A few weeks back I ordered some things I really should have gotten a long time ago, and I always read about this sort of thing here on AK so that's what motivated me.

Here I was focusing on the AC power coming right out of the wall outlet. I know our power is "dirty" because the lights always flicker, and because it's just my luck. So I ordered a pretty cheap "surge protector"/power conditioner to plug basically my entire system into. I also ordered a Zebra Cables ZC-PWR12 power cord (carbon color:D). Then I got horribly sick and had to go an entire week without listening to pretty much anything because I couldn't stand any noise. That was hell for me.

But in the past couple days I've finally fully recovered, and now I've had a chance to hook everything up. First of all, I'm very impressed with the build quality of the Zebra power cord, and the price was really fair IMO. On top of that it looks really cool, but unfortunately it's not visible where it has to be placed. Anyway, that was another excellent thing I learned about on AK, otherwise I doubt I would have ever discovered Zebra.

Tonight was the first night I've had a chance to listen to vinyl with these new components, and I didn't have high expectations, I just figured those things were good investments that would eliminate more weak links in the chain, and it couldn't hurt. I was a little surprised to hear improvements that I would almost describe as "in your face." That is to say, I immediately noticed that everything sounded cleaner and clearer than before, and that's saying a lot because my system in it's current form sounds pretty incredible. And, although I still don't understand how this works because it seems counter-intuitive, I believe I heard that PRAT thing some of you are always talking about. I was tapping my foot in any case, even to classical:scratch2:

So the bottom line is that these two minor things have once again caused me to go "What?!! It can get even better??!!" :D All for approximately $100.

The ZC-PWR12 costs $65 bucks - what is the "pretty cheap "surge protector"/power conditioner"?

Inquiring minds want to know!

The ZC-PWR12 costs $65 bucks - what is the "pretty cheap "surge protector"/power conditioner"?

Inquiring minds want to know!

That would be the Monster MP HT 800, which retails for about $80 but I found one for $40. Normally I'm not interested in Monster products, but for the price this seemed worth it.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that a few weeks back I finally got a Pro-Ject Speed Box for my RM-5 turntable. For those who don't know, it's a speed controller designed specifically for use with Pro-Ject turntables. When I started using that I thought I heard a difference but wasn't quite sure, now I believe I did hear a difference because what I'm hearing with the new power cord and power conditioner is the same type of thing, but unmistakably an improvement.

Mr. Linn, Like you I also have dirty power, flickering lights and such, about six months ago I bought a Tipp Lite RS-1215 and right away I noticed a considerable difference, particularly on my TT, well worth the nominal investment.

Yeah now that I'm aware of this aspect of putting together an audio system it seems to me like a basic and fundamental thing, which is why I said I should have done it a long time ago. But what can you do? This whole hobby is very complicated. That's part of what makes it so fun.

Can you provide links to the products you got? I have the flickering light thing too (joys of 75 year-old wiring), and have just lived with it for years. I guess power conditioners would make an improvement on the current to my Mcintosh, but don't know what if any effect it would have on my Thorens 124. The only thing that is powered on it is the motor, and even when you cut the power to the motor, the platter continues to spin and music play for almost a minute (although losing speed for the entire minute). Is the benefit to the turntable perfect pitch (speed control via steady stream of power), or is there more to it than that? I do notice periodic undulations in the strobe on my Thorens when I stare at it (steady for a while then a flicker forward, the back, then stabalizes again...complely inaudible though), but figured it was simply the nature of the idler beast....now you make me think it may be inconsistent power supply...hmm?

Not to hyjack this thread, but I have toyed with the idea of "upgrading" the original grey power cord on my 124 (it's only held into the block by 2 screws), but have been told that since it is only providing current to keep the motor running, it would be a waste of money...anyone disagree?

James R.

Mr. Lin,
Always interested in your posts. It's interesting about your experiences with power conditioning. This is something I have considered, but put off, as power in my house seems fairly steady (and clean?). I don't have noticeable fluctuations. I may have to "take the plunge."
Did add the Speed Box a while back (as you have) and found subtle imporvement.
Glad to hear you have recovered.
Bob

I've heard this from several people but have not experienced it. Since the power STILL has to go through the fuse, I cannot figure out how the power cord can make any real difference.

But then: "There are more things in heaven and earth..." :dunno:

Flickering and irregular power is often caused by forces outside your home. It may be your wiring, but it may be the guy down the street welding his hot rod? Anything that will cause fluctuations on the main grid will get to your house as a variation. Usually it's pretty small - a few %.

