find conduit with lose wires unless it's an building that's very old, or something commercial industrial. The ground however is uncommon in such buildings.

Romex suppresses ground by having hot and neutral on each side of it. Only JPS wire twists all of them into turns. Otherwise you can buy twisted THHN and run it in a conduit with ground somewhere.

Leaving ground out on its own is a mixed bag. It can generate bigger fields and will have more inductance, but be farther from H&N. It can have a tuned antenna affect possibly too. I use DENO's in things I build to prevent ground loops and reduce CMC.

 

[Folsom]

Actually, Folsom, I postulate that you have it bass ackwards.

It's all mechanical energy (vibrations), including those of an electrical nature.

You're can't dampen electrical resonances by physical means. Vibrations may generate some electrical noise but not necessarily resonances.

I'm not sure how much vibrations generate noise. With ground being seperate it's probably the relationship to other fields making more noise than the vibration itself. Tightly wound wires should be pretty immune to vibrations. Potential of vibration energy is low in a cable, but in an amplifier or something it won't matter because the low potential exists through the the entire device, where every silicon device is working etc.

 

[opus112]

I was explaining how Folsom thinks.

That was an explanation?

 

[amirm]

That was an explanation?

 

[stehno]

Injecting noise into an AC line is tricky business so I am confident as useful as this can be, it is not a test you have run.

There is no assurance of clean AC lines in our homes. As such any high-performance audio system would take care of the noise that impacts its performance to limits of its specifications. It is of no need of a handful of filter components external to it in another box. I know I will shoot an engineer who charged me $10,000 for an amp or DAC and expects me to then put yet another box outside of it to help it do what it says it does! The filtering in the audio device is application specific and as such can be far more effective. For example I can band limit an amplifier so that it doesn't care about high frequencies. That is a heck of a lot easier to do on a low level input signal than 15 amp, 120 volt AC mains.

Amir, you don't have enough bullets. Actually, that seems pretty naive to think that component designers know the first thing about noisy AC and then sufficiently addressing it.

IMO, one of the most nonsensical folklores in high-end audio is when somebody thinks just because Joe Designer is an expert at amp design, he therefore is an expert at AC noise cleansing, filtering, conditioning. And of course they're always the expert at vibration mgmt too. In fact, some enthusiasts think an expert designer is an expert at anything he designs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Not saying that designers don't try suppressing AC noise or don't try to minimize distortions induced by mechanical energy. But I'm not aware of a single designer who has sufficiently conquered either problem. And certainly not to the point where the designer's corrective action plan meets or exceeds the performance of a superior line conditioner. Not to say such a designer doesn't exist but I've never heard of a single one.

Funny enough I owned a $10k pre-amp where the designer attempted to filter AC noise by inserting right behind the IEC inlet a cheap $5 AC filter. The same designer made similar hack attempt at minimizing mechanical energy by creating a sandwiched bottom plate of various materials.

Those having significant experience with superior line conditioners are usually quite aware that piggy-backing line conditioning / AC filtering with two or more line conditioning / filtering products almost always makes the sound worse not better. Not sure why but I suspect it has to do with differing methodologies and executions where they somehow collide rather than compliment. It's not 1+1=2. It's 1+1=-1.

Case in point. It was only after I removed the cheap $5 AC filter from the preamp that my superior dedicated line conditioner was allowed to perform at its full potential and finally the pre-amp edged ahead of any of my previous preamps. And I doubt it's uncommon for designers of much more expensive equipment to do the same hack job of inserting little more than a cheap AC filter.

I don't know why but I suspect it's because

1) the designer hiimself is unaware of the benefits of a superior line conditioner and

2) even if he was aware, he has no clue how to properly address the matter because it's outside of his area of expertise. But he obviously knew enough to try a cheap AC filter that may filter out a little grunge and since very few even know how to spell superior line conditioner, in most any A/B comparison his design with the cheap $5 AC filter just might sound a tad more musical to the unsuspecting.​

Same is true with superior vibration mgmt. I recall engaging in "meaningful dialogue" with one renouned amp designer who claiimed to be an expert with vibration mgmt where he would issue his "ding test" by flicking a finger against a chassis top plate and compile his findings from that. He was none too happy when I renamed it his "ding-aling test."

Best thing for a designer to do is not attempt to address either type of distortion and for us to understand that every last component design is an incomplete design and it's up to us to complete it. With superior line conditioners and superior forms of vibration mgmt.

 

[Steve Williams]

for us to understand that every last component design is an incomplete design and it's up to us to complete it. With superior line conditioners and superior forms of vibration mgmt.

I totally agree. I like to think that my equipment is well constructed and top shelf but it wasn't until I put each component on a rack designed to solve the vibration issue that I can say I truly heard my equipment. Same for line conditioners

 

[stehno]

I totally agree. I like to think that my equipment is well constructed and top shelf but it wasn't until I put each component on a rack designed to solve the vibration issue that I can say I truly heard my equipment. Same for line conditioners

Steve, though your rack's designer may well claim to have designed a rack to "solve" the problem with mechanical energy with all due respect, I can assure you your rack has a long journey ahead before can absolutely minimize much less solve the problem of universal distortions induced by mechanical energy onto our sensitive instruments. Nevertheless, I appreciate your comment as it means much.

That said I'd like to add a few notes about what I consider by far the most important and yet also by far the most overlooked aspect of high-end audio and that's building our playback systems on the right foundation.

I’m a huge proponent of superior and extreme forms of AC mgmt and especially superior and extreme forms of vibration mgmt for which I call building on the right foundation. Superior and extreme being the key words here and thus implying there exists plenty of inferior and half-assed forms.

My position is that electrical and mechanical (vibrational) energies are a basic requirement for any playback system to function at all. Yet when under controlled or improperly managed, these same two energies will utterly destroy our sensitive components’ precision and accuracy so that they can only perform at a small percentage of their real potential. Thus leaving a majority of the music information embedded in a given recording (regardless of format) so distorted that even though processed, it remained inaudible due to a much raised noise floor. A performance-limiting governor if you will.

Whether or not anybody agrees, every last system is built on this very same foundation. Whether it's an inferior / half-assed or superior / extreme foundation is entirely up to us. And just as in perhaps every other industry, it is the foundation that ultimately determines the performance levels of everything built on top of it.

Moreover, for those who live and die by measurements coming from sensitive measuring instruments, I've yet to try it but I've no doubt the very same philosophy applies to our sensitive measuring instruments too. That's why I put very little stock in measurements.