How noisy is my line? Audio Prism Noise Sniffer


A friend and audio journalist had this Prism device, and he plugged it into various outlets when I visited him. It gave a clear sense of which outlets were noisy and how effectively his conditioners were helping with noise.

 

He said these were not made any longer. Does anyone know of another tool like this?

It seems like it could save someone with clean power (or a quiet outlet) a lot of money from conditioners/regenerators which would not necessarily help.

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Showing 2 responses by larryi

Google “powerline noise analyzer” or “powerline noise sniffer.”  The typical meter has a numerical readout in some units, such as parts per thousand, and they also have a mini speaker that plays a demodulated form of the noise so you can identify the source as radio interference or a motor or electric arcing, etc.  

There are at least a dozen models available.

I saw the meter reading and demodulated noise from the meter speaker on a dedicated line running from a very expensive dedicated subpanel.  There was still, somewhat high level of noise, that was substantially reduced by a powerline conditioner.  The system had no audible noise, as such, without conditioning, but the sound did improve with conditioning—particularly with respect to creating a soundstage that seemed to float in space.  The meter being used was an Isotek meter, which is not cheap (about $1,000), but, $100 meters seem to work the same way.