[DVV]

Ah-HA!  I bet it was Jerry's shoddy wiring that killed the last unit!    (Just kidding)

Hell, there's probably 200 microns of tar and nicotine on the ground wire.  A good cleaning would probably get a positive continuity check! Ha!

No brother Nate, they used it for shishkebab, which they fried in the magnetic field. Why do you think they use teflon insulation?

C'mon Nate, give it a rest. Just say NO to drugs. And buckle up for safety. And support your local police. And practice only safe sex. And get the pots on your NAD changed.

Cheers,
DVV

[nathanm]

Huh?!  What are you on about over there Dejan?  That whole second paragraph was bewildering!  Dammit, I hate when I don't get jokes...

I have supported my local police: by achieving 81mph in a 65mph zone!  Don't let the coppers say I never gave 'em anything.

It's a shame the 'ol DeZorel left my clutches before I got this noisy, archaic, second-order harmoic-rich tube equipment in house.   From what you guys are saying it sounds like the little box really cleans up the AC nasties, eh?  What I really need to do is replace the crappy wall plugs.  I think one too many tennants rammed the couch up against the lamp cord. Are those plugs with an 'isolated ground' a Good Thing? (see, that's sorta on-topic!)

[bubba966]

Bubba,
I'm glad you checked it. I hope I didn't screw up the connections to the Hubbel outlet. This was how I wired it.
neutral = purple or blue
hot = brown  
green/yellow = ground

Can you see inside the Hubbel to verify? If not can you dissamble the Hubbel and check/fix all the connections. No soldering is needed.

Also can you try listening to it before making any changes, and the re-listening afterwards, if any changes are needed?

That's how the plug is wired.

So I pulled the lid of the DeZorel to check how it looks inside. Looks like the hot & neutral are swapped inside. So I'm going to swap them at the plug and see how it goes...

[nathanm]

Looks like we have to start all over again!

             

[bubba966]

Swapping the hot & neutral in the plug seems to have fixed the problem. My Monster HTS3500's are no longer complaining about an improperly wired circuit.

So I've hurridly put the lid back on (don't want to let any more of that nasty tobacco smell out from inside the DeZorel )

I did test it out before I swapped the leads. I did help on the audio end of things, but didn't really do anything for the video. I'll re-test it now that it appears to be wired properly and post more detailed results later.

[OBF]

So, would that mean the DeZorel had been filtering the neutral rather than the hot?  Or would its balanced configuration make it more complex than that?

[DVV]

So, would that mean the DeZorel had been filtering the neutral rather than the hot?  Or would its balanced configuration make it more complex than that?

I can't swear to it, but I think it would. That thing never ceases to amaze me. In my time, when I was really testing it, I purposely swapped plus and neutral - and nothing happened, it just went on filtering. It took me some time to realize that if it is truly balanced in operation, and does not require the ground to operate, it makes no difference which wire is which, it will work anyway.

But I remember much discussion among the initial panel of six (not counting myself), from Italy, UK, Australia, Netherlands and two from USA, it seems everybody had their own wiring scheme, and it also seemed no two people had the same arrangement (plug), except the man from Holland and myself.

Cheers,
DVV

[audiojerry]

I asked Dezorel if we needed to be concerned about this, and Miki sent this reply. I think it should ease everyone's minds:

To cut a long story short, no, there is no need for you to
readition
the unit. Please remember that it does NOT need nor use the
ground for
full operation, and you could just as well hold the Brick
in your hand
and it would still operate perfectly.

As to "proper grounding", I'm afraid that even now, in the
21st
century, the so-called standards are far too often
overlooked. What
your audiophile-group member found was exactly what our
distributor
found also - but thought to be in perfect order, tried it,
it worked,
and there were no ground problems, either in ground loops,
or
degenerated singlan-to-noise ratio.

It seems that not every place in any one country, USA
included, has
what is referred to standard wiring. We have this problem
quite a lot,
and must suffer it, because we use what is written up as
the norm. We
may use it, but not all developers seem to.

Ultimately sir, if it was not properly grounded, somebody
would have
felt some static by now, rest assured, those are, after
all, serious
voltages and currents in there.


Best regards,
Miki                

[bubba966]

Looks like we have to start all over again!

             

I don't think so. I couldn't tell any difference when demo'ing before I fixed it to demo'ing it after. Though I didn't spend all day with it either before or after, as I was trying to get it packed up so I could get it sent off to OBF. I'd let Al Garay mess with it for a day or two on his setup last week as I thought most of you would rather hear what it did for his AKSA/Ellis setup than what it'd do for my setup. Maybe we could get him to post his impressions about it. He certainly liked it.