But we all know that capacitance and inductance leads or lags current. The current does the work, but the voltage drives the current and they are often not in phase. Think big electric motors at a local pumping station. The motor circuits have to create a lead on the current to make the motor start and run. It may be in the 100's of amps.

If your house and equipment are experiencing both amplitude and phase variations, it will be audible at some point. The power sections of almost all our gear are engineered to deal with average conditions. They will absorb pretty good sized spikes and dips in voltage. 10-20% is not too tough to control. But phase variations can't be easily controlled within our gear at the prices we pay (new or used). That's why so much of our gear is run on DC internally. That's the easiest way to engineer around the problem.

If any of your equipment uses AC motors or circuits, it will be directly coupled to the fluctuations of the power grid and the neighborhood. Sounds like the Project and the Thorens both use AC? I know my Dual does. You want clean sound, you need clean power (think re-capping power section in receiver). Clean power, at our level, usually comes from a solid state power conditioner. The bigger and more robust, the better. When I was a tech in NOAA, we had to use kilowatt Heart (brand) conditioners to keep our scientific instruments on line and recording accurately. Otherwise the data would have been the instantaneous condition of the power grid and not the sea state !!

You want to eliminate hum and hiss off an amp, TT or receiver? Either recap the piece or condition the power going in. With conditioned power, you can treat all the parts of your system. I don't know where the diminishing return curve turns over on this, but I'd guess around $200 worth of computer grade power conditioning should be audible and affordable. :)

I dont believe it... Its all dalusional hyperbal.... 5 feet of power cord cannot do all as claimed....no matter how dirty the power source is...If you have a good regulated power supply in your amp thats all thats needed.

Your not running some highly sensitive scientific equipment,,,Just an audio power amp.

Remember its AC on one side of the amp...and regulated DC on the other side.

I'm sorry to 'quibble' here but it is rectified DC on the other side, not regulated.

Rectified and regulated !!!

Ive got a monster 1500 it works awsome.Id say most of your improvement was from the power conditioner.Mr lin did you ever get/set up your bottlehead amps?How did they come out?What about the super tweeters you were going to buy?

I looked on needledoctor's and music-direct's web-sites for power conditioners, and saw stuff for home theater (has coaxial ports, pretty color coded sockets, & other things I don't need). Is there a different type of conditioner needed for old audio/turntables vs. the modern home theater stuff (none of my equipment is newer than 1980, hence no modern circuitry at all)?

What appealed to me was not just "clean power" per-se, but the idea of cutting RFI feedback, which is an issue with two of the tonearms I own (the cables run past the wall socket and I get humm when they get too close...hence I am rewiring the tonearms with modern audioquest cable to mitigate the interferance). Music Direct has an in wall unit:

http://www.musicdirect.com/product/74162

which looks like it would do what I need. I use two wall jacks for my equipment, one for the turntables (x2) and lamp, and the other for the amp, CD, DVD, VHS, and television into a cheap beige power strip. After reading all of the above, I am starting to think about the components I have interfering with each-other (like my halogen lamp plugged into the same socket as my turntable, or my TV plugged into the same wall socket as my Mcintosh...which when you turn on the TV, you hear major feedback through the speakers on power-up). Has anyone tried an in wall unit like this, or is this just another gimmick?

James

I dont believe it... Its all dalusional hyperbal.... 5 feet of power cord cannot do all as claimed....no matter how dirty the power source is...If you have a good regulated power supply in your amp thats all thats needed.

Not this again....the big tell is using the word "believe" rather than saying "in my experience", or words to that effect, and it's "delusional hyperbole"...

The following are a few of my experiences:

I once took a Black Mamba from Shunyata to an audio club meeting....one very outspoken fellow said pretty much the same things Maron has said, but added that if he could hear the difference then he would buy the cord...we played an SACD player for a while and then changed the cord....that was all we heard about that...

It's all part of system balancing, and, most importantly, having equipment that has the resolution to be able to discern the differences! Most classic electronics and many, many speakers (even brand new ones) just don't have the resolution, clarity, and freedom from distortion to tell subtle changes....my Heresy's, while almost as sensitive as the Lowther DX-55 drivers in my Third Rethms, do not have anywhere near the ability to dig down into the music, or more importantly, make as much sense of the differences between cables, whether signal, speaker, or power, that the Rethms make crystal clear...yes, you can hear it with the little Klipsch speakers, just not as clearly and succinctly.....

