AC Filtering, Grounding Boxes, Linear PSU and Balanced Power.

[YashN]

A few new items on the plan as from now:

 

I went to the hardware store to get some proper distribution rail, but they had none and instead sold me some 'Marettes' which can be used to make connections between wires there must be an English word equivalent. Speaking of AC Power lines, for safety, the code here requires you to enclose the duplex units in a metal casing. I took three boxes, as well as three metal plates for covering the duplexes (this after verifying the metal plates hastily handed to me by the employee, which was a completely uniform plate without any aperture for the duplex...).

 

I also took a few metal cable conduits which will screw into the boxes above.

 

This provides a fair amount of material for little cost and which will help finalise the AC Power Filter. I might use a thin MDF for the top face of the box, and the rest is an aluminium box. All connections, including the IEC if it's kept (or the power cable if hardwired) will occur at the top face. This is to facilitate any further external vibration isolation of the whole box.

 

The remaining design question is how to geometrically arrange the filter lines within for proper spacing and vibration control/damping internally, and perhaps also add the chassis-grounding features.

 

So, make sure you follow all safety precautions and the Electrical Code (safety + legal) if you embark on such a project. It's better to give the design to an electrician if you don't feel comfortable or don't know about the theory and practice and safety.

 

For the amplifier filter line, I want to test a couple of things:

 

1. Remove the amplifier from the AC filter line and power it with its own power outlet and compare SQ.

 

2. As a completely different experiment: build a parallel filter filter-line and use the amp on this line instead of the CLC filter line currently in use and compare SQ (attack transients, dynamics, soundstage, instrument separation, reverb tails, timbral accuracy, presence).

 

After these tests and after designing the internal geometry, the AC filter implementation will be ready to be finalised in its own box.

[YashN]

I think that the unbalanced generic RCA interconnect between the DAC and the Amp can be improved upon.

 

Hence, I have decided to build a new set of interconnects. This time, I will use a few of the principles I used to build my DIY USB cable (prototype v1.0) which gives stellar results.

 

The most important change, however, will probably be the directional nature of these new interconnects. Actually, this time, I will connect the shield at just the DAC end.

[YashN]

firedog had started a little related thread a few months back:

 

Spike protection, isolation, DC offset protection, and power filtering - ISOL-8 Minisub Axis

 

He speaks of the ISOL-8, which uses what they call transmodal filtering, basically dealing with both common-mode and differential-mode noise.

 

[YashN]

Please don't think about an additional separate ground rod. This causes two separate paths to earth, bypassing the protective fuse or circuit breaker. This will charcoal your house.

 

You can though have multiple earth stakes to fill your backyard if you wish, but all of them need to come back to the one point at the switchboard.

 

Many people too casually mention a separate grounding rod for audio as if it's easy to do and safe.

 

You could fry a lot of things, including humans in case of a bad implementation and a lightning strike at the wrong time and spot.

 

I am weary of doing anything like that, and if ever the need comes to implement this, I would certainly defer to people with the proper expertise.

[YashN]

This what you get when you don't have accountants breathing down your necks and managers who do not have the first clue about Engineering impeding progress and implementation, while sprouting B.S. behind your back to save face and hide their own incompetence in the field:

 

The cost-no-object engineering Smc (Steve McCormack) Audio AC Nexus Power Enhancer:

 

• Cost no-object engineering, component selection, and execution

Designed for use in the worlds finest systems. Effectively enhances

power delivery and ground quality without the negative effects of

poor quality components and the current limiting of coils and

transformers

 

 

• Proprietary enhanced grounding configuration with ultra-hi-purity copper bus and Cardas unplated copper grounding posts.

 

 

• Duelund silver capacitors and silver wire, with ultra-pure copper wiring throughout

• Bocchino Mariner 10 IEC connector for maximum power transfer and unlimited current capability

• Stillpoints vibration technology throughout, including Ultra SS isolator feet and standoffs

• Furutech GTX AC receptacles, back plate and carbon fiber cover plates

• Rigid, inert, unibody construction forms an ideal housing

• Passive operation, unrivaled transparency and neutrality with

incredible dynamic expression

• Allows your equipment to finally achieve its full sonic potential

and delivers a richness of musical information not previously attainable

 

 

 

[YashN]

Another manufacturer who gets very good reviews and a high satisfaction rating from users is Torus Power.

 

Here's a webinar about their technology and products. For some reason the actual content is relegated to a small area of the video.

 

[video=youtube;Ws1yKu-UKSw]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws1yKu-UKSw

 

A good post about Torus Power.

