Mains conditioner for SMPSs?

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Cheap wall warts can have a negative effect on SQ, and so can many of the components that is used in a computer, NAS and routers IMO. I think it’s good that you have separated the laptop, router and NAS from your NAA, DAC and integrated amplifier.

 

A power conditioner or power regenerator can be used as you describe it, but I would rather use a power conditioner on the audio gear instead. By doing that you will reduce both the mains noise made by your computer, NAS and routers + their SMPS and on top of that external mains noise.

 

A good quality power conditioner can be expansive thou and if the purpose is to separate one noisy part of the system from the other an isolation transformer can be a good cheap alternative.

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The negative effect of noise is well known and is not made up by subjective audiophiles. Intel for example have measured the interference of wireless devices operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM band and its effect on hard drives, USB muse and cables. Intel have tested and measured with and without shielding different devices in this easy to comprehended white paper.

 

Conclusion to be “made” is that the effect of a power conditioner or the shielding of various devises may be hard to understand the importance of, if the measure is solely conducted in a lab without the normal interference they are made to reduce the effect from, but with them it’s much easier to see their effect.  

 

https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/327216.pdf

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13 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

What isn't measured is how components interact with each other - one obvious example is when all the boxes are plugged into the same effective socket, and the varying current draws by the individual power supplies add constantly changing noise to the mains voltage - power amplifiers are a major contributor here ... no-one is telling you anything about the robustness of the designs here.

 

 

It's not that the hi-fi is sensitive - rather, that it reaches a standard where it becomes easy for the listening brain to unravel what the low level information means - a frequent term for this is that one can "hear deeper into the recording".

 

This is a two-edged sword - the plus is that one appreciates far more what is going on; the minus is that this 'finer' information is far more delicate, far more easily disrupted by system replay misbehaviour - and the better the 'transparency' is, the easier it is to hear variations in the tonality and degree of detail of this low level information - one can point to a highly tweaked performance road vehicle which when used as intended is delicately balanced between performing excellently, and crashing catastrophically. ... If one wants a boring shopping basket to trundle around in, never coming close to exploring what's possible, then you reap the "benefits" of that sort of transportation, 😜.

 

Yes exactly, it's not that the high end audio gear is more sensitive than other gear per se - rather that they are much more revealing of even small amount of noise than budget gear that that is not made to ravel everything that is recorded in the recordings.  

 

I got my first isolation transformer 1992 or if was 1993. It was the EE at me old work that gave me the isolation transformer for free and told me to try it at home. At work they used it between the data servers and the mains power to prevent noise to affect the servers and he thought it may be beneficial in my high end system. Back at this time I played only vinyl and already had a Jean Hiraga designed MC step up amplifier, which had 2 motorcycle batteries as PSU. The isolation transformer resulted in clearly better SQ and we even did some blind test to conform it.

 

Now I have two power conditioners, two LAN filters, some ferrite clamps, balanced gear and cables as well as some good LPS. All those devices used for one goal - to separate the audio and data signal from the noise pollution that we have around us in our home.

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14 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 Even less well known is that RF/EMI from internal SSDs can  affect WiFi in close proximity, which has implications for Computer audio, and is why some may prefer HDD over SSD .Use of a PCI-e SSD could be even more degrading for Audio.

 I saw a link to a pdf about this, but unfortunately the link no longer works. IIRC, I passed the link on to Speedskater at the time

 Although the link no longer works it may assist in locating the information.

https://www.ieice.org/proceedings/EMC14/contents/pdf/14A2-B4.pdf

 

It is correct that the switching noise generated by SSD can degrade SQ. There are special SSD filter and ferrites you can get to diminution their effect. SSD noise can also affect many other components besides Wi-Fi, which I don’t use more than to remotely control ROON.  

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13 hours ago, sandyk said:

That does not mean that they are unable to outperform HDD with Audio.

In my case, I also have 2 SSDs mounted in the metal drive bays of my PC in aluminium carriers , and they use 2 separate  low noise regulated +5V supplies derived from the internal +12V rail, and are connected from the regulators which are mounted on the bottom metalwork of the PC via short screened PSU leads.

They are connected to the Motherboard using no longer than necessary screened SATA 6.0Gps A leads, not the generic 7 wires side by side type.

 

I guess from your post that you think that one type of data storage is clearly better than the other, SQ vice. I must admit that it’s hard to know exactly with the double negative 😉. No matter what you meant to say no type of digital storage is by design so much better that it outperform all the other ones in all kind of use.

 

As with everything else one design may be better in one way and another in a different way. Without going in to details many SSD and M2 with big catch buffer can be quite fast, but also generate HF noise. HDD is much slower, needs more power and create a lot of vibration. Vibrations can have a negative effect on clocks and other components normally used together with HDD.  

 

The best storage solution is not always the same and depends on what is going to be stored on the disc, how fast does it have to operate, will the vibrations have a greater negative impact than the HF noise and can the HF noise be reduced by ferrites or SDD filters?

 

I did “test” some different disc solution a few years ago and thought that the slower green HDD worked best for storage music and a small separate SSD for OS was best.

                                                           

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The chance that more than a few bits actually would flip without also causing dropouts is next to impossible.

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17 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

Innuos use a combination of SSD and RAM Cache. The chosen track is transferred from SSD to RAM, then the SSD is shut down and the music streamed from the RAM cache.   

 

Jriver and many other music players are transferring music data from SSD to RAM and have done it long before Innuos, so what’s you point?

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20 minutes ago, sandyk said:

I can get higher quality SQ from SSD than HDD due to the precautions I take. In this case the SSDs are also powered via very low noise +5V supplies which are not only also isolated from each other , but have far less interaction with the main +12V rail due to the voltage regulators. It's much harder to provide low noise power for an HDD due to the need to provide both +12V and +5V low noise PSUs for it.

 In my PC  one half of the PCB powers my OS SSD, and the other half powers an internal Music SSD with both powered from the +12V rail.

In addition, JRiver25  is set up to play from System Memory, which can easily be seen when playing from a USB memory stick where you can unplug it and the music continues.

 

Good for you Alex that you have it all figured out. 

 

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10 minutes ago, mansr said:

The way computer systems are designed, it is impossible to access a single bit of data from a storage device without placing it in RAM first. When an application requests data from a file, the OS works out where on the storage device this file resides. Then it sends a request to the storage controller with an instruction to read the relevant block and place it at a specified location in RAM. When the transfer is complete, the controller raises an interrupt, and the OS lets the application continue.

 

Jriver and many other music players can transfer complete tracks of music data from SSD to RAM and some think its sounds better that way, other that it doesn’t matter. Did you not understand what was meant by the context and the post I reply to?

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30 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

My point is that Innuos transfer the music data from SSD to RAM, so your music quality isn’t impacted by SSD noise if the SSD is switched off while the music file is streaming

 

Maybe but is not the same true if the music is stored on a HDD and how about the OS on the SSD isn’t it on all the time?

 

My HDD turns off when not in use.