Mains conditioner for SMPSs?

[semente]

I've got two extension leads/strip coming out of the wall socket, one for 3 SMPSs (laptop + router + NAS), the other for LSPU (Network Audio Adapter) + DAC + integrated amplifier.

Would it be worth spending on a mains conditioner lead/strip for the SMPSs?

Thanks.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

But hi-fi ...used in a domestic environment to connect all kinds of solid state and tube equipment; some hot, some cold; some balanced, some single ended; some close together, some far apart, some with low output impedances, some high; some requiring cable with low inductance, some perform better with high; some extremely expensive, high resolution components some cheaper less revealing units.

And still it all just works. What does that say about hi-fi?

[marce]

2 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Could that be because we have no standardising specifications for the equipment they’re interconnecting?

 

Look at every specified cable.  Networking, telecoms, etc. Its all based on standards and the items to be connected are all standardised items. 

 

Boeing for example use hundreds, probably thousands of cables on their aircraft....you can bet they all have specifications. Why? Life and death. You can’t afford the wrong cable in the wrong place...everything has to be HIGHLY controlled in that environment

 

But hi-fi ...used in a domestic environment to connect all kinds of solid state and tube equipment; some hot, some cold; some balanced, some single ended; some close together, some far apart, some with low output impedances, some high; some requiring cable with low inductance, some perform better with high; some extremely expensive, high resolution components some cheaper less revealing units.  So, what would you particularly like to mandate in terms of cables, because while you’re at it you better start introducing standards for the rest of kit that’s going to be connected by your standardised cable, otherwise the end product...Sound Quality (remember that?) is going to go to hell for all but a few systems that happen to ideally match your chosen standard values. And when you’ve done this and introduced standards for interconnects, where do you think the market is going to go?. Are they going to wipe their brow, sigh and lament that its about time someone did this. Or are they going to look at the standardised cable, try it, then go elsewhere for something better? 

Of course if one believes that cables make no difference then all I can say is, heaven preserve us from zip-cord man. 

But here’s an alternative scenario

 

Start an R&D project to find out why cables affect sound quality, because they do, Fact.  Use all kinds of measurements and statistical analysis until your have down all the elements that affect the final sound. Then design and build the ideal cable from an engineers standpoint. What will happen?  It will sound great with some systems, not so good with others, so audiophiles will still compare and some, probably many well chose alternatives. And where does that leave you with your standardised cable? Welcome to the cable industry 😁

The question was rather rhetorical,, I would suggest looking for some of the specs out there.....

[marce]

2 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 

Of course if one believes that cables make no difference then all I can say is, heaven preserve us from zip-cord man. 

But here’s an alternative scenario

 

 

Do you think Boeing believe in cable magic?

[marce]

2 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 

 

Start an R&D project to find out why cables affect sound quality, because they do, Fact.  Use all kinds of measurements and statistical analysis until your have down all the elements that affect the final sound. Then design and build the ideal cable from an engineers standpoint. What will happen?  It will sound great with some systems, not so good with others, so audiophiles will still compare and some, probably many well chose alternatives. And where does that leave you with your standardised cable? Welcome to the cable industry 😁

Provide us with some facts then, instead of hearsay....

The cable industry... the magic audiophile cable industry or the rest of the electronics world cable industry....

[marce]

15 minutes ago, mansr said:

And still it all just works. What does that say about hi-fi?

It is a magical world, where Maxwell and Tesla are great fiction writers...

Of course it worry's me after all these years that plugging a cable into any audio interface is a gamble, not knowing what is in there lurking... Why the other day I plugged in an RCA cable and got a analogue signal out or my pre-amp left channel output... I was happily surprised and suspect that if I plug in the RH channel I may be rewarded with yet another analogue signal. Then there is the motor interface at the arse end of my power amp, being a voltage amp, I think there may be a low impedance output, for supplying the time varying voltage to drive some linear electric motors I have in these fancy cabinets.