[YashN]

Another well-loved manufacturer, and the more I see and read about them, the more I like what they do and how too, is Shunyata Research (Caelin Gabriel).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[video=youtube;M-xkQZ4qlDc]

 

 

 

Two articles:

 

1. 6Moons - Caelin Gabriel of Shunyata Research

 

We could lock onto correlated signal virtually obscured by random noise, a feat believed impossible by engineers using commercial electronics of the day. Working on these projects and with other NSA engineers taught me that 'impossible' is a relative term - and one that is not acceptable to overachievers.

2. The Audio Beat - DCTD Measures Up (by Chris's new-found friend Fremer)

 

You see, we can measure the difference between connector contact points. And this also was significant. This was 190 amps versus about 160 amps.

 

 

If you look at it (the molded plug connection) physically, it’s like a blade. It’s designed so that they push the wire between the blades and the blades cut the insulation and so you have a knife-edge contact. And that doesn’t have as much surface area as you would with a Hubbell, where you strip the wire and you put it in there and you screw it down or you solder it.

 

 

Because we can now show significant current differences between power cords, some people would argue, because everybody likes to argue, "Well, then obviously, if you use a bigger wire it’s going to have more current capacity and obviously if you use a good connector it’s going to be better."

 

 

And listen! That’s been our whole point all along! The wire matters, the connectors matter, how you make the connections matters. Look, the only point we are trying to make is we can measure these things now, which people haven’t been able to do, and we can now prove it.

 

[YashN]

And a 6th video of Shunyata (max is 5 per post):

 

[YashN]

There are a lot of great reviews for duplex units from Furutech and Oyaide, but they are quite expensive.

 

A more affordable outlet could be the Maestro ones, but they still cost around $85, so three of these for 6 outputs still round up to $250+...

 

Forgot to mention that Miguel of Tripoint uses the Maestro outlets in his Tripoint Troy devices. The Maestros are said to be among the most neutral (lack of coloration).

 

A step-up from the very basic duplex outlets/receptacles I bought could be the Hubbel hospital grade units, some even have isolated grounds, although I am not too sure yet what advantage this has.

 

After researching, I have decided to stick to the side wiring of the outlets (and not the 'back-stabbing' method which is less mechanically sound over time - safety first, but also audio advantages).

 

The filter has been working solidly for many days in a row, so at least from a mechanical perspective, using the outlets is much better than the individual plugs I was using before.

 

Some thoughts come to mind (don't they all the time?):

 

1. I am going to get myself a spare duplex to investigate mechanical and EMI/RFI isolation.

 

2. The points of junction between AC male connectors and the outlet receptacles do not seem to be properly isolated from EMI/RFI in the default cases with usual, affordable outlets. Here, I would like to design the junction in such a way as to cater for that, probably by making it a recessed duplex unit where that junction occurs, and perhaps treating the recess in such a way as to do some shielding.

 

Good ideas?

[YashN]

$16,000. Hope there's something cheaper that works reasonably well.

 

As mentioned, this is a cost-no-object design. Therefore, it's only for much, much bigger budgets.

 

However, knowing what the engineering decisions were in that design can be helpful for DIY, with a few compromises sometimes, but at least to get a good idea of the attention to detail to optimise a design or build, and also to research to understand the phenomena involved and their various solutions.

 

I've come across a few much more affordable solutions during research last night, which ended up being early morning. I do get passionate sometimes, but after a while I told myself: 'hey, isn't it time for you to go to bed?'.

 

Turns out that while we were watching the beginning of Season 3 of Game of Thrones yesterday (well, I was only watching with one eye, being mostly interested in reading the Philip Giddings text 'Intro to EMI and EMC' - excellent read), I had turned off F.Lux until sunrise and forgot to turn it back on.

 

Will check my notes and post about them soon, but in the meantime, you can check out Blue Circle Audio for very affordable solutions (don't expect a beauty here, but the reviews are good).

[YashN]

One point that interested me in the early part of the 6 Moons interview is that Mr. Gabriel says it's not the power company but sources of powerline noise inside the home we've got to worry about. This lines up with references I've read in my research about whether it's possible to have home solar and/or battery power that is audiophile-grade.

 

Yes, it's very paradigm-shifting when it dawns that not only other appliances in the house are putting out a lot of noise in your audio system, but indeed, the very same audio components also do that too, and in the case of computer-based playback, the computer itself and other digital components are quite guilty. Based on this, I will add two filters, one for the cable modem, and one for the Wi-Fi/LAN router in the near future.

 

Home solar / battery can be a really good solution. Tesla's product is very interesting in this respect.

[YashN]

It's pretty difficult for the inverters used with solar and battery power to come within the standards required of electrical utilities for specs like harmonic distortion. Few do. Nevertheless, I remain quite interested, since I like both the idea of being "green" and, of course, saving money on utility bills.

 

I am not too cognizant of those 'specs like harmonic distortion', but sometimes following the electrical specs, we do the opposite of what is required for audio.

