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How To Do You Measure the Quality of Your AC Power?

What is the best way to measure the quality of the AC power feeding your listening room? Is there a device you can plug into an outlet that will give you the voltage, frequency, the total amount of distortion relative to a perfect sine wave, etc.? Furthermore, how would you measure the ability of your AC main to deliver transient currents?
It seems like there may be a scenario where you could measure your power quality to be excellent but somewhere in the line you could have a loose or poorly made wiring connection which under heavy load (such as powerful bass notes) you could run into trouble with power delivery. In this scenario, an AC regenerator would not help you, or would help very little.

Just curious what methods people have come up with to systematically analyze their power and how they use those measurements to drive buying decisions or repair work, if needed.

Edit: My apologies for the title typo.
128x128mkgus

Showing 2 responses by millercarbon

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
take the advice of MC. He is the only one here that has actually done it".....  

To wit:
What you do is what everyone does. Make all your connections from the panel to your room as clean and tight AND FEW as possible. This is where the "dedicated" (which really means direct) line comes in. Then from there you use as good quality outlet, power cords, and conditioner as you can.  
The better the quality, the better the results.
Strip away all the blather above and this is what you get. Every time.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
What a freaking waste of time and money. None of these people will find anything wrong, because from their point of view there is nothing wrong.

Multiple electricians have failed to find anything wrong with my electrical system or electrical panel. 

Exactly. There is nothing wrong. Sorry, but there just isn't.  

Only thing wrong is your approach. You heard a difference and assume this means there is some glaring fault somewhere to be fixed. There isn't. Instead there is just the normal problem of noise coming into the line.   

The kind of noise we are talking about is endemic, and involves everything from RFI from radio, cell phones, and appliances, to EMF from everything connected to power everywhere.  

It is what it is. What you do is what everyone does. Make all your connections from the panel to your room as clean and tight AND FEW as possible. This is where the "dedicated" (which really means direct) line comes in. Then from there you use as good quality outlet, power cords, and conditioner as you can.   

The better the quality, the better the results. Results which are by the way determined by ear, not by meter. Unless your system goal is to sit in the dark looking at a meter?
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