Time for bed said Zebaedee....

 

[semente]

@The Computer Audiophile could you please move this question to the General Forum?

 

It's scope of te discussion has widened immensely and I think that the answer is no longer a simple matter of Yes or No...

[semente]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

And still it all just works. What does that say about hi-fi?

 

This works too:

 

 

[marce]

Another interesting paper from Bill Whitlock, covering ground loops, noise and some info on audio interfaces...

http://web.mit.edu/jhawk/tmp/p/EST016_Ground_Loops_handout.pdf

[semente]

2 hours ago, marce said:

Do you think Boeing believe in cable magic?

 

Obviously not or their planes wouldn't have fallen from the sky...

[Blackmorec]

3 hours ago, marce said:

Do you think Boeing believe in cable magic?

No, I think Boeing recognise the differences between cables and employ engineers to sort out exactly what they need in the terms they need it...things like temperature range, armouring, screening , robustness, fuel proof, ability to flex, electrical impedance, capacitance,  inductance etc,  susceptibility to EMI and RFI, RFI radiation characteristics etc.  Essentially audiophiles have a couple of needs....match the equipment they’re using both electrically and physically and sound good when passing a music signal between components.  Of course an engineer would spec that differently, in terms of avoiding ground loops, avoiding radiating RFI, avoiding picking up RFI and EMI, matching the amplifiers’ and components’ electrical requirements, not  creating any distortions, preventing reflections,  providing sufficient flexibility, providing good socket and plug alignment and contact, avoiding corrosion etc etc 

But if you can’t hear the differences between cables, you’re never, ever going to get any of this. Your loss I’m afraid.     

 

[marce]

40 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

No, I think Boeing recognise the differences between cables and employ engineers to sort out exactly what they need in the terms they need it...things like temperature range, armouring, screening , robustness, fuel proof, ability to flex, electrical impedance, capacitance,  inductance etc,  susceptibility to EMI and RFI, RFI radiation characteristics etc.  Essentially audiophiles have a couple of needs....match the equipment they’re using both electrically and physically and sound good when passing a music signal between components.  Of course an engineer would spec that differently, in terms of avoiding ground loops, avoiding radiating RFI, avoiding picking up RFI and EMI, matching the amplifiers’ and components’ electrical requirements, not  creating any distortions, preventing reflections,  providing sufficient flexibility, providing good socket and plug alignment and contact, avoiding corrosion etc etc 

But if you can’t hear the differences between cables, you’re never, ever going to get any of this. Your loss I’m afraid.     

 

Stop being so arrogant mate... and so convinced of your super human hearing...I probably get a lot more than you regarding cables...

what differences do Boeing recognise between cables, because when I've done stuff with them, there was never any mention of cable magic....

As to the rest I would suggest at least learning some basics of electronics, you may be surprised...

[Blackmorec]

6 minutes ago, marce said:

Stop being so arrogant mate... and so convinced of your super human hearing...I probably get a lot more than you regarding cables...

what differences do Boeing recognise between cables, because when I've done stuff with them, there was never any mention of cable magic....

As to the rest I would suggest at least learning some basics of electronics, you may be surprised...

I don’t want to study electronics. Not remotely interested. For me there’s FAR more compelling stuff to study. I have a lay understanding which keeps me from electrocuting myself but that’s about it. For electronics I’m just a customer....I want to buy gear that sounds great, engineered by people who know what great actually sounds like.  I don’t know the best combination of electrical characteristics for a cable. That’s an engineers job. What I DO expect is for the engineer to be able to differentiate a poor sounding cable from a good one, otherwise how in the hell is he going to engineer a great cable and all we’ll get is a cable that doesn’t sound any better. Hmmmmm 😁

Also go back and read my post.... (joking!).  Cable magic is your term, not mine.... you do tend to invent a lot of the stuff you credit me with saying. To paraphrase what I said was that of course Boeing recognize differences between cables and they employ engineers to control those differences, matching what they need with the exact right cable for the job.  Audiophiles also have needs from cables but you would deny them that option as your opinion is that cables make no difference, even though probably hundreds of thousands around the world hear clear differences. The sad thing about all this is that you’re wrong so all you’d achieve at least symbolically, is to deny audiophiles the ability to buy properly engineered cables. Plain and simple. 

