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In Reply to: RE: Take a moment and think about posted by Al Sekela on June 12, 2007 at 10:10:22
I don't have a technical background so much of the details below are lost on me. I simply printed a few things out and gave them to my electrician: "here, do this please".
If I may, if you run a dedicated line for each piece of equipment, do you then plug in each piece directly into the socket (ie not worry about line conditioning/surge protection)? Or are you using line conditioning/surge protection individually for each piece of gear (I imagine this gets expensive).
Apologies if the anwer to this question is obvious - but I'm learning.
Thank you
Follow Ups:
Thanks for the detailed responses. Some of these options seem like they are pretty low budget, so I'll get rolling on them. I didn't see this until the Electrician had finished, but I have two separate circuits that I can at least separate everything from the amp. It's the best I can do for now.
I'm either suffering from the placebo effect, or I swear, my system sounds better already and not by a small amount. It seems much more involving, energetic and more well defined. When I re-do the house, I'll get five or six circuits put in for the equipment.
I suppose you guys just rely on home insurance should a surge destroy a piece of equipment? To be honest, I've been running my system on an ungrounded electrical system for 5yrs (old Manhattan apartment, to an old Toronto house), so I guess I've been taking that risk despite my Brick Wall surge protector.
Cheers
There is always a risk of a massive power voltage surge, even in areas with little thunderstorm activity. For example, a drunk driver could crash into a power pole and the resulting electrical mayhem could dump several thousand volts into your house until the power company's automatic protection devices shut it down (this has actually happened in my town).
The small surge protectors sold for home use are just about worthless. They use small devices called Metal Oxide Varistors (MOV) to absorb surge energy. These devices wear out as they absorb small spikes, so they are likely to have much less absorption capacity than when they are new if they have been in service for a while. They are physically too small to absorb much energy in any case.
There are more sophisticated devices available, but these are still physically small and will be overwhelmed by a large spike.
You can get whole-house surge protectors, that are installed by electricians at your power entry point. These are expensive but more likely to protect your equipment and appliances.
My approach is to assume the risk. Equipment with large power transformers is already self-protected by the nature of the transformers' primary windings. The Hammond choke tweak is another good spike protection method. The Brick Wall should work as well, but I don't have experience with it.
Your risk from lack of an AC safety-earth connection is to your safety, not to your equipment. You only have a risk if your equipment has its exposed metal connected to the third pin of the power cord. Some equipment accepts three-wire power cords but does not have this connection.
The main benefit of separate dedicated lines for each piece of equipment is to reduce the coupling of power supply noise among the different pieces. When two pieces share the same line, the noise from unit A's power supply interacting with the line is impressed on unit B, and vice versa. There will still be some coupling at the circuit breaker panel, but this will be much less than what happens in a shared power circuit. The isolation afforded by separate circuits is superior to what any power conditioner could provide.
The individual dedicated lines will still have their own resonance characteristics, which may amplify RF noise present at the breaker panel or originating from the equipment. What I do is plug each of my components into its dedicated line, using the outlet to which the wire is directly attached. I plug an R-C damper into the other outlet of the duplex. The damper reduces the ability of the AC line to resonate.
If you are not able to make your own dampers, AudioPrism makes Quiet Line filters that do the same thing. These filters are also useful on non-audio circuits that have noisy appliances plugged into them.
My system is simple and sensitive to the choice of AC hardware. I don't use surge suppressors with my audio equipment because doing so would introduce an additional set of plugs and outlets into each circuit. I've read that MOV surge suppressors create electrical noise, but I don't have direct experience to confirm this.
The Achilles Heel of MOVs is that each each small hit they take become cumulative, at some point causing their failure without warning. I believe that it is Sony who developed the ZNR surge protector with which small hits do not become cumulative. They are carried by Digi-Key. To the un-initiated, you must use 3 MOVs or ZNRs for complete surge protection of a line. These must be connected as follows : one from the 'hot' wire to the neutral (white wire), one from the neutral wire to the Safety Ground wire (green wire), and the third from the 'hot' wire to the Safety Ground wire.
Hartari, there is a wealth of info in the archives. What you will find is that boatloads of very experienced folks do it a number of different ways. What you might want to start with are those AC areas that must exist no matter what (except for battery powered components of course!):a. you are already installing dedicated circuits
b. the outlet itself (there are many, including Oyaide)
c. compatible power cords, interconnects and speaker cables
d. optimal cable positioning/dressing (given your rack's constraints)
e. RF and noise reducing tweaks (power wraps, 193L Choke Tweak, application of carbon fiber, ERS, etc.)You won't be able to hear the full benefit, if any, of a power conditioner until you take the above steps.
Then you can research power conditioners including balanced power and/or isolation transformers, etc. etc. You can also research whole house surge at the panel including the pros and cons of doing this.
As far as plugging in your components it often depends what type of equipment you have and what type of conditioner you buy. For instance, equi-tech, a leader in the balanced power field urges folks to plug all of their equipment into a balanced power conditioner. Other types of conditioners excel at a digital or analog. Some insist that power amps must be plugged directly into the outlets and only source components should plug into conditioners. Try to be thoughtful about steps A-E above first, and then experiment as much as possible. This will give you time to do your research as a power conditioner can be expensive.
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