I am fortunate in the fact that I have access to many, many different pieces of really great quality audio gear to listen to due to my part time job. Yet, sixteen or seventeen years ago when I was running a Soundcraftsman/Onkyo Grand Integra/Infinity RS-IIIa system I could not tell any differences between either speaker or interconnect cables...and I've been playing with my own stereo systems since the mid-sixties....and, being an Advanced Class Ham Radio operator, could cite chapter and verse for the reasons cable believers were idiots and deluded...ha!

As I learned more, heard more, listened more to varied music instead of all the Zep, Floyd, Yes, etc...that was my main fare from the sixties on, my stereo started increasing in quality...I'm a million miles away from the Sansui QRX-7500a driving a set of Ohm Walsh 2's that I first had running in my house when I bought it 20 years ago....after those, there was the Onkyo/Soundcraftsmen/Infinity setup, but I was really unhappy with that stuff, so I started upgrading and rebuilt a set of Magneplanar MG-1's...that started a whole trend....first with the Martin Logan Aerius i's replacing the MG-1's, then with the Audible Illusions Modulus 3A replacing an Adcom GFP-565 which had replaced the Onkyo Grand Integra preamp which replaced the big Carver preamp, then finally the Brown Electronics Labs BEL 1001 monoblocks replacing the Adcom 555-II which had replaced the Pioneer Elite M-90 which replaced the Soundcraftsmen PCR800, cable distinctions became easier to discern, music seemed so much more "real" and less "canned", and I found I could listen for hours on end without fatigue...unless I had the wrong cable in the system somewhere! And this was ten years ago....

Today the ML's are in occasional duty, the BEL 1001's are long gone, the Lowthers suffered a power spike while hooked up to a solid state amplifier (that wasn't hooked up to a filtered or protected line, why, why, why me Lord? $800 for replacement drivers, whew! Gonna have to wait on that!) and I usually use a set of BD Designed TQWP with Fostex FE103E drivers that I built, or a set of Loth-X Amazes (I really like the single driver coherence), the Mod 3A is a constant, and the amps right now are a set of the new Quicksilver SET monoblocks (on loan, of course!), sometimes interspersed with a set of Bottlehead Paramours or a Sound Valves VTA-70i I built with a massive parts upgrade and Magnequest outputs...still, man, it amazes me how cables can really affect the sound...power conditioning here has everything from 20A, 10A, and 3A isolation transformers, a Tice Solo, and a lot of homebrew power strips that really do clean the grunge off the line, to a power stabilizer that the Sondek is plugged into, to homemade power cables...

Another experience:

I once took an Icom R-71A SW receiver to my part time job to mess with AC cables and power conditioning after playing with an Audio Prism Line Noise Sniffer...now, WWV at Fort Collins, Colorado transmits on 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 mHz 24 hours a day...with a short whip antenna, a stock power cable, and plugged directly into the wall, the Icom was unable to receive any of the transmissions..it's been 8 or 9 years now, but I still remember experimenting with different power cords and conditioners....the Corcoms that I had brought along with me did little, while some of the MIT, Tice and others did a bunch...now, this is a short-wave radio receiver, a very high quality and highly regarded one, and power conditioning is something we Hams have traditionally have though of as something to keep our transmitter's RF out of the AC lines, not what gets into the receivers, etc., from the outside...

Well...like I said it's been several years and I don't remember what frequency it was but since it was during the day it was probably 15mHz, but, taking the cord plugged directly in the wall out of the receiver and plugging in an up graded one brought a bit of improvement, but, plugging an upgraded cord into the wall, into a power conditioner, and then an upgraded cord into the receiver took a noisy copy into solid and clear copy...to say it amazed me was an understatement, to say the least! The house is stucco, basically a form of Faraday cage, and signals from the outside are greatly attenuated while stuff in the house tends to stay there...it appeared that there was just enough noise coming up the AC line to make at least a 3 S-unit (around 18db) difference in the noise level as measured by the meter on the receiver...

Yep, once upon a time I believed the fairy tale about power supplies filtering out the garbage, too....even the Martin Logans prefer better cables....

In that vein, my Adcom 555-II pumps an incredible amount of noise back into the line! I have made a dedicated 20A filter just for it to help keep it's noise out of the AC line when I use this amp....yes, the 555 has it's stock power cord....but, I was amazed when I used the line noise sniffer and heard just what each piece of gear dumped back into the line!!! I made stuff to take care of it, as good as you can buy from the big guys (DAMHIKT)....But, that's another story, right?