 As for my hearing, its not super-human, its just educated. So no magic, just LOTS of experience

 

Let me give you an example of how things could be:. 

Let’s say you’re a very good and thoughtful engineer who’s open to new ideas.  You listen to some really top class hi-fi, far better than you’ve ever heard before and you realise in your engineering brain that something is afoot. Stuff doesn’t get THAT good by accident and given that its so rare it certainly can’t be the product of regular hi-fi plugged together by regular ‘just enough’ cables otherwise there’d be great systems everywhere, and there isn’t. 

So you get to exploring and you find that the biggest culprit as far as Audiophiles are concerned is EMI and RFI, which they claim has a major impact on sound quality.  Now at this stage, what’s the next step? Nothing, or maybe Investigate the phenomenon with all the instruments you need  or build a series of cables with absolutely wave tight protection. Nothing in, nothing out.  You control for a uniform screen and to ensure the system avoids causing ground loops. Just for kicks to appeal to the Audiophiles you use Neotech 7N UHPurity 16AWG cables for your DC power cords, triple screened and some other high purity wire in your interconnects and speaker cables.

You may provide some active HF drain for the shields, whatever. 

You take it to someone who is currently running a top of the line system and cabling loom and they run it in for you, then put it into their system. How do you think it would sound?  

 

If you say ‘the same’ then I would conclude that you are really not experienced in high-end hi-fi and we needn’t really bother taking this further. That cable may or may not sound better because that depends on what is already in the system. What you can say with some certainty is that high purity cable, really well screened and spec’d exactly for the job will sound great. Less grainy, less bleached or cloudy, purer in tone and with an extra layer of information that you haven’t heard before . With a lower noise floor you’ll hear a lot more detail and ambience and instruments will take on a more 3 dimensional aspect, thanks to the extra fine detail. hhhmmmm. Its hard to imagine more music....would my imagination be that skilled that it can add musical detail, greater venue ambience and yet smoother tone while perfectly preserving the musics’ verve and integrity and make it all sound substantially better and play that every night, the same, hmmmmmmm. That’s quite an imagination. 

Anyway what you would hear if you actually did this is that you have an exceptional cable and while complex and somewhat costly due to better materials, you’d find that your “designed to be a loom” cabling with tightly controlled earth and screening on all links really does kick ass and belongs in the market place where it would support a fair profit. It would also support an unfair profit, so your choice😉

Or you can take the dead boring, ‘makes no difference’ approach and pass up on all the exciting engineering opportunities. 

This stuff is real, it exists, and as an engineer it can be under your control, but first you’ll need to prove it to yourself. I suggest you organise a visit with someone having a top class installation. Not a dealer....their systems are always in a state of flux and can get quite unbalanced at times. Rather someone whose spent time and money to acquire some top performing electronics, refined Networking and a dedicated well treated room.  When you’ve heard that, I’m fairly sure you’ll realise how far this sound quality thing has to go. Its been progressing steadily and is showing no sign of slowing down.  Essentially the improvements come from further refinements in gear, cables, furniture (vibration control), mains power, network power supplies, cabling and topography. 

All those things ALL will have a substantial impact on how a really good and revealing system will sound. When all the above have been optimised I can promise you some real sonic fireworks from standard 16 bit recordings (some may be more, I don't actually check) 

Long message...I enjoy writing 🙂

[mansr]

8 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

I don’t want to study electronics. Not remotely interested.

Then perhaps you should stop making such grand pronouncements about it.

[sandyk]

7 hours ago, semente said:

@The Computer Audiophile could you please move this question to the General Forum?

