[kyrill]

well
i live in the Hague/Rijswijk with a lot of industry around albeit no smoking pipes

The ektricity is dirty. but switching pws are very dirty too and i have 4 PCs in the house! and ALL my neighbours..

I do NEED power cleaning. the effect i hear with the cleaning is also very obvious.

JENS  how are your solutions? and lost81 and others? It would be nice to know what AKSA lovers do  for their pws

[fajimr]

kyrill

this is what I did http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=10310.0

I have two of these and an ernie's po-box in between (check out the username 'subaru guru' on audiogon)- all spaced out approximately 2 ft from eachother.  I didn't do much testing (none after putting the LF modules in) but they didn't degrade the sound.  I have the amp plugged into the po-box and the CD and DAC plugged into the second RG box.  I don't play around too much with A/B testing but am simply happy with the sound. 

FWIW
jim

[Jens]

well
i live in the Hague/Rijswijk with a lot of industry around albeit no smoking pipes

The ektricity is dirty. but switching pws are very dirty too and i have 4 PCs in the house! and ALL my neighbours..

I do NEED power cleaning. the effect i hear with the cleaning is also very obvious.

JENS  how are your solutions? and lost81 and others? It would be nice to know what AKSA lovers do  for their pws

Well, I don't seem to have too many problems with my mains. I live in a separate house in a residential area, and there aren't any major consumers for miles.

I did have a separate mains group installed a few years back, from which there is a direct 2 x 5 mm² mains cable running directly to distribution outlets for everything audio. The effect of installing the separate mains group was indeed more silence and "blackness", so I haven't regretted it. Actually, one of my audio friends is an electrician, so he hooked everythings up for me in the best possible way

The installation incorporates true earth, which I use.

Apart from that, I haven't done a lot. I do have a couple of mains filters (very good ones with discrete components) that I use for low consumption equipment such as my DVD player and the GK-1R. For the power amps, my LF55 and an IcePower amp, both of which use toroids, I have implemented DC traps to ensure that the toroids are kept silent.

Finally, I have developed a mains cable (that I have named the Equilibrium PowerCable), which improves sound radically, also when comparing to rather pricy off-the-shelf mains cables. Unfortunately, it works so well that I only have one of those at the moments, as friends who hear it tend to buy them as quickly as I can build them

The Equilibrium PowerCable seems to have an effect on most components, and I intend to equip the whole system with these mains cables 

[kyrill]

Dag JEns

your AC mains cable will "block" RFI by common mode rejection I suppose. It does not matter where you live on earth there is always RFI and dont forget your own computers or any other switching pws in yr house!

Can you tell me how you block DC for yr transformers? Are you sure those thingies do not not harm the dynamic flow of current?
My "mother of audio transformer" hums like the war in IRAQ. the sound is very very unpleasant metallic  but it is build like a tank. Not loose filaments or so. I suspect dc critters to insurge my lovely current;)

i shield my ac main cables with 3M electric copper foil tape and solder a wire on top of it connected to real earth   I have at least 20 cuts the last 3 weeks. the thin copper foil is like a razor 


any other out there ? Even when you do nothing about power "cleaning" it is interesting to know

[wmeckle]

any other out there ? Even when you do nothing about power "cleaning" it is interesting to know

Hi Kyrill:
   It is probably overkill, but I installed 2) 20 amp breakers in the electrical box, ran 2) 3 wire, 10 gauge wires in conduits to 2) 4 outlet wall plates
for dedicated 20 amp, 120 V service to my equipment. I also built 2 boxes with isolation transformers and 120 V outlets. details at:
http://www.plitron.com/PDF/857502.pdf
   I got the idea from a friend, his example can be seen at:
http://tubino.smugmug.com/gallery/1847507#95022569 
 I don't have meters on mine as they are buried behind the equipment, so couldn't be seen, but it is a nice touch.

[Jens]

Dag JEns

your AC mains cable will "block" RFI by common mode rejection I suppose. It does not matter where you live on earth there is always RFI and dont forget your own computers or any other switching pws in yr house!

My Equilibrium PowerCable is a shielded cable. However, during prototyping I tried two identical cables, except for the shielding, in my system. Absolutely no difference. But that may only be in my house. The shielding certainly doesn't hurt anything. As you say, there is always RFI - although probably not vey much in my house, where the computer is at the opposite end of the house from the audio system, and I usually never leave it on when I'm not using it

Can you tell me how you block DC for yr transformers? Are you sure those thingies do not not harm the dynamic flow of current?
My "mother of audio transformer" hums like the war in IRAQ. the sound is very very unpleasant metallic  but it is build like a tank. Not loose filaments or so. I suspect dc critters to insurge my lovely current;)

A very simple DC block consisting of two mutually reversed caps and two mutually reversed diodes. I'm certain it does not affect dynamics in the least    There was a thread in this circle quite some time ago about blocking DC. You might want to try and locate it. Whether or not the hum from your huge transformer is DC induced or not is difficult to say - as you probably know there could be a number of other reasons ... but it's worth a try!