It also takes training your ears...it is a very fatiguing experience for me to listen that deeply, that intently, that analytically, but in the long run, the end results are worth it...but I still don't really like to do it all that much...


So, as I have said before, I don't care if it's the impedance, capacitance, resistance, goat sweat, monkey pee pee, whether the cables were rolled on the thighs of Caribbean virgins, or whatever, every cable has some kind of interaction in our systems....sometimes we can perceive the difference, sometimes not...if you can't, if the cables included with your stuff sounds as good as better quality cables to you, then you can spend money on other things...but, don't knock it until you have tried it and qualified it with what equipment you tried it with...then, preface it with it as in your experience, not dismissing it out of hand just because you don't happen to "believe" whether it makes a difference or not....


As always, this has been my experience, I don't care if you don't believe it, and as always, YMMV.

.

I feel you Rick. I haven't jumped into the power supply realm yet (hence my questions above), but I started my cable upgrades when my HI-Fi store guy was pulling a set of audioquest speakers wires off a set of speakers they had on display (already well burned in) and asked if I wanted to try them. I told him not to bother, because I knew they wouldn't make any difference. He told me to take them home for 1 week and to talk to him after that. I was running 12g Monster cable from Radio Shack at the time (considering when my system was designed they recommended lamp cord, monster cable was an improvement) so I thought I had as good as anyone could get...wrong!!

I ran one speaker with the audioquest (Polk Monitor 10's from McIntosh MA6200) and the other with the monster, set the phase to mono so the same signal came from both speakers, and balanced back and forth playing Chris Isaaks Forever Blue. The bass was pretty equal from both sets of speaker cables, but the audioquest was clearly more open, cleaner highs, and much more dynamic in the mid-range. I was actually able to hear Isaak annunciate his "s's" through the audioquest that was clearly more muddled with the monster cable. I spent 2 hours going back and forth with both digital and analog..the difference was subtle, but noticable. I brought the cables back to the store the next day and ordered a new set in the custom length I need for my listening room. I have since upgraded every interconnect in my system from the free-bees that I got with them to audioquest (I like thier products and prices since I am on sort of a budget)...it HAS made a real, not percieved difference.

Now back to the power thing....what will help those of us with historic urban houses, aging wiring, loaded circuitry (still have fuses for half the house...not in the listening room though), and vintage audio equipment (lots of RF interferance) that won't break the bank??!

James R.

From the experiences I have had in the last 40-odd years of buying and listening to audio gear, I prefer to take the common sense (http://signal.ece.utexas.edu/seminars/dsp_seminars/01fall/AudioMyths.pdf) approach.

The bottom line is, if you like it and you're convinced it really makes a difference in your system, then who am I to judge?

Wow, there's a lot to respond to here.

First of all James: I got the monster power conditioner from Royal Discount (not posting direct link as I don't want to irritate moderators). For some reason they sell a few of those things for about half the price of Needledoctor. It's a very basic thing, and I'm sure Broc is correct in saying that bigger more expensive units would yield better results, but for me it's actually a space issue. And don't worry about hijacking the thread, because what you're talking about with your power cord is exactly what we're discussing here:thmbsp: PM me if you can't find the website.

From what I understand the benefit would be perfect pitch, because, as Broc explained, there's no more fluctuation. Also Broc, both of my tts are AC powered, hence the Grado hum issue.

Bob it would probably be worth it to buy a power conditioner, but remember like I said you can get away with a pretty cheap one. I like the Speed Box too; it's fairly cheap, simple, and I can finally play 45s on the RM-5 (didn't bother doing it manually before).

As for the cable debate: Rick thanks for taking the time to write out such a thoughtful and intelligent response. It really irritates me to no end when people argue against this, because I know for a fact that they're either simply incapable of hearing the differences, or they have no real experience with upgrading cables at all, yet they insist it's "snake oil." You hit the nail on the head at the beginning of your post when you pointed out that the word "believe" is used in place of "in my experience." It's not a myth, I've heard the differences with many interconnects and now the power cord. Honestly I don't entirely understand the power cord thing, but it works, and I'm hardly in a small group of people who have had the same experience.

