[Big Red Machine]

Would using a 2-prong power cord be one way around this potential problem?

You would think so.  But in USA, neutral ties to ground at the service panel, so it gets rather complex.  As frequency goes up, so does coupling.  So I don't think any hard and fast rule can be used..

Cheers, John

I'm using Arc Fault breakers.  I'll have to dig up a wiring diagram, but the neutral is separated into the breaker and it has a separate ground wire that goes back out to the bar.  Probably not separated internally enough to matter noise-wise.  I'm lucky enough to have a dedicated circuit and while I don't have noise issues and have good power, I am interested in grounding schemes because I have made a few PC's that work well and not sure if I got lucky.

[Steve Eddy]

You would think so.  But in USA, neutral ties to ground at the service panel, so it gets rather complex.  As frequency goes up, so does coupling.  So I don't think any hard and fast rule can be used..

Dinner's coming up so I'll reply to your other post later tonight. Just wanted to touch on this one real quick.

I don't see neutral being tied to ground at the service panel any sort of problem or anything which makes things more complex.

The problem with three prong cables isn't that neutral is tied to ground at the service panel, but rather that the safety ground is tied to neutral at the service panel. It's the safety ground that produces the loop and the associated problems.

se

[Imperial]

I recalled reading somewhere that a well-known amplifier designer once claimed that his amplifier do not need exotic cables because it works well under ALL conditions.
I've heard this said many many times over. Lots of designers seem to think this

My question is then, what materials can you put in the cable to enhance the damping of the amplifier? And do you think the claim of the amplifier designer has any validity at all, that the quality of an amplifier design can be judged by how it is NOT being affected by swapping cables?
To improve dampening factor... After the output of the amp, it will fall... always! Maybe this speaker cable allows it to remain higher than usually so? This is a logical conclusion to draw...
Materials... Well, they can affect somewhat, but I'm more on the design itself and method of construction and so on.



Any thought and comment?

I leave with one comment.
Magnetic oscillation, as a result of charges (Read currents..) that change.
It is many ways to view a cable. But in essence it just conducts a charge, and a magnetic field is created as a result.
Then you can move a conducting wire in this field (If the field is oscillating the wire "thinks" it is moving and thus emf..), or the field itself can move.
If the wire is coiled... then we have to talk about inter twined solenoids... and inductance.
When a signal is traveling in the cable ... any windings or type of wire geometry will induce emf in the surrounding fields (wires), that is either set up by the geometry of the cable itself or other factors.
Maxwell, Gauss, Faraday and Ampere's math can be applied to a cable design and help in giving a cable some unique electrical and magnetic properties.
I have made cables for years myself, DIY.
And I have fallen in love with magnetic fields and electricity, they really are connected. No current = no field.
Shape the wire = shape the field. And Shape the field also implies that the wire may be given some additional properties that it by itself don't really have... But when it is is this specialized field, it interacts in a new way and the emf, or even lack of emf can be controlled.

So to the dampening factor here:
Can you make a cable that "helps" the amp getting full/more controll over the voice coil and still resists some back-emf for the speaker - thus improving the usable dampening factor of the amp?

If we know what that emf will be, we can introduce a "coil" in the cable that will pass the standard signal undisturbed to the speaker coil , but when the back -emf comes back, that is a slightly different type of signal... and there could be ways to soak that up.
But this is probably very complex to do, if possible at all.

Designing cables... is not for everyone I think.
Magnetic field theory is massively complex stuff.
Some of the cables that we see today have very advanced build-up, and I'm sure you would need some sort of really complex
software to properly simulate all aspects of especially the magnetic fields.

A superb book on this would be http://www.plasma.uu.se/CED/Book/ - Recommended reading!


Imperial

[jneutron]

I don't see neutral being tied to ground at the service panel any sort of problem or anything which makes things more complex.

The problem with three prong cables isn't that neutral is tied to ground at the service panel, but rather that the safety ground is tied to neutral at the service panel. It's the safety ground that produces the loop and the associated problems.
se

Um, Steve?  Potatoe, pot"ahhh"toe..

I speak of the connection itself, as do you.  The point being we are forced to tie neutrals to safety grounds at the panel.

If you assume that the safety ground is the problem and then eliminate it (not MY recommendation of course..), the question would be, how could loop currents flow now..the loops "gone"?  (or so it seems)

For any loop current, there needs to be a path.  Any conductance path from hot/neutral to the rca grounds..  Noise filters sometimes shunt to ground... xfmr wind to lamination capacitance also shunt to ground.  Assuming that grounding the xfmr core to chassis is "good"... may not be correct for a specific end use configuration.

Remember, breaking the safety ground will most likely pop 60 hz and 120 hz out, but it may not clear the path out to 20Khz.  Old style light dimmers come to mind..

Cheers, John

[jneutron]

Maxwell, Gauss, Faraday and Ampere's math can be applied to a cable design and help in giving a cable some unique electrical and magnetic properties.

I believe we all agree with that.

If we know what that emf will be, we can introduce a "coil" in the cable that will pass the standard signal undisturbed to the speaker coil , but when the back -emf comes back, that is a slightly different type of signal... and there could be ways to soak that up.
But this is probably very complex to do, if possible at all.

The cable per se, does not have the ability to distinguish between current induced by the amp, and that induced by the load.  It merely reacts to the e and m fields.  Use of the Poynting vector within the cable is not possible.

Magnetic field theory is massively complex stuff.

Nah, it's child's play.





(just not your normal child)

A superb book on this would be http://www.plasma.uu.se/CED/Book/ - Recommended reading!

Imperial

Thank you for the link.  I'll peruse it next year.

I have Jackson, Becker, Shadowitz, Rojansky, Ragan currently on hand, and find each explain some topic better than the others.  More references is always best..

Cheers, John