[andyr]

My Equilibrium PowerCable is a shielded cable.

Hi Jens,

TNT Audio many years ago wrote about a DIY power cable they called the "TNT Snake".  It was a 3-core braided cable using shielded cable.

I have made my own (unshielded) variant of this which sounds pretty nice to me but I have always thought there was a dichotomy present in the original TNT design ... as follows:

If a 3-wire (I say 3-wire because, remember, our US cousins sometimes only have 2-core PCs available to them! ) mains cable improves the sound of the component it is plugged into by reason of it being braided ... then to my way of thinking, this is because the braiding is reducing inductance compared to a mains cord which uses the same cross-sectional area wires but uses merely a slightly twisted "lay".

Sure shielding stops RFI from exiting the wire but, if you use (as the TNT recipe did) 3 individually shielded wires, this surely must render the benefit of the braiding ineffective? 

However, braiding 3 unshielded wires and then putting a shield - connected to earth at the wall-plug end - over the result to stop RFI exiting, could indeed be a good thing. 

Regards,

Andy

[Occam]

.... I also built 2 boxes with isolation transformers and 120 V outlets. details at:
http://www.plitron.com/PDF/857502.pdf
   I got the idea from a friend, his example can be seen at:
http://tubino.smugmug.com/gallery/1847507#95022569 
.....

Why no capacitors to aid noise filtering? I'm assuming you've wired the transformers for balanced/technical power. Even if you eschew Y caps for reasons of maintaining balance, a X cap across the output phases is going to attenuate both common and normal mode noise, assuming your loads have any impedance, which they allways do.

[Jens]

My Equilibrium PowerCable is a shielded cable.

Hi Jens,

TNT Audio many years ago wrote about a DIY power cable they called the "TNT Snake".  It was a 3-core braided cable using shielded cable.

I have made my own (unshielded) variant of this which sounds pretty nice to me but I have always thought there was a dichotomy present in the original TNT design ... as follows:

If a 3-wire (I say 3-wire because, remember, our US cousins sometimes only have 2-core PCs available to them! ) mains cable improves the sound of the component it is plugged into by reason of it being braided ... then to my way of thinking, this is because the braiding is reducing inductance compared to a mains cord which uses the same cross-sectional area wires but uses merely a slightly twisted "lay".

Sure shielding stops RFI from exiting the wire but, if you use (as the TNT recipe did) 3 individually shielded wires, this surely must render the benefit of the braiding ineffective? 

However, braiding 3 unshielded wires and then putting a shield - connected to earth at the wall-plug end - over the result to stop RFI exiting, could indeed be a good thing. 

Regards,

Andy

Hi Andy,

Well, since I sell my Equilibrium PowerCable (albeit in a small way), I cannot really go into a discussion of how it is made. I can tell you, though, that the philosophy is somewhat different from the TNT cable you mention and that the wires are not individually shielded.

In the Equilibrium PowerCable, the shield has two basic functions: 1) It controls RFI in systems where this is an issue  2) It strengthens the cable substantially - the shield used is made of tightly braided tinned copper and in itself is strong enough to pull a truck

[andyr]

Hi Andy,

Well, since I sell my Equilibrium PowerCable (albeit in a small way), I cannot really go into a discussion of how it is made. I can tell you, though, that the philosophy is somewhat different from the TNT cable you mention and that the wires are not individually shielded.

Fair enough, Jens!    We obviously agree that a shield is good but the braiding must be carried out by unshielded wires! 

Were you aware of Allen Wright's (Aussie guy who lives in Germany and owns Vacuum State Electronics) PC recipes in his "Super Cable Cook Book"?    First published in 1996.

Regards,

Andy

[Jens]

Hi Andy,

Well, since I sell my Equilibrium PowerCable (albeit in a small way), I cannot really go into a discussion of how it is made. I can tell you, though, that the philosophy is somewhat different from the TNT cable you mention and that the wires are not individually shielded.

Fair enough, Jens!    We obviously agree that a shield is good but the braiding must be carried out by unshielded wires! 

Were you aware of Allen Wright's (Aussie guy who lives in Germany and owns Vacuum State Electronics) PC recipes in his "Super Cable Cook Book"?    First published in 1996.

Regards,

Andy

I've heard about it, but haven't read it .....