I didn't mention it because it's sort of off topic in a vinyl forum, but I also recently purchased a pair of Tara Labs RSC Vector 1 interconnects, which for now I'm using between my DVD/CD player and receiver. I've always wanted to get a pair of these but put it off for a long time. There is a difference (and I hooked them up planning to hear nothing), and this is between the Vector 1s and Kimber Silver Streaks that they replaced, and those Silver Streaks make some of the most clearly audible differences of any interconnect I've ever tried. I always say if you have a decent audio system you should at least have solid cables, which you don't have to pay an arm and a leg for by any means. But at that point it's about system tweaking, and if you're so inclined to spend the money on that aspect of your system, it can yield results.

Terryfox, I'm a little embarrassed to say my Bottlehead kits are sitting unassembled in my basement. Now, this is NOT because I'm lazy or that I don't want to use them, very much the opposite and I think about them all the time. I'm currently in an extremely tight living space with my girlfriend as we're preparing to move into an apartment, but it may still be a while, and to set up those amps the way I had planned would be an enormous hassle, and it would be very temporary, so I think it's better to wait. It's not easy though, because I'm still planning on using those as my main system.

The super tweeter thing got put on hold indefinitely because Eric from Tekton moved, and he said he was going to do it in the last week before he moved but I never heard back from him. It's OK though, because other than that he's provided excellent service, and I understand that putting together my super tweeters is probably not a huge priority at the moment. Plus, I am so thrilled with those speakers as they are (now that they're fully broken in) that I don't feel like I'm really missing anything, as I did at first. But maybe eventually...

Now I'm hijacking my own thread, but I have a lot to say.

Guys, no smoke here from me. I am only making comment about the AC side of any component. As some mentioned earlier, inside most audio systems it's rectified, filtered and regulated DC power.

BUT, turntables are another issue. Duals have AC motors. Mr. Lin's tables have AC motors. That's why the speed box is such an improvement, it conditions and changes the AC signal to the motor to change the speed and it stabilizes the signal too. It's a defacto power conditioner for that one unit.

You can do a search for AC power conditioners. There are tons of them out there from simple spike clippers to full-on AC-DC-AC full conversion systems. Regulated computer battery back-ups with sinusoidal AC output is what you should probably be looking for.

You may be able to find used ones as server farms upgrade the back-ups. Do your research and start looking. You need not be in hurry. The simple small system conditioners will help in the meantime. Someday you'll come across a nice one the will run all the AC side of your system, or your whole system. :)

From the experiences I have had in the last 40-odd years of buying and listening to audio gear, I prefer to take the common sense (http://signal.ece.utexas.edu/seminars/dsp_seminars/01fall/AudioMyths.pdf) approach.

The bottom line is, if you like it and you're convinced it really makes a difference in your system, then who am I to judge?

Yeah, I read that blather, and in my experience, that's all that is. Someone who had the patience to sit thru eight or more years of college for a fancy piece of paper and using that to espouse his beliefs...feh!

I went to his web page and read all about him, his qualifications, and like most measurement uber alles types, it's very impressive....no doubt that he'll make a contribution to the audio arts, but many of his so called findings are just as pure BS as anything I have seen from the opposite side of the aisle...

His use of terms like "Vinyl Freaks", his portrayal of negative feedback as indispensable, his prejudice against McIntosh amps, gold plated connectors, decent speaker cables (using 12 gauge is all you need, according to him), avoiding system tweaks , his love of integrated circuits, and his topping out of speakers at $1500 a pair really show that he has never really sat and spent any time with a modern, high resolution, audio only system. His snobbery about his beliefs permeates the entire presentation and is just one more strike against those who measure versus those who listen...

He reminds me of Julian " of all the amplifiers I have tested, this is surely one of them...." Hirsch...

It also reminds me of an American speaker manufacturer we have dealt with...their uniquely designed boxes have an incredible bass that is tight, tuneful, and powerful...but, they have been using the same tweeters for 20 years and won't change saying that "they measure flat, why change them?" Well, because they suck...they might measure flat to 20kHz, but compared to the newer tweeters from Seas, Dynaudio, Audio Physic, etc., they really lack resolution....how do you measure resolution? I don't know, and don't care, but put these puppies in comparison to a high resolution speaker, like an Audio Physic Tempo VI with it's new "Hyper Holographic Cone Tweeter" , and they run to hide under the porch....

If all you have ever been exposed to is the kind of gear you get from Circuit City or Best Buy, then you really have no understanding of how wide a gap there is between mass market receivers, etc., and the more exotic. In that fellow's world of experience, his "findings" may be a fact for him, but in my experience, most of it doesn't hold water. Believe me, once you leave the world of receivers (except for a few like the MD-208 from Magnum Dynalab) and start swimming in the water of high quality separates, things start changing greatly.