I've come to the conclusion that my power isn't too nasty in this house. All thee AC filters I've used so far have shown some improvement, but not really that much. The Transparent Audio AC filter was the only one that did much of anything for video quality. But at $2,200 for a one outlet AC filter, I didn't find it to be THAT usefull.

[nathanm]

I was kidding of course. (hence the mass 'o winks)  It would be comically absurd to start over now, which is precisely why I made the joke.  But if someone were to blow the cap in this once I'd be  

[audiojerry]

Steve K. of NJ just signed on; welcome aboard
1. audiojerry, Wisconsin Performance = 9, Value = 10
2. Nathanm, Wisconsin Performance = 5, Value = 3
3. Beezer, California Performance = 5, Value = 8
4. Randytsuch, California Performance = 6, Value = 6
5. Derrick N, California
6. Brian S, Seattle
7. Mike G, Englewood CO
8. Mark J, Salem OR
9. Mark C, Ontario
10. Briley, Greensboro NC
11. JoshK, NY
12. Steve K, NJ

[DVV]

It seems DeZorel caused quite a stir in Bristol a few days ago; there was an A/V fair there. Miki says we can expect to read about them in British mags in a month or two or three, whatever their testing time is.

Cheers,
DVV

[OBF]

I've had the DeZorel since the middle of last week so I plan on sending it off to Mike tomorrow.  

I ended up doing less testing than I had originally planned.  I wanted to test it out with video but when push came to shove I couldn't bring myself to power my projector up and down repeatedly as the test would have required, and the couple minute wait would have made a real A/B test impossible anyway so I skipped that part.

I also planned on testing it with my friend's A/V system (Outlaw 1050 receiver) that's being temporarily stored next to my stuff, but I had to drive my girlfriend to the hospital for an emergency (ended up not being too serious) at 11:30 when we had just really got started on the session.  Personally, I liked the DeZorel with this receiver (also functioning as DAC).  Nothing major, but it softened and smoothed things a bit and I found it to be more enjoyable and easier to listen to.

With my own 2 ch setup, I didn't notice as much difference.  With my digital amp, the bass seeemd to fuzz up a bit, but otherwise didn't do much.  My friend preferred it plugged into the wall.  I don't have a good power strip so I didn't test with everything plugged into the DeZorel.  The other combo was my DAC and/or transport with the filter.  Again, I didn't notice anything major here, but I felt the music was a bit richer and maybe the background blacker.  I didn't feel it had any negative affect.  If I owned the DeZorel I would have left my DAC plugged in.

I wish I could say more, but I didn't feel too strongly about what I was hearing and I don't know if I'd notice in a blind test.  I probably should have started off by saying my equipment is set up in a new addition to the house with its own new panel and 20 amp circuits (too bad its a rental and I'm moving soon    ) so I probably have as good of power as you can have without going to dedicated lines and fancy outlets.  I wouldn't mind owning a DeZorel for peace of mind, but only if the price was right.

For the ratings, I'd give it a 5 on performance since it seemed to help with some equipment and not others and a 6 for value since it's reasonably priced relative to other power filters even though it might not be the best use of my funds.

[Jay S]

Which digital amp do you have?

[OBF]

Same as you, but one of the "downgraded" versions.

[OBF]

Ok, before sending it off to Colorado this afternoon, I decided to try out one additional configuration last night that I did not previously try and I was pleasantly surprised with the results.  I should have tried it sooner since DVV has said it can sometimes work better with tubes and the one tube component I'm using is an Anthem Pre 2L.  With just that plugged into the DeZorel, I got a subtle increase in all the audiophile stuff.  As others have said, the music became more focused and better seperated.  Still nothing major, but I wish my Anthem was still plugged in!  So... now I'd give it a 6 and 6 rating and be more inclined to buy one, but still very price dependent for me.

[mgalusha]

Began my audition of the DeZorel this evening. Here are the notes I typed up.. quick and dirty. More to follow in a few days.

Mike

DeZorel initial impressions

Arrived 2/28/03, still smelling of smoke.

Opened unit up and removed top, front, rear and side panels. Cleaned everything with Simple Green. No longer smells like an ashtray.

Noticed wire color codes were reversed. Blue wire was connected to line instead of neutral. This was on both the plug and outlet. Corrected. This would not affect operation or safety since it was reversed on both ends.

The ground wire from the outlet to the chassis was loose. Tightened.

System config at time of audition:

Preamp: Transcendent Grounded Grid with DACT attenuator, 4.75uF metalized polypropylene coupling caps, feedback resistors  changed from 100K to 182K, .12uF metalized polypro caps bypassing all electrolytics on preamp board, Herbie's Audio Lab tube dampers and Tenderfeet.

Transport: Marantz CD-67 SE with LC Audio LClock II and dedicated clock power supply, DynaMat Extreme inside of case and chassis, bypass caps on electrolytics, Herbie's Audio Lab Tenderfeet.

