WSJ on audiophiles: A Gift for Music Lovers Who Have It All: A Personal Utility Pole

soundArgument · Aug 15, 2016

The activity on my Twitter feed suggests that this Wall Street Journal article is getting a lot of attention from non-audiophiles:

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/a-...ity-pole-1471189463-lMyQjAxMTE2MzE4NjExMjY1Wj

It's an amusing read, and many folks whom I follow on Twitter - none of whom are audiophiles - appear to have been entertained by what they find to be the eccentricity of our hobby. I'm not bothered by that.

But I do wonder whether it's beneficial to have one's own power pole and transformer. Wouldn't a large AC regenerator or a giant bank of batteries work better? Or even an isolation transformer?

audio.bill · Aug 15, 2016

For those that may not have access to the WSJ article directly without registering, here's a link to the related video which should be readily accessible.

DaveC · Aug 15, 2016

IMO, simple passive filters do a good job with purifying AC electricity, but I do understand their poor reputation as well... most have significant design flaws that make them incompatible with some component's power supplies and have other issues that might roll off the highs and limit dynamics. Also, if poor quality parts are used then they add their own problems and few to no power conditioners feature extremely high quality internal parts that are required so the conditioner doesn't add grain or harshness. Then I found SurgeX, which combines an excellent patented surge protection system with an effective emi/rfi filter, but suffers from poor quality parts... once these parts are replaced you get a device that will do no harm and often makes for large improvements. Later, a member here named Folsom added a few more parts that further improved it's performance and after experiencing this kind of AC filter you'll never want to do without one ever again.

I've also experimented with batteries and they have their own problems, the chemical reactions that produce the electrical power do not make for especially low noise or ESR (equivalent series resistance) ... batteries require filters both to remove noise and to reduce the ESR, and even when that's done battery power supplies might just equal a decent power supply that runs off AC. Unless your AC supply is unreliable I wouldn't waste time on batteries. Supercapacitors seem interesting though, as used by Vinnie Rossi's LIO.

I have not had much experience with AC regeneration, and reviews seem mixed. To me it seems like an over complicated solution, but in the context of poorly designed AC power conditioners and surge protection that is typical on the market I can see why it's available.

ddk · Aug 15, 2016

IME, everything you do improving things before the outlet including exclusive transformer pays huge dividends with a real high end system. The snake oil and minimal improvements is what you get from the outlet and out into the room. I've tried several industrial and audio AC regenerators, the sonic results were always extremely negative!

david

soundArgument said:
The activity on my Twitter feed suggests that this Wall Street Journal article is getting a lot of attention from non-audiophiles:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-...ave-it-all-a-personal-utility-pole-1471189463

It's an amusing read, and many folks whom I follow on Twitter - none of whom are audiophiles - appear to have been entertained by what they find to be the eccentricity of our hobby. I'm not bothered by that.

But I do wonder whether it's beneficial to have one's own power pole and transformer. Wouldn't a large AC regenerator or a giant bank of batteries work better? Or even an isolation transformer?

carolkoh · Aug 16, 2016

What about a whole-house battery ala Tesla Whole House Battery but use it only for your music system?

treitz3 · Aug 16, 2016

Hi, Carolyn. My concern would be during heavy passages with demanding transient loads and how quick they could deliver, maintain and restore said loads.

Tom

ddk · Aug 16, 2016

Video link for the above article, much more interesting!

david

ddk · Aug 16, 2016

carolkoh said:
What about a whole-house battery ala Tesla Whole House Battery but use it only for your music system?

The Tesla battery is still in the future but my experience with batteries aside from cost and life span are the DC to AC inverters that have a very negative impact on the sound. I went through the process with a client who has a mountain house and is completely off the grid. He invested heavily in both dry and wet cells but we couldn't get the regenerated AC to sound acceptable in the end went with a very expensive gas powered generator.

david

NorthStar · Aug 16, 2016

I don't have access to that article from The Wall Street Journal.

But it doesn't matter; there are other articles that are free without paying for a "forced" subscription.
Very interesting, and I'd like to see the measurements (graphs) before and after installing that new utility power pole:
http://www.odditycentral.com/news/o...n-utility-poles-for-better-sound-quality.html

Like, is this scientifically sounds or not? And while @ it why not design your own thermo nuclear power grid? Or build your own dam with the cleanest water flow? Yup, audiophiles for sure.

Lol

soundArgument · Aug 16, 2016

NorthStar said:
I don't have access to that article from The Wall Street Journal.

But it doesn't matter; there are other articles that are free without paying for a "forced" subscription.
Very interesting, and I'd like to see the measurements (graphs) before and after installing that new utility power pole:
http://www.odditycentral.com/news/o...n-utility-poles-for-better-sound-quality.html

Like, is this scientifically sounds or not? And while @ it why not design your own thermo nuclear power grid? Or build your own dam with the cleanest water flow? Yup, audiophiles for sure. Lol

I, for one, won't be content until I have a nuclear reactor to power only my audio system.

Or maybe two--one for analog, one for digital . . .

microstrip · Aug 16, 2016

ddk said:
The Tesla battery is still in the future but my experience with batteries aside from cost and life span are the DC to AC inverters that have a very negative impact on the sound. I went through the process with a client who has a mountain house and is completely off the grid. He invested heavily in both dry and wet cells but we couldn't get the regenerated AC to sound acceptable in the end went with a very expensive gas powered generator.

david

In order to have high efficiency battery generators are very complex from an electronic point of view. As far as I know no one has ever measured the output of these devices, specially considering the time variations and distortions due to the feedback systems that are optimized to keep an accurate voltage.