It also depends on what genre of music you like, and what you look for in your music...if your looking for power, slam, impact, dynamics, i.e. a very high energy form of presentation from rock then a system with a lower resolution may actually be more satisfying to you as it won't expose so many of the faults present in most of the rock recordings....such as all the stuff I bought from 1968 until the mid nineties....I'm now too old to care about that kind of sound anymore, instead I prefer a different presentation where I can hear for instance, the texture of the sound of the snares on the bottom head of a snare drum, the sound of the reed in a clarinet, the individual vibrations that added together make up the sound of a bow being dragged across a violins strings....to me, Lowthers and Electrostatic speakers do this the best...the classic speakers I have on hand (even with upgraded/renewed crossover components) like my Heresy's, the Ohm Walsh 2's, the Boston A-100s, the Snell K's, all fall a bit short in varying amounts to that of the Fostex pipes, or either Loth-X speakers I have, the Amazes and the BS-1's, which in turn have similar resolution to my Aerius i's...but nothing I have heard compares to the DX-55 driver in the Third Rethms...no bass, you need subs, but the resolution, the tonal shading, the TEXTURE, the speed, the coherency and the dynamics with even the 3 measly watts from my Paramours is unforgettable....

I am very lucky that I get to play with a lot of exotic audio gear and not buy it! This has also opened my eyes as to what really happens when you leave the mass market gear and enter into the realm of high-res audio...believe me, if you haven't sat down and listened to a setup consisting of the Final Labs 1000i driven by the Spectron Musician III Signature, which is fed by the ModWright LS-36.5 and the EMM Labs CDSA-SE and properly cabled you don't know what you are missing!

Or an entire MBL setup with the 101E Radialstrahler, man, talk about holography!

Or a set of Reference 3A MM DeCapo i with a set of the Quicksilver V-4's...

But, you don't need to buy expensive gear to enter this realm, nope, some of the best sound I have heard has been from homebrew stuff lovingly created by people with a love of the craft at the various Bottlehead meetings I have attended...AND that includes homebrew cables, as well as speakers, amps and preamps...

Conversely, some of the worst sounding dreck I have heard has come from large manufacturers supporting their gear with all these impressive measurements...and don't get me started on large, multinational companies, like Philips, that build gear that has a built in expiration date....the day your expensive piece of gear from them goes out of warranty and dies and can't be repaired because there are no more Furore chips left in the entire world...well, I haven't knowingly bought anything from Philips since my SACD1000...jerks....

Yes, you can build a satisfying system from gear bought at BB or CC, (just don't use the over priced Monster Cable they have) but it isn't in the same realm as really top of the line stuff....or even some of the affordable gear like Creek, Jolida, Music Hall, etc....

I also believe that you should work your way up the food chain...starting at the top gives you no where else to go, and you miss out on all the stuff you learn as you try new gear, new cables, new footers....

It's kind of like how we used to learn how to ride motorcycles...first your folks let you have something like a Honda Sport 50 or S-65, or a Yamaha 60....if you didn't kill yourself or wreck it, you worked up to a 125...then a 175 or maybe a 250...then a CL-77 305 Scrambler, or a Yamaha or Bridgestone 350....after that it was time for the Triumph Bonneville, Norton Atlas, Royal Enfield Interceptor...or Black Bomber 450 Honda......there was no shame in having a lesser bike, you didn't have to have the biggest thing...i.e., you didn't go out and by a Hyabusa as your first bike....you rode, you learned, you got better qualified, you lived....

Learning to hear the subtleties is a lot like learning to ride a motorcycle well...it takes time and practice...just "boogieing" out at head banging levels to the music doesn't really count...neither does sitting around, wacked out of your brain, slipping into darkness...it takes concentration., but once you recognize something you also understand a bit more, and you've learned, or heard, something you hadn't noticed before....and so on....


I'm sorry to be so long winded, and anyone who knows me knows that's just the way I am...
...

Now back to the power thing....what will help those of us with historic urban houses, aging wiring, loaded circuitry (still have fuses for half the house...not in the listening room though), and vintage audio equipment (lots of RF interferance) that won't break the bank??!

James R.

Check out Jon Risch's ideas on the Audio Asylum,
and his pages:
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/index2.htm

Also:
http://www.10audio.com/diy_power_conditioner.htm

I built my own using ideas from both of these guys...also check out the power conditioner threads on the Audio Circles DIY section....