 

It's scope of te discussion has widened immensely and I think that the answer is no longer a simple matter of Yes or No...

 Semente

 No matter where the thread is, you are still going to get the exact same entrenched views from both sides of the great forum divide.

 The obvious answer here is to try what you suggested in #76 and decide for yourself.

 

Regards

Alex

[fas42]

Don't need to know electronics to be able to hear what's going on with cables ... but having a keen interest in understanding things allows one to investigate why there may be issues with cables. Which has lead me to using extremely normal, cheap cabling - but to be very careful in how it is installed ... this provides me with perfectly acceptable results.

[Blackmorec]

2 hours ago, mansr said:

Then perhaps you should stop making such grand pronouncements about it.

Oh I don’t make grand pronouncements....i just sit and plonk away in idle moments.  Regarding your point, how can I make pronouncements about electronics when I actually know very little about it?  I know more about acoustics and a lot more about hi-fi.  45 years worth. And what I’ve found in that 45 years is that pretty much all this s11it matters. Interconnect and power cables, power, network power, DC cables, Vibration Control...assuming you care about and wish to achieve the very best quality sound.  If you think you get great sound by taking a few average components and plugging them together with some just enough cables, you’ve got a major surprise in store someday. 😉

And Just to point out, one of the main improvements I talked about was metallurgical, not electronic.   

[marce]

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

 Cable magic is your term, not mine

Ah but you believe cables can act as DSP's.

 

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

hundreds of thousands

It increases by a factor of 10 every post.

 

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Boeing recognize differences between cables and they employ engineers to control those differences, matching what they need with the exact right cable for the job.

Same with audio, only simpler....

 

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

The sad thing about all this is that you’re wrong so all you’d achieve at least symbolically, is to deny audiophiles the ability to buy properly engineered cables. Plain and simple

What a load of rubbish.

 

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

You may provide some active HF drain for the shields, whatever. 

A what.... A drain wire is to reduce the resistance for crappy foil shield cables, Drain wires actually increase some rf pick up.

 

12 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

I suggest you organise a visit with someone having a top class installation. Not a dealer

Been there done that, I was an audiophile when we had to meet up, pre internet days.....

[Blackmorec]

2 hours ago, marce said:

Ah but you believe cables can act as DSP's.

 

It increases by a factor of 10 every post.

 

Same with audio, only simpler....

 

What a load of rubbish.

 

A what.... A drain wire is to reduce the resistance for crappy foil shield cables, Drain wires actually increase some rf pick up.

 

Been there done that, I was an audiophile when we had to meet up, pre internet days.....

`No, I believe that cables can prevent noise entering a system and that the removal of noise, especially very damaging HF noise is what brings the improvements. That and high purity conductors. 

 

The numbers may increase, because they’re probably still understated....there are a lot of companies around the World making a very good living satisfying the needs of audiophiles, so they have plenty of customers. 

 

Re drain wires.....I’ll take your word for it. However some of the better sounding cables use drain wires so I assume they’re properly designed and tested and don’t increase rf. There are a lot of very successful techniques that require some skill to implement and don’t sound good if they’re not. Its why we need GOOD engineers who can hear the difference. 

 

Been there, done that, and remained in the same place ever since. If my hi-fi sounded like it did before Internet I would also not believe in all this mumbo jumbo. But it doesn’t. Its moved on by leaps and bounds and sounds orders of magnitude better, thanks to a lot of the ‘mumbo jumbo’ devices and strategies you’re in denial about. 

[semente]

 

[Blackmorec]

22 hours ago, marce said:

It is a magical world, where Maxwell and Tesla are great fiction writers...

Of course it worry's me after all these years that plugging a cable into any audio interface is a gamble, not knowing what is in there lurking... Why the other day I plugged in an RCA cable and got a analogue signal out or my pre-amp left channel output... I was happily surprised and suspect that if I plug in the RH channel I may be rewarded with yet another analogue signal. Then there is the motor interface at the arse end of my power amp, being a voltage amp, I think there may be a low impedance output, for supplying the time varying voltage to drive some linear electric motors I have in these fancy cabinets.

