Well, nobody’s buying any fission plants in Japan these days...
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| Do folks here use power line conditioners? https://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=8074 |
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| Author: | signofzeta [ 13 Oct 2020, 19:19 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
Well, nobody’s buying any fission plants in Japan these days...
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| Author: | substance [ 14 Oct 2020, 05:58 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
signofzeta wrote: When it comes to surge suppression and protecting gear I think obviously that’s helpful. Everyone has lost something at some point, probably an early 80s TV. But when I hear about this “conditioning” I sorta laugh. I mean, is there anyone who is BOTH a) able to explain what “conditioning” is in normal technical terms and b) recommending they be used? I’ve never seen that. I know the basic thing that’s being thought...that all that chroma noise in my S201 may be reduced with lab perfect power. I just don’t think it’s realistic as with an LD player there is a TON of noise being generated by the player itself. And how does a conditioner actually condition? Is it like a massive massive cap and a variable frequency drive so that it can generate a new %100 perfect AC wave form? If not, I don’t really see how you can “condition” the power. A device like that would be a few thousand, most likely, if it’s not %100 reliable it can single handedly wipe out everything plugged into it. Is it like a really high speed chip that follows the wave forum and damps any peaks or valleys? Like a dynamic compressor for AC voktage? That might work but the chip would have to be really good if it’s going to be better and more reliable that the power company. These products are typically two stages and some are three stages. First stage is the protection circuitry. You can think of this as an extra piece of breaker. Having a breaker as close as possible to the device you want to protect is ideal. Some of these products also include a fuse but it is not necessary. The typical arrangement is that you place a MOV in parallel. This MOV shorts the circuit when the current/voltage is above a threshold. It’s a chemical electrical component like diodes so this threshold is never the same on two but close enough. They have a capacity that they can width-stand and beyond it they get damaged(This is the Joule number you see on the packaging). Also their performance decays overtime (but typically very long time). The second flavor is microprocessor controlled smart relaying. There is a voltage and current sensor that triggers a relay to open circuit. It reacts much quicker and can width-stand higher surges. These don’t die therefore typically advertised as maintenance free on the packaging. You may say why do I need another breaker on a strip while I have one at my electric box. Well, you don’t always get surges from the utility line. Electrical appliances and all other electronics plugged onto that circuit do and can cause surges. This also makes claims like I live in a new home or I live in Europe, electric here is good a false claim. If nothing happened to you in the past 15 years doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the next 15 years. All it takes is one hit to burn all electronics at your home. But yes the odds are in your favor, chances are it won’t ever happen. Second stage is conditioning. There are multiple methods to do so. First let’s talk about what contaminating your power. All electrical wiring inside your home, inside your electronics and utility wires act as an antenna grabbing all sort radio waves. You can experiment with plugging your power strip into your FM radios antenna port. It will catch all the stations. In urban areas this contamination is heavier with all the wifi and cell phone signals. These are all present on your electric line. Furthermore, all switching mode power supplied in your and your neighbors (within close enough proximity) are signal generator switching in megahertz and these are connected to the same conductors. These need to be eliminated. There is also voltage sags that occurs from being too far away from the utility transformer or something along the way sucking all the current .Think of your neighbors Air Conditioner. Every time the compressor kicks in you will get a sag on your AC power. Most electronics don’t care about this situation but audio amplifiers suffer from the lack of current coming in. Most conditioner use capacitor/inductor chokes/filters to remove the noise. These filters need to be high in octave (amount of reduction) but their curves must be carefully selected so they don’t case more inductance(more on this later). There is also isolation transformer method. These transformers have no physical connection between their primary and secondary sides. They are 1:1 ratio. I.e. 120V in 120V out. Since transformer themselves are inductive they are also low pass filters. Further more some companies use different taps on these transformer and split Voltage to +60V and -60V and use the neutral wire as ground. This is the balanced configuration. Since there are identical wave forms in opposite polarity they cancel any/most noise out. Transformers are very expensive so you will only see this on very expensive conditioners. There is also a catch. Transformers can add more resistance and inductance therefore choke the current in the amplifiers. Due to this, most conditioners will have dedicated outlets labeled “high current” with no isolation transformer on them and carefully selected L/C choke/trap circuits. Again, very high quality inductors and capacitors are very expensive. Another method is regeneration. This one converts 120V AC to DC with a rectifier and then feed into a very high quality low noise amplifier. A microprocessor generates a 60Hz sine wave and feeds as the source to this amplifier. The result is a 120V high current 60 Hz signal which is equal to our power in our electric outlets. There are some limitations to this as well. They are super expensive and limited to the power of the amplifier. PS Audio makes a 20kVA version for $10k. But this is literally regenerating the electricity right before your audio components. Most of what its doing is not care by the audio amplifiers and generates a lot of heat (and takes up space). Third stage is power correction. There are physical components to power such as resistance and magnetic component that is inductance. Later one is a phenomena related to AC power. It’s complicated but in short when electrons move in constantly changing direction(AC-Alternating Current) induction therefore magnetism occurs. This is the electromagnetic interference we talk about. When inductance is high the power factor is low which means current does not follow voltage on the voltage over current graph. This causes the sinusoid waves to be distorted. This can be corrected by adding removing capacitance and or inductance. Most well built units also use large capacitors to store current to use when there is a sag on the power line. Now the real question? Do you really need all this? Well some of this is already built into your electronics. Remember, engineer make cost vs performance analysis and pick components and designs for where cost and performance intersects. So these built in components will satisfy most average people. If you want to go that final a few bit of performance you can opt to use a conditioner. Power sections and protective components are very expensive. Most electronics including very expensive ones will usually give you the simplest option such as a fuse and a simple LC choke filter. Also, some components are more effected from bad power than others. Most source devices will operate fine with dirty power. Anything amplifying will amplify the contamination noise in the power so these are the ones that suffer most. I hope this help. I didn’t proof read what I wrote. I hope it makes sense. |
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| Author: | signofzeta [ 14 Oct 2020, 15:34 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
Oh yeah, transformers. I didn’t think of that. Thanks for the words. Btw, some time ago I had assembled a less than perfect receiver and turntable combo. The TT was a basic synchronous motor type with a single micro switch that was rigged to the tone arm position. When this unit shuts off it generates an unpleasant pop in the receiver. All sources. In fact, if you plug the TT into a socket two rooms away with no connections to the receiver at all it still pops. I tried serval Monster products in their lower ranges and they did absolutely nothing to dampen this pop. I eventually traced the issue to excessive corrosion on the TTs microswitch (undersized, IMO). I replaced it with one from a arcade machine that had like 100,000 cycles and 30 years on it and that removed %90 of the pop. Presumably a clean switch would fix it but I got a better deck after that. The receiver is a Marantz 2235. No other TT causes this issue with it but also this TT causes issues with no other receiver I own, most of which are heavily protected AVR stuff. |
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| Author: | admin [ 15 Oct 2020, 16:38 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
admin wrote: Here I'm just replacing basic $10 no-fuse, no-nothing basic power strip with... a rackable glorified power strip with fuse and on/off button. 100V PDU solved... just won a $75 Furman PL-PLUSJ Series II on YAJ. J stands for Japan.. they modified the voltmeter to center on 100V, I think the chassis works on 90~140V anyway. Series II as far as I can tell just updated the front labels and have an all-black case, instead of bare metal on the previous model. MSRP was $500, street price $400 (typical -20% Japan reseller discount). 8 outlets on the back, I'll need 6. Attachment: PL-PLUSJ II.jpg [ 25.82 KiB | Viewed 4635 times ] Now on to the 120V PDU hunt! Julien |
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| Author: | audioboyz1973 [ 16 Oct 2020, 11:13 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