Great thread Mr Lin...<excluding post's 10,11,12 & 14 which are nothing but blatant thread crapping and drivel to boot....something heavily frowned upon here at AK>
It is great to read when a simple, inexpensive solution has this kind of positive impact on the listener




Bill

Working up the food chain IS the only way to do this. If a piece of gear or a tweak does nothing, you know it right then. End of argument. If it works, it will lead you into new thinking and other arrangements.

If you don't like to play with the bits and pieces, maybe this is not the best place to hang out? If you do, this is how we get to synergy. Not every MFG makes all the best sounding gear throughout their line (anyway to my ears). Some make some great pieces, and then their ears lead them in a different direction than I would go?

At the Sacramento Audiofest we heard a little low watt bottle amp running some marginally inefficient speakers (JBLs IIRC) that sounded absolutely marvelous to me. I was blown away what a few watts could do to big old room speakers. It was totally unexpected, even to the owner when he tried them just for fun. AND he was feeding the with both a CDP and TT !! Sounds good on both :)

Synergy is real and specs will not predict it - period! We can't measure all we can hear. Our ears have evolved over countless centuries to be sensitive to harmonics and nuance (sonic signatures that create emotion like flight or fight, adrenalin, etc.). Scopes are not even close. You can't measure emotional reaction except with humans doing the listening (living instruments).

The measurement guys will get you to one plateau and it's not very far up above the entry door. After that, it's up to your ears and good set of headphones. Speakers with the resolving power of phones are really expensive, so tweaking with phones is cheaper and quicker IMHO. :)

Talking about a power cord to a TT is still connected to TTs, but if we are going to go deep into all ICs, speakers cables, all power cords...you should take it to TOL forum. Read the rules there first though because they are different. The TOL forum was created with tighter rules because so many folks can't seem to remain calm and well mannered when discussing cables/cords of any kind. Comments without experience really aren't welcome there and of course snide remarks and ranting really aren't welcome anywhere on AK.

At what point do you rerun all the romex from your wall outlet to your circuit breaker with audio grade romex, then from the power lines to your breaker.

If you have a true power conditioner that converts ac-dc, then back to AC, totally isolated, perfectly regulated, perfect sine wave, etc maybe a power cord could help. In most cases where power conditioners are just glorified surge/noise suppressors - a power cord change will only help if the original is damaged or was grossly undersized from the start.

Also many of these electronic devices make so much noise on the A/C side, everything on the clean side of your conditioner is going to be subject to the switching noise of each other piece. If you are really going to make a difference each device should be powered from its own totally isolated inverter from seperate isolated batteries. The inverters output transistors and driving circuitry should be of as good or better quality than what is driving your speakers.


In short, if you don't have a really great power conditioner with completely isolated outputs - all the power cords in the world are still connecting you to whatever wiring is in your walls, down the block, etc.

I agree with phase controlling speed controllers being a wonderful thing for devices with induction A/C motors where the speed is regulated directly by the incoming AC frequency.

At what point do you rerun all the romex from your wall outlet to your circuit breaker with audio grade romex, then from the power lines to your breaker.

It really doesn't matter, but the folks that I have talked to that have taken the extreme steps of using something exotic such as the JPS Labs In Wall cable have universally agreed that even though the money they spent was considerable, the gains were well worth it...even running a better quality, or newer, or larger gauge standard Romex can be a step in the right direction if you take the run for your audio setup and make it a "home run" or a dedicated circuit....

If you have a true power conditioner that converts ac-dc, then back to AC, totally isolated, perfectly regulated, perfect sine wave, etc maybe a power cord could help. In most cases where power conditioners are just glorified surge/noise suppressors - a power cord change will only help if the original is damaged or was grossly undersized from the start.

Is this conjecture on your part? Or have you really experimented with something like the PSAudio power plants? Have you experimented with power cords at all? How about better quality AC outlets?

Also many of these electronic devices make so much noise on the A/C side, everything on the clean side of your conditioner is going to be subject to the switching noise of each other piece. If you are really going to make a difference each device should be powered from its own totally isolated inverter from seperate isolated batteries. The inverters output transistors and driving circuitry should be of as good or better quality than what is driving your speakers.