 

The renewable and clean aspects are very interesting to me. Renewability and sustainability is also why I like bamboo as a material in addition to its natural tones in audio.

[YashN]

Here's the Blue Circle Audio Thingee:

 

 

his customer asked if we could build him a line conditioner similar to the BC6000, but at a more affordable price. That

same day Gilbert Yeung, the Blue Circle designer, had a prototype built; and it was... well let’s just say that it wasn’t the most elegant

piece of audio gear in the world. Instead of using a nice metal case, Gilbert housed the unit in a section of four inch ABS pipe. Rather

than a flashy faceplate, he sealed both ends of the pipe with silicone. His reasoning was simple. If the customer was primarily

interested in high performance, but at a low cost, and was not too concerned about cosmetics, this

was a way to meet his needs. After all, line conditioners can sit behind the audio rack anyway.

 

I think it might retail for $400 or so, but better check with them. The method is affordable and cheap, so could be used for DIY as well if building a new device, but then I wonder about how easy it is to look inside it again should an issue arise or if you need to change the design and implementation internally. It's probably interesting from a mechanical damping aspect too.

[YashN]

Inspired by this thread, I just floated the ground on my Tripplite IS1000HG, WOW! I should have done this a year ago.

 

Hey lmitche, it's good you're inspired and you're having results, and sincerely, I don't want to discourage you in any experimentation, but in this case, try to find out if you have the possibility of having a system-wide implementation without any floating ground (but still getting great improvements).

 

There are safety implications when using cheater plugs and floating grounds (safety for both components and people).

 

This said, kudos for experimenting, you may find a lot more improvements the more equipment you plug into it (but steer away from floating grounds).

 

I read some good things from Tripplite users around the web.

[YashN]

FYI, I also stuck a Shunyata Venon Defender in one of the empty outlets on the transformer. Just terrific!

 

Cool man, you'll find that proper power is fundamental and often overlooked. I think with room response it's probably one of the first things that should be taken care of.

 

Interesting device (anything by Shunyata is interesting to me these days), hadn't come across it during my readings and research but did come across other manufacturers' devices, like one from Isotek.

 

[YashN]

For the time being, I removed both the tentative chassis grounding as well as the tentative signal connection. I found that somehow there was too large a current draw at the DAC USB, in which case the iMac shuts down the device. Sometimes, Mac OS X will notify you about it. During the other times it doesn't notify you or instead the notification is missed, be prepared for a little scare, like your DAC not working at all.

 

A complete shutdown and reboot should restore things to normal.

 

Currently listening to 'Masters of Acoustic Guitar'. I highly recommend it, it sounds to me as if it is very well recorded, some varied styles in there.

 

Playlist:

 

 

 

First track that I use the beginning of to listen for fast attack transients (among other tracks on other albums):

 

 

 

It is currently sounding quite full and satisfying, with the sole 3 filter lines, even on tracks with a single guitar (some tracks also have percussion instruments).

[YashN]

In this case audio and power company specs are congruent. Other items in the home that use electric power besides audio systems don't function correctly if the utility's power doesn't meet these specs (and continue to meet them even with the various home electrical items feeding junk into the line).

 

I had set aside some reading on Power Factor Correction to add to my AC filter box among other features (more on that later), and what do I come across? This:

 

The ac-dc off-line application is one of the most important markets in the switching power conversion arena. Electronic devices and equipment operate off ac sources in one way or another, and in most instances require some type of ac-to-dc power conversion. The simplest and most popular method for converting ac power to dc is via diode rectification circuitry. This is the least expensive ac-dc conversion scheme, but it also causes the highest “pollution” to the ac power network[1]. Used in large numbers, these “low”-power devices can significantly affect the quality of the ac line. This is where government regulations kick in to protect power quality.

 

There are currently two basic regulations for the ac-dc market. EN-61000-3-2 sets the harmonic regulation standard on any off-line application with power consumption over 75 W. This essentially demands power-factor correction (PFC)

[YashN]

I looked at various duplex outlets and and tried some at home (Shunyata SR-Z1 and PSAudio). Shunyata made no improvements but the PSaudio is Ni plated and sounded very harsh (a lot of hospital grade ones are also Ni plated to prevent corrosion and likely will have similar sound).

 

Did you allow for the long 'break-in' periods? Some of these require time like 200 hours/weeks.

 

Most audiophile outlets have a T shaped neutral (which allows for 15A and 20A plugs) but all audiophile AC plugs have the 15A configuration i.e. the blades for neutral and hot are parallel. The T shaped neutral has 2 parallel blade for the 20A configuration but only one full one for 15A. A genuine 15A outlet has 2 parallel neutral blades and thus provides much better contact. But be aware that not all 15A outlets have these 2 parallel blades as often a company makes only one metal part with different plastic covers.