Time for bed said Zebaedee....

 

So you plug in the LH RCA and get signal, thus encouraged you plug in the right and hey presto sound from both speakers. Job done. Happy days!

 

You know how you wrote about how therapeutic playing music is? How on the bad days listening to music is not good, while playing music is? 

Well I can tell you that when your hi-if is really cookin’ it has the ability to grab your attention and lift you up, even on the bad days. When a system is vaguely irritating it will never sound good when you’re not feeling great. But when the music is pure and unadulterated, that’s different....the music can be magical. 

 

Have you ever been ‘not in the mood’ but gone to the concert anyway, only to find your mood improving dramatically with the music?  Hi-fi systems have exactly this ability, but not if they are in any way irritating....because that’s what you’ll Pick up and focus on.  

 

Are you the guy who wrote the piece about the bass guitar? If you are then you’re clearly a music lover like me. If so then the only thing we disagree about is that you can tune hi-fis to rid them of all a-musical characteristics and anomalies 

[marce]

2 hours ago, semente said:

 

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/116637511-the-importance-of-star-quad-microphone-cable

A bit more to it than

 just a video, you need to examine what is going on, signal levels etc. This is a low level analogue signal with a cable you must admit is a bit longer than your average household run... You might have seen some of the fancy stuff around like CERN, LIGO even Daresbury, all have the same issues with low level signals... You wouldn't run a cable near a phone charger (a bad one at that) the video is to show the effect the cable geometry has, so exaggerated noise is a good example of what can happen, in the real world you would not run a cable near to any such sources of interference.

 

Star quad microphone cable is designed for the very low levels of signals microphone produce, hence the signal has to have a lot of gain applied to get a usable signal... Its all about levels and effect...

[semente]

1 minute ago, marce said:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/116637511-the-importance-of-star-quad-microphone-cable

A bit more to it than

 just a video, you need to examine what is going on, signal levels etc. This is a low level analogue signal with a cable you must admit is a bit longer than your average household run... You might have seen some of the fancy stuff around like CERN, LIGO even Daresbury, all have the same issues with low level signals... You wouldn't run a cable near a phone charger (a bad one at that) the video is to show the effect the cable geometry has, so exaggerated noise is a good example of what can happen, in the real world you would not run a cable near to any such sources of interference.

 

Star quad microphone cable is designed for the very low levels of signals microphone produce, hence the signal has to have a lot of gain applied to get a usable signal... Its all about levels and effect...

 

I agree. Star quad mic cable is better fit for purpose (low-level signal transmission). One could argue that it work well with the signals coming from a low-gain MC cartridge if the phono preamp as not in the vicinity and the interference environment wasn't friendly.

 

So my questions are what mechanisms could be affecting data stream transmission and how can we deal with them?

[marce]

10 minutes ago, semente said:

 

I agree. Star quad mic cable is better fit for purpose (low-level signal transmission). One could argue that it work well with the signals coming from a low-gain MC cartridge if the phono preamp as not in the vicinity and the interference environment wasn't friendly.

 

So my questions are what mechanisms could be affecting data stream transmission and how can we deal with them?

Here is the longer answer I was composing earlier...

Digital data stream, all the usual suspects, covered many times as the data tends to get there bit perfect we have a bit of an issue as to what mechanism can cause the perceived change of sound...

Anyway the long reply that was being created...

Quote

For the record I have never said cables don’t have an effect on the signal they carry, what I have said is this effect is measurable. In the case of analogue interconnects the effects of the cable parasitic resistance, inductance and capacitance can be seen with measurement’s and unless the cable is badly engineered or designed to have a noticeable effect, the differences are far too low to be audible.  Of course using balanced is better than single ended.

