Cleaning up dirty power...What's your flavor?

Over the weekend I checked grounding on my amps, moved cables and wires around behind my rack. I got rid of some noise, not all. This week I am going to try and land a new ground rod and maybe a subpanel. Pulled a little 100 amp off a job. I would rather not use anything and clean up what I have with good practices.
 
Kingrex said:
Over the weekend I checked grounding on my amps, moved cables and wires around behind my rack. I got rid of some noise, not all. This week I am going to try and land a new ground rod and maybe a subpanel. Pulled a little 100 amp off a job. I would rather not use anything and clean up what I have with good practices.
Click to expand...

I would rather not use anything and clean up what I have with good practices
Click to expand...
Yep
 
CPP said:
What works for me is fixing the nasty power before it gets into your home. Once you and your power company and electrician are satisfied that your ground is proper and the power into your home is clean, then you can start working on wiring , and fancy power conditioners and regenerators. . In my case FPL found a bad transformer feeding my block, my home is the first house on that leg and my ground was not sufficient enough for the sandy soil. Cost FREEBIE
Click to expand...

How did you know that your power had problems at the source To the point where you called in your power company? Did you measure it somehow?
 
Willco said:
How did you know that your power had problems at the source To the point where you called in your power company? Did you measure it somehow?
Click to expand...

When we bought our home ( ps I live at the beach) we installed a whole house generator,, the electrician and the generator company noticed some odd readings with the ground also found noise on the main line. We have always had some odd static pictures on the TV and hums on our phone line with is provided by the cable company since we moved in it was never right. The cable company said it was a power company problem. So we called our power company, who came out and installed a recording device to monitor the power feed . The next day the started working on a few poles up the road. The power company said it was a faulty transformer ( old age) . They also added another section of ground rod after they megged my ground. Thats it. Nothing magical
 
CPP said:
When we bought our home ( ps I live at the beach) we installed a whole house generator,, the electrician and the generator company noticed some odd readings with the ground also found noise on the main line. We have always had some odd static pictures on the TV and hums on our phone line with is provided by the cable company since we moved in it was never right. The cable company said it was a power company problem. So we called our power company, who came out and installed a recording device to monitor the power feed . The next day the started working on a few poles up the road. The power company said it was a faulty transformer ( old age) . They also added another section of ground rod after they megged my ground. Thats it. Nothing magical
Click to expand...

So maybe you were fortunate with your hums and static as a legitimate way to get your power company to come optimize your power. Without serious problems like that, the local power company's not going to come out to help us get out power source to audiophile standards.
 
Willco said:
So maybe you were fortunate with your hums and static as a legitimate way to get your power company to come optimize your power. Without serious problems like that, the local power company's not going to come out to help us get out power source to audiophile standards.
Click to expand...

All depends on where you live I would think unless one lives in some high raise or a condo community then all bets are off. .
 
I have 4 20A dedicated circuits. I use a pair of huge Toroidal transformers (Balanced Power Technologies) for my amps that can provide more instantaneous power than your 20amp wall socket. For my front end I use the Shunyata Research Hydra Triton.You can't get any blacker backgrounds then what I have! Ask Mike! :D
 
I seem to have a fair amount of noise coming in on my line as measured by my Entech meter. My topaz isolation transformer takes care of 95% of it for my sources. But it can’t handle my amps: 2 mono Sets and the sub amps from my Avantgarde duo mezzos.

I have a 20 amp dedicated line for each pair of amps.

Any suggestions for maybe a small,quiet isolation transformer for each of these dedicated lines?

I wonder if I should recheck my grounding as well, as noise levels didn’t measure this high a couple of months ago.
 
I don't know what topaz you have, but I have a 2.4 KVA unit I was looking to sell. Ir's a pretty robust Transformer for only a few hundred dollars.
 
Kingrex said:
I don't know what topaz you have, but I have a 2.4 KVA unit I was looking to sell. Ir's a pretty robust Transformer for only a few hundred dollars.
Click to expand...

By the way, I would sit this Transformer in the basement next to the panel. I would find that line going to my audio source and put it on the load side of the Transformer down there.
 
Kingrex said:
By the way, I would sit this Transformer in the basement next to the panel. I would find that line going to my audio source and put it on the load side of the Transformer down there.
Click to expand...
I have the same size Topaz and I think it does a good job. However it hums too loudly when the amps are plugged into it. No basement to my space so would have to be run outside which is not really practical.
 