 

One of the advantages of the hospital grade ones is that the grip is a three-point contact. Caelin Gabriel explains this well in his little video on outlets. That's why the Hubbell H Grade is interesting to me.

 

Found out last night after reading about an AC distributor product for PA/music that the isolated ground has implications for RFI, so that's an interesting feature. The Hubbell I found yesterday was H grade and isolated-ground, and was about $13 on Amazon (no cryo), but last night it had already gone.

 

The best real 15A outlet I found is Hubbell HBL5262 (many other Hubbells are disguised 20A ones) and I recently discover the on can get them even cryoed and burned in Take Five Audio - Canada's Online Source For DIY Audio, Parts and Accessories - Hubbell 5362I Heavy Duty Grade Outlet Ivory Cryo Treated.

 

Take Five look cool, have you used their service already?

[YashN]

For the time being, I removed both the tentative chassis grounding as well as the tentative signal connection.

 

Both of us found the sound is less large and holographic as it was when I had installed the initial chassis grounding cable and the additional signal connection implement.

 

It's less apparent on well-recorded albums, so probably some micro-details are hidden again.

 

I will test additional filtering lines (cable modem + WiFi LAN/Router) as well as putting the amp on a separate outlet + trying out a parallel (out-of-signal filtering line for the amp.

[YashN]

One point that interested me in the early part of the 6 Moons interview is that Mr. Gabriel says it's not the power company but sources of powerline noise inside the home we've got to worry about. This lines up with references I've read in my research about whether it's possible to have home solar and/or battery power that is audiophile-grade.

 

Read the whole article in the garden yesterday afternoon. Solid article, great to get the culture of the company and the mindset of its founder and CEO. Great info on his perspective on speaker cables and their own Lyra: 'the geometry will trump metal purity every time'. This reminded me of the time I spent braiding my own speaker cables out of Cat5 cables...

 

There's a short section on one of the materials they use to induce lossy dissipation of high-frequency energy in some of their products.

 

They use a lot of cryo and mechanical + EMI/RFI isolation tech.

[YashN]

Yep, exactly - when I researched inverters for solar and battery applications and started reading all about this stuff it reminded me very much of the literature for the MIT "Z" series power distribution and noise filtering components when they first came out.

 

Now, to come back to my previous comment on regulations and all: they might be congruent as you said in the sense that both domain, gov and audio, want the reduction in AC back-injected noise. However, with regulations and standards, it is often the case that the regulation thresholds aren't good enough for audiophile uses.

 

I haven't read the actual regulations yet, but the existence of a lot of products to deal with AC filtering and power conditioning for audio purposes does hint at the evidence.

[YashN]

You found a lot of the Core Audio nonsense!

 

Hoping you can write more about your thoughts when you get some time rather than making one-liner criticism which doesn't help anyone.

 

Cheers.

[YashN]

Inspired by this thread, I just floated the ground on my Tripplite IS1000HG, WOW! I should have done this a year ago.

 

Was it the ground float of the secondary neutral as mentioned on avsforum?

 

Just saw that from the Regen thread.

 

Interesting, it would be cool to know why the original poster says that for audio and video this must be done. Hopefully, there is no safety implications (as you would get with ground floats and cheater plugs).

[YashN]

Did you allow for the long 'break-in' periods? Some of these require time like 200 hours/weeks.

 

This reminds me that I need to do that with my own filter lines even though they're the totally normal, cheap outlets you can get at the hardware store. Mechanical/Heat break-in can last rather long and probably explains why the sound was changing daily (improving i would say). I'm only using 3 of the outlets for now, so I will need to mark them later so that I know the others need some break-in as well.

 

All right, I fairly went all-in this afternoon: removed the amp and connected the external DVD drive to that filter line, and ripped a few CDs I got today (including Hans Zimmer's 'The Last Samurai' - this sounds huge!).

 

Since Lionel was still taunting me from his CD cover, I had to do it...

 

It sounds like the up-conversion to DSD128 of the XLD Secure (slower than Burst) rip made with the filter sounds the best... Going to wait for my gf to come back tomorrow night and get her feedback.

 

Haven't checked the actual rips, but I could do that too.

 

Went so far as to disconnect the modem and router as soon as Audiogate had Tweeted, all that in the dark (no lights on).

[YashN]

I suspect that there may be. Where would you be for example, if the secondary of the transformer broke down to it's core ?

 

Me? Nowhere: not only would I not be there, but I wouldn't ever think of removing grounds on equipment, and even more so if there's not a complete explanation of the reasons why it 'should be done' and a complete description of the risks!

 

I would rather fix the overall system power, grounding, isolation than remove a ground.