substance wrote: . There is also isolation transformer method. These transformers have no physical connection between their primary and secondary sides. They are 1:1 ratio. I.e. 120V in 120V out. Since transformer themselves are inductive they are also low pass filters. So if I'm using a step-down transformer which is a toroidal isolation transformer am I then effectively killing two birds with one stone; both betting the reduced voltage required and achieving some power conditioning? |
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| Author: | admin [ 16 Oct 2020, 11:40 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
audioboyz1973 wrote: So if I'm using a step-down transformer which is a toroidal isolation transformer am I then effectively killing two birds with one stone; both betting the reduced voltage required and achieving some power conditioning? This is my target for the next PDU: Furman AR1215J either stabilizing 100V or stepping up 100V to 120V while providing some protection. Attachment:
File comment: AR1215J AR1215J.jpg [ 52.05 KiB | Viewed 4612 times ] It's similar to the step-up + power strip I'm using right now + rackable + surge protection + earth path. It does have a toroidal transformer with a switch to move the wiring output from 120V to 100V if needed. From the specs it would turn 100V into 120V at about 1300VA capacity. Attachment: AR1215 inside.jpg [ 119.8 KiB | Viewed 4577 times ] It would gracefully replace my bulky step-up/down: Attachment: MF-1000-U.jpg [ 50.84 KiB | Viewed 4577 times ] Julien |
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| Author: | substance [ 17 Oct 2020, 00:30 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
audioboyz1973 wrote: substance wrote: . There is also isolation transformer method. These transformers have no physical connection between their primary and secondary sides. They are 1:1 ratio. I.e. 120V in 120V out. Since transformer themselves are inductive they are also low pass filters. So if I'm using a step-down transformer which is a toroidal isolation transformer am I then effectively killing two birds with one stone; both betting the reduced voltage required and achieving some power conditioning? Yes this is correct. |
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| Author: | audioboyz1973 [ 18 Oct 2020, 01:31 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
admin wrote: This is my target for the next PDU: Furman AR1215J either stabilizing 100V or stepping up 100V to 120V while providing some protection. Nothing quite so complex in this case, literally just a step-down transformer; but an isolation transformer: https://www.tortech.com.au/product/voltage-converters/step-down/isolated/isolated-japanese-step-down-transformer/ I have the 1010VA model in the main setup, 500VA in a secondary and the 100VA on test/work bench. |
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| Author: | forper [ 26 Mar 2021, 12:00 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
teddanson wrote: No, those argon coated power cables made out of uranium and quadruple wrapped in a twisted Fingerite and Hazenite (two of the rarest minerals on Earth) core dipped fifty seven times in polonium will not make your signal any cleaner. Your work gives me heavy Larry Hama waves. Thank you. 
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| Author: | admin [ 12 Jul 2021, 04:55 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
admin wrote: This is my target for the next PDU: Furman AR1215J either stabilizing 100V or stepping up 100V to 120V while providing some protection. AR1215J on the way to my place right now. I missed a very good deal 1+ year ago on Mercari and all following units showing up on YAJ were either damaged in some ways (scratched, missing screws, bent racking ears, some outlets not working, etc.) or out of budget. A decent unit showed up, and the seller was giving away the 2RU case as well. Will be a good fit for my 2 Furman units (100V and 120V). Attachment: i-img1198x898-1625307020x0ulrl310013.jpg [ 95.12 KiB | Viewed 4120 times ] Julien |
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| Author: | xtempo [ 12 Jul 2021, 13:10 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
I have a Panamax MR4000 but it looks like it's just a surge protector and not the power line conditioners like the other models |
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| Author: | shopkins82 [ 12 Jul 2021, 19:00 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
I have a Panamax M5100-EX... it's hefty, convenient, and looks the part but I see it as a big nice surge protector and don't put much stock in any performance gains from power conditioning. Luckily it was a $20 Goodwill find. |
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| Author: | admin [ 15 Jul 2021, 15:02 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Do folks here use power line conditioners? |
admin wrote: A decent unit showed up, and the seller was giving away the 2RU case as well. Will be a good fit for my 2 Furman units (100V and 120V). Project completed!
Attachment: signal-2021-07-15-221410.jpeg [ 184.14 KiB | Viewed 4079 times ] Julien |
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