I started with an Audioquest Niagara 5000, but it always had a hum that was clearly audible from 7 ft away. I recently switched to a Torus RM20 / Bryston BIT20 and it is dead silent. Wished I would have gone with the RM20 / BIT20 originally, but I was paranoid about the 95 lb mass. Live and learn. Overall, an increase in clarity and bit better micro dynamics in upper mid-range to treble.
 
Short of buying and learning to use an oscilloscope, is there a simple plug-in device that can measure THD in my power line? Seems to me from this thread that knowing my incoming power quality is helpful when deciding which power conditioning technology would work best in my home.
 
It took years to get here and a lot of great, good and not so good trials along the way but for me, cleaning up inbound power and grounding is a main foundation of the system;

- Dual 10’ Ground Rods, CADWELD bonding of large-gauge solid copper ground leads, no clamps that come loose, corrode, etc....
- Cutler-Hammer/EATON Copper Busbar Main panel & GE Sub-panel (model with copper busbar), 20-amp dedicated circuits, house panel re-organized / rebalanced
- Environmental Potentials EP-2050 Wave-Form Regenerator & Surge Suppression on main house panel direct off the main & EP2750 Ground Filters on sub-panel and main panel feed
- 5 Avatar Acoustics AfterBurner8 duplex outlets (no exotic metals, will go to Shunyata CopperCONNs when Caelin product-izes them); have tried 'fancy' exotic metal outlets from Furutech & others; don't like them
- SHUNYATA TYPHON QR (the impact of this device is staggering)
- SHUNYATA TRITON v3 (the impact of this is also staggering)
- star-grounding all components to the ground-plane on the TRITON v3; Thank you (!) Shunyata for figuring this out and eliminating the flawed approach of star grounds not united with central power distribution!!!

A solid power and ground-plane is essential and will be my first focus, always.

 
Kingrex said:
Good job on the panels and grounding SC.
Click to expand...

Thanks....I did it in stages starting 4 years ago from the panels and ground rods + CADWELD on up and I could actually hear each incremental improvement.
The EP2050 and EP2750 plus ground rounds actually brought a power improvement I could see as well on my Oppo 105D and Samsung UHD4K LED in the living room,....
 
I don't so much like filters on my gear. What I have been considering is a filter on the line that feeds my refrigerator. When that is running I can hear it through my amps and speakers. I could possibly look at replacing the run cap in the reefer, but I've wondered why audio companies don't design devices to clean up pollutants in your house.
 
SCAudiophile said:
Thanks....I did it in stages starting 4 years ago from the panels and ground rods + CADWELD on up and I could actually hear each incremental improvement.
The EP2050 and EP2750 plus ground rounds actually brought a power improvement I could see as well on my Oppo 105D and Samsung UHD4K LED in the living room,....
Click to expand...

Wow Mark, I’m impressed that addresses everything in a serious way. Kingrex, Rex is going to begin with sinking new grounding rods in my place.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
 
UltraFast69 said:
Wow Mark, I’m impressed that addresses everything in a serious way. Kingrex, Rex is going to begin with sinking new grounding rods in my place.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro
Click to expand...

"Wow Mark, I’m impressed that addresses everything in a serious way."

I assure you the way this has been progressed and all things I have tried along the way with input from some audiophiles who are master electricians and experts in power devices has been to tackle nthis in a serious way from the ground up (pun intended).

In short, it all did and the most noticeable "in your face" or "in your ears" as it were, improvements were with the Shunyata TRITON v3 and TYPHON QR combination also moving my star-grounding connections from a separate device to the ground plane connects on the TRITON v3. Outstanding improvements, now the system just sounds like live music all the time.

A word on Environmental Potentials EP2050 & E-2000 regen devices and 2750s (end-point) and 2775 (main-gate) ground filters ,....EP specializes in pro, medical, commercial and industrial power conditioning, wafe-form regeneration, surge suppression, etc...right off the power line in; they are experts in their field and have solutions from residential to full-on industrial, datacenter and medical facility applications. At the main-panel and sub-panel they have been (in my installs) superior to anything They are as specialized and knowledgeable in their focus areas as Caelin and Shunyata are in theirs upstream at the outlet and all after that. EP and Shunyata are a combination I've not found the equal of for the 'whole house' problem.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top