The small battery regenerators used to drive turntables usually are usually free from such side effects - as power is very small and efficiency is not critical they just use a stable sinusoidal oscilator, an audio amplifier and a booster transformer.

I have no experience at all with gas powered generators, but I admit that these electromechanical systems should have a high inertia, creating a mains with less "electronic impurities" .

soundArgument · Aug 16, 2016

soundArgument said:
The activity on my Twitter feed suggests that this Wall Street Journal article is getting a lot of attention from non-audiophiles:

http://www.wsj.com/article_email/a-...ity-pole-1471189463-lMyQjAxMTE2MzE4NjExMjY1Wj

It's an amusing read, and many folks whom I follow on Twitter - none of whom are audiophiles - appear to have been entertained by what they find to be the eccentricity of our hobby. I'm not bothered by that.

But I do wonder whether it's beneficial to have one's own power pole and transformer. Wouldn't a large AC regenerator or a giant bank of batteries work better? Or even an isolation transformer?

I replaced the link above with one that should work for non-WSJ subscribers.

DaveC · Aug 16, 2016

Batteries are best for replacing linear PS or SMPS, as ddk said inverters have their own issues which is why AC regen often doesn't work out. But even when the battery's DC output is being directly used the ouput impedance and noise aren't nearly as good as many assume, and they require filtering and stiffening caps. It's hard to beat using AC power from the wall with a good emi/rfi filter into linear or SMPS.

fas42 · Aug 16, 2016

One of my systems along the way used an amplifier which was totally a DIY effort of mine; it used a power op amp for the amplifying element - sorry about that!!

- but the real design was in the mains driven power supply: it had very large reserves of stored energy, effectively halfway to being a battery - I could pull the power cord out of the wall while the system was playing - and absolutely nothing changed. Depending on what was on and level, it could go for up to about 5 minutes before the sound spluttered into silence - and it was impossible to pick the loss of the mains until then.

Mosin · Aug 16, 2016

ddk said:
The Tesla battery is still in the future but my experience with batteries aside from cost and life span are the DC to AC inverters that have a very negative impact on the sound. I went through the process with a client who has a mountain house and is completely off the grid. He invested heavily in both dry and wet cells but we couldn't get the regenerated AC to sound acceptable in the end went with a very expensive gas powered generator.

david

More often than not, the cartridge in my current setup is a strain gauge type that runs off a prototype that Dave Slagle built. It happens to be battery powered, and what I discovered is that battery power isn't really so clean, as your experience also bears out. I improved mine considerably by following advice given me by FranK Schroeder, which was to add bypass caps to the batteries.

DaveC is right about his application, too. I found that to be the case with ASR equipment.

Would that work for an entire system? Who knows? In any case, finding out would be a very expensive experiment.

ddk · Aug 16, 2016

Mosin said:
More often than not, the cartridge in my current setup is a strain gauge type that runs off a prototype that Dave Slagle built. It happens to be battery powered, and what I discovered is that battery power isn't really so clean, as your experience also bears out. I improved mine considerably by following advice given me by FranK Schroeder, which was to add bypass caps to the batteries.

DaveC is right about his application, too. I found that to be the case with ASR equipment.

Would that work for an entire system? Who knows? In any case, finding out would be a very expensive experiment.

I only recently heard the ASR over at Marty's and there was a strange halo like glare around everything, after a while I got up to see what was going on and noticed the ASR phono was switched to battery operation, the glare disappeared when switched over to AC. I gotta get my Final Labs system from years ago and see if I hear the same strangeness or not. They run on D cells, need a fortune in batteries for phono/pre/amp to get going.

david

GaryProtein · Aug 17, 2016

My utilities are all under ground, so I can imagine getting my own "pole" and transformer would be extremely costly.

I would seem to make more sense to get a 50 KW natural gas generator to get off the grid completely and be free of unplanned power outages caused by lightning strikes, cars hitting telephone/power line poles, etc.

DaveC · Aug 17, 2016

Mosin said:
More often than not, the cartridge in my current setup is a strain gauge type that runs off a prototype that Dave Slagle built. It happens to be battery powered, and what I discovered is that battery power isn't really so clean, as your experience also bears out. I improved mine considerably by following advice given me by FranK Schroeder, which was to add bypass caps to the batteries.

DaveC is right about his application, too. I found that to be the case with ASR equipment.

Would that work for an entire system? Who knows? In any case, finding out would be a very expensive experiment.

Yeah, with some filter caps batteries just about equal a decent AC power supply, without they are fairly poor imo. Ideally they probably need a more complex filter, but why bother...

I could see having your own AC power trafo could be a big advantage but the power company would charge a fortune and good AC filtering will greatly reduce that advantage.

amirm · Aug 17, 2016

GaryProtein said:
My utilities are all under ground, so I can imagine getting my own "pole" and transformer would be extremely costly.

I would seem to make more sense to get a 50 KW natural gas generator to get off the grid completely and be free of unplanned power outages caused by lightning strikes, cars hitting telephone/power line poles, etc.

We have a 30 KW LP generator powered by a GM industrial engine (no lawn mower engine here) that can power most of our home. But despite being in sound absorbing enclosure and away from home, the low frequency rumble gets into the home. Our high-end clients build underground bunkers and place the generator there! That's the way to silence them. It is a great peace of mind to be sure given how frequent and inconvenient our power failures ar.

Joe Whip · Aug 17, 2016

We have a 27 kW generator. The great thing about it is that since buying it, we have had to use it only 3 times or so over the last three years. I am sure if we didn't have it, we would have been without power for a week with last winter's big storm.

WSJ on audiophiles: A Gift for Music Lovers Who Have It All: A Personal Utility Pole

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