The big problem with this is that switching DC to AC inverters have their own set of problems, such as the symmetry of the sine waves, you do NOT want to use a modified sine wave or triangle wave such as that put out by the usual computer backup supplies, with any kind of decent audio gear! Then there's the switching transients and noise, and power conversion efficiency. Why not just do something along the lines of Audience and their Adept Power power conditioners? You don't have to, or necessarily want to, go to the length that you proposed for component to component isolation. I have actually done experiments with line noise sniffers, such as the Audio Prism and Medea systems, and found that much simpler and more elegant solutions are a better implementation than a whole bunch of extra electronics stuff consuming electricity for no good reason....


In short, if you don't have a really great power conditioner with completely isolated outputs - all the power cords in the world are still connecting you to whatever wiring is in your walls, down the block, etc.

I agree with phase controlling speed controllers being a wonderful thing for devices with induction A/C motors where the speed is regulated directly by the incoming AC frequency.

But, have you actually TRIED anything yourself? Or are you just theorizing what you say based on your "beliefs"?

I HAVE tried power cords, straight from the wall, from power conditioners, from all sorts of combinations, and with audio gear capable of decent detail retreival, things can be heard! Most of the ones I use in my system have been hand built by me. Have I heard better than I have made? Sure I have, but I really can't afford that stuff! That's one of the reasons I build stuff myself...

I have always been one to try and do things for myself...when I couldn't afford a new sports car, I went out and found a fifteen year old one, towed it home, took it entirely apart, cleaned, painted, polished every part, put it back together and had something unique and better than new (if you've ever been a fan of British sports cars, then you know where I'm coming from!) I did that half a dozen times.....same thing with motorcycles like my KZ900 and Seca Turbo....and with audio, I started buying stuff at pawn shops and Hamfests (like an entire Dynaco St-70, PAS-3, FM-3 for $50.00 in mint condition), I bought stuff at estate and yard sales, I bought stuff from drunk salesmen at open houses of audio shops, I modified, I blew up, I got shocked, in short, I actually tried a whole lot of things instead of just relying on what someone else has said...I do look to others for their experience, for their knowledge, and try to learn from them what I can, to make my experiences better, safer, more enjoyable....

And isn't that what we are supposed to be doing here on AudioKarma? Sharing knowledge and experiences, trying new things? Things that work, things that don't? Things we have actually tried, heard, seen? Reality, not conjecture....not just sitting around dissuading someone from trying something because it doesn't fit with your belief structure or what you learned in school...and while conjecture can be productive, too often when it is treated as fact, not just the guessing that it really is, the strong polarization this causes can be really counterproductive and unfriendly....

.

I have what amounts to lamp cord as the power cord for my Thorens. Would it be beneficial to take it apart and solder on a better power cord? Just something that came to mind, as part of my goal here was to further eliminate weak links (wherever they're trying to hide!) in my turntable/general audio setup. I'm not rich by any means, but I will spend a fair amount of $ making sure every component is excellent - I mean turntable, cartridge, power cord, speaker cable - everything.

His snobbery about his beliefs permeates the entire presentation and is just one more strike against those who measure versus those who listen...

So your particular brand of snobbery is different in what way again? I dunno, Anyone with a Ph.D in electrical engineering would seem to have done a few pages of homework in his time. I understand where you're coming from but you don't know this man anymore than you know me. I subscribe more toward his philosophies in some ways, but not all his ways but they do make a lot of sense. No emotion, no conjecture. Just facts as he sees them. Kind of like the facts you present..as you see them.

If anyone cares I've started a similar thread focusing only on power cords in TOL, since this is getting a bit out of hand.

If anyone cares I've started a similar thread focusing only on power cords in TOL, since this is getting a bit out of hand.
Excellent Idea....I am looking forward to reading more on this discussion....
(Too bad that this topic has one more time become a pissing contest:thumbsdn:)



Bill

(Too bad that this topic has one more time become a pissing contest:thumbsdn:)

Amem, Bill, amen.:smoke:

I have what amounts to lamp cord as the power cord for my Thorens. Would it be beneficial to take it apart and solder on a better power cord? Just something that came to mind, as part of my goal here was to further eliminate weak links (wherever they're trying to hide!) in my turntable/general audio setup. I'm not rich by any means, but I will spend a fair amount of $ making sure every component is excellent - I mean turntable, cartridge, power cord, speaker cable - everything.

I have never experimented with power cables on any of my turntables...that being said, two of my best friends have Basis tables with the separate motor and both have reported a small, but noticeable, improvement when switching to a different AC cord...one of them uses a power cord he made from Cardas Twinlink speaker cable....

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Discussion has moved to TOL.