Digital cables, all the digital interfaces used in audio are well specified, getting signals down a digital interface is a well-studied area… Again like any physical signal transport medium a cable will have some effect on the signal, again measurable and because we understand how signals travel quite well now, the cable/signal interaction can be simulated allowing the correct cable to be engineered. Same with the connectors… And the PCB, though all the interfaces have hard defined rules on how they should be laid out… For Ethernet and other LVDS lines the critical factor is skew between the +/- lines on a PCB or structure with a 0V reference plane, for cables it’s the skew and the twisting for CM noise rejection. Obviously controlled impedance from source to destination is desired and should be within the interface specification… And thus we get bit perfect transfer or as near as dammit these days. Archimago musings have some interesting information on the Ethernet interface worth a read… Of course this does not support the belief that a cable 2 or 3 buffers away from the DAC can change the sound, I am still waiting for some mechanism to be put forward for this… as well as mains and DC cables and how they can influence the sound… Never mind copper vs silver… Oh and cable directivity, that’s a proper hernia inducer.

Though I must admit the claims on some audio cable manufacturer’s sites do amuse one…

Same with any other cable whether its DC, mains, speaker cable… all well studies, including their effects on the signal or supply. We have been studying cables and their effects on signals for well over a hundred years, as well as noise, because that’s the usual suspect for why cables sound so different… If high end audio kit is prone to noise having such an effect or is so unstable that cables cause issues then I’m glad those concerned are designing something benign and not something critical.

There is of course a financial benefit for audio cable companies to promote cable myths, a big financial incentive… Not that that has any influence…

Just remember many millions don’t hear cable differences, if we are playing a numbers game.

 

And this thread is about possible SMPS noise, hence my original post showing how noise can get into systems, sorry the usual thread noise has distracted from the initial discussion.

OT Stuff!

I am a great believer in separation and filtering down the power delivery chain, from source to destination. Without becoming over obsessive regarding the end requirements (over engineering to a degree is good, but can become as problematic as under engineering if it goes too far… overly complex systems are more likely to break or induce their own problems so KISS).

 

[semente]

3 hours ago, marce said:

Here is the longer answer I was composing earlier...

Digital data stream, all the usual suspects, covered many times as the data tends to get there bit perfect we have a bit of an issue as to what mechanism can cause the perceived change of sound...

Anyway the long reply that was being created...

 

 

I have a few more questions if you don't mind which are related to the topic. I'm not obsessed about this, just curious.

 

You've mentioned that "digital cables, all the digital interfaces used in audio are well specified, getting signals down a digital interface is a well-studied area".

Is there a difference in the way a computer sends data to another computer by say Ethernet (could it be data verification?) and the way a computer sends a data stream to a DAC?

 

Is it correct to differentiate between the two data transmission and data streaming?

 

Is there a way to determine/measure if the data stream reaching the D/A chip is exactly the same which was transmited by the processing software?

 

Are there way to test the possible impact of noise/interference being sent along with the digital signal (voltages?) in D/A performace?

[semente]

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

Is the DAC also using Ethernet? Then the lower layers (Ethernet, IP, TCP/UDP) are exactly the same. Above this, protocols may vary. UPnP streaming usually uses HTTP requests to fetch the audio files just like a regular web browser would. There are also audio specific protocols such as RTP and Dante.

 

I was thinking about USB.

 

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

No. The network doesn't know or care about the purpose of data packets.

 

Again, I was thinking about a computer feeding a DAC using USB.

 

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

Yes, monitor the I2S pins going into the DAC chip and compare the data with what was sent.

 

Can you somehow determine how clean and crisp the analogue DC voltage levels are and if they are affected by noise?

 

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

Sure, inject known noise into the interface and measure the output of the DAC.

 

What would you measure and what would you expect to find if noise were to affect the D/A conversion?

I don't think that it would be possible to compare the input with the output, would it? Could you meaningfully compare conversion (analogue output) of a clean vs a dirty signal, not static test tones but live streaming music or at least something more complex and varied?