DAC: ART DI/O with Riken/Holco/Vishay resistors, 17amp PS transformer with common mode filter, LT1362CN op amp, panasonic electrolytics, schottky diodes, ADC circuits removed, damped crystal, other stuff. Very similar to mods Bolder does for MENSA DI/O.

Power Amps: DIY tube mono block based on Transcendent SC150 design. Will deliver an honest 100 watts into 8R @ 1kHz without clipping and clean square wave response.

Speakers: Vandersteen 3A signature with 2 Vandersteen 2WQ subwoofers. Amps are passively high passed at 75Hz.

Cables: DIY interconnect - 30ga silver plated OFC copper, bullet plugs. Speaker: 12Ga flat braid, biwire - very long and could be better but room won't allow.

BPT BP-2 Ultra feeding power amps. BPT BP-4 Ultra feeding DAC, Transport, Preamp and Phono Pre. Each source on it's own balanced transformer. Wall outlet is 20A, silver plated, cyro treated Acme.

Scenario 1. Tried DeZorel feeding SC150 amps vs BPT 2.0 ultra. Both plugged into same wall outlet. Did not try plugging amps directly into wall.

With DeZorel they sounded much brighter and more forward. Slightly less detail than with the BPT on sounds such as brushed snare drums. Soundstage lost depth and speakers were much more noticeable. Normally the speakers in my system will disappear and the sound just appears across the front of the room. This effect was noticeably less with the DeZorel. For the power amps I definitely preferred the BPT.

Scenario 2. Tried preamp on DeZorel, BPT BP-4 and unfiltered power.

This was a lot closer than the power amps were. First I listened to 88 Basie Street on the XRCD of the same name on the BPT. It sounded as I was used to it, as expected. The preamp was then plugged into the wall. What a shock, it has been quite a while since I haven't had clean power that I forgot just how much better the system sounded compared to raw, unfiltered power. Detail was gone, it was harsh and unfocused and just generally nasty in comparison. I had to stop the CD before the track finished.

Up next was the DeZorel. A huge improvement over the raw AC. There was really no comparison IMO. The real comparison was how it fared against the balanced power. I still noticed a more forward and bright sound in comparison to the BPT and again the speakers drew more attention to themselves and the image lost depth. The biggest difference was in the sound of the piano and horns. The piano had more body and wooden resonance with the BPT than with the DeZorel and the horns seemed to be playing more in harmony with the BPT in the system.

With both configurations I found the sound with balanced power more rhythmic and relaxing. The more forward sound of the DeZorel made it seem like the BPT was somehow restricting the dynamics. I soon found out this was not the case...

I put in Royal Crown Revue and cranked the volume up. Things got very interesting. A higher volume the DeZorel sounded less forward and aggressive than it did at a lower level and the BPT was now open and very dynamic. They were much closer at higher listening levels. I found the snare drums to be more dynamic with the BPT than with the DeZorel, this was nearly reversed at lower levels. Soundstage and imaging was still very much the same with the BPT freeing the sound from the speakers and providing greater depth.

To be fair I did try raw power again and either power conditioner offered a huge improvement. Again, I preferred the BPT in the system but it was much closer.

Next up will be the DAC and transport. After that we'll see how it fares in Jason's system and my HT.

[audiojerry]

Mike, that was excellent. Kudos for your very systematic approach and explanation of how you did the comparison. Also, my compliments on a very nicely assembled system of components.

Can you try a couple of additional tests?
Try keeping the BPT's in the system and adding the Dezorel to the front and immediately following each BPT.

Thanks for your report.

[mgalusha]

Jerry,

I will be trying the DeZorel in the fashion you suggested. It was getting late last night and I thought my family might be getting tired of hearing the same songs many times each.

Perhaps this evening, and if not, certainly tomorrow. I did take the DeZorel and the BPT 2.5 over to Jason's house today to see how they compared in a different system and the results were very similar. We also had the luxury of trying a Bolder Cables Bybee power bar and a Tripp Lite line conditioner. In Jason's system the BPT sounded best followed by the Bolder power bar, the DeZorel and finally the Tripp Lite. I thought the Bolder and the DeZorel would be quite similar but we all found the system to be more enjoyable with the Bolder.

More to come.

[Jay S]

OBF,

Peter said that the eAR amps have a very good power filter built in and he doubted that they would benefit from an external power filter.  I didn't try the DeZorel with the eAR, though it did clearly benefit my Cary and Mensa DAC.

Mike,

Very interesting comparison with the BPT!  I had read great things about the BPT, but was discouraged that there isn't a 220V version.     Transcendent Sound has a relatively inexpensive balanced power supply ($399 assembled) that has enough juice for source components -- I wonder if it would be as good as the BPT.  Have you talked to Bruce R. about it by any chance?