I guess I never thought that hash on the AC line was associated with any frequency....I assumed it was an equal opportunity offender of all frequencies regardless of where you were measuring the dB reduction.
Measuring line noise and power conditioners
I recently purchased a Trifield EMI (Dirty Electricity) Line Meter to measure noise coming from my outlets. To my surprise, my $500 power conditioner (name withheld to protect the potentially innocent) appears to not filter any noise per the Trifield readings. In fact, with some of my outlets the measures are higher through the conditioner’s outlets, than the measures coming straight out of the wall. The manufacturer denies anything is wrong with their conditioner, claiming the Trifield is measuring the wrong frequencies. Can anyone explain?
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In your recent responses, you say RFI. We are referring to EMI. My bad. What I hear ain't luck. Having a device that can measure what I hear ain't luck. Coincidence and bias are real, which doesn't mean you haven't done enough experimentation to eliminate them, they are just the first to things to eliminate before claiming more. |
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My point to all of this is that cleaning up AC noise in the audio frequencies is as important or more than RFI. We should be looking at devices and measurements which clean up both. Think of most power conditioners as essentially filters, much like the crossovers in a speaker. Signal comes in, some passes, some gets blocked. The ideal power conditioner (as opposed to a regenerator) passes 60 Hz (or 50 depending where you are) and blocks all others. RFI filters are low pass filters. If you can go lower, and start at 3-10 kHz that's better than starting at 100 kHz. Notice I'm not talking about any brands you may like or not like. I'm just stating principles. |
Before I got my Audioquest Niagara 1200, I read where a lot of manufacturers of conditioners go for a change in sound, rather than good filtering of AC hash on the line. But to go so far as to discredit all makes of power conditioners is silly. I haven't personally measured the noise on my lines since installing the Niagara 1200 but I've seen demos online showing the differences with noise sniffers and meters and it works as advertised. In fact, it's probably the single biggest gain with a "tweak" I've experienced. I hadn't realized how much filth there was on my incoming AC. All the best, Nonoise |
It’s hard to imagine noise on your line only affecting one portion of the frequency range. So in other words if you reduced noise that’s being measured above 20khz why wouldn’t you expect that same filtering to affect the entire range even in areas that aren’t being measured by the meter? This problem is kind of a Venn diagram. A conditioner which starts at 10 kHz will hopefully also clean up 100 kHz. A conditioner which starts working at 100 kHz won't necessarily clean up 10 kHz. Of course, coupling can occur later, and there will be a frequency high enough that it stops working at too. So, you have a meter which measures RFI, which shows reduced noise, and the power conditioner happened to reduce noise in the audible spectrum too. That's luck. |
@erik_squires You are measuring starting at 20 kHz and going up. That is, these devices START measuring noise at the upper limit of human hearing. It's hard to imagine noise on your line only affecting one portion of the frequency range. So in other words if you reduced noise that's being measured above 20khz why wouldn't you expect that same filtering to affect the entire range even in areas that aren't being measured by the meter? Do they make current filters that reduce noise between 100hz and 1Khz??? (for example) That makes zero sense to me. |
If we are talking about this meter: https://www.alphalabinc.com/product/plm/ You are measuring starting at 20 kHz and going up. That is, these devices START measuring noise at the upper limit of human hearing. While many surge protectors claim to block EMI/RFI, they also claim to start working in the 100kHz ranges, way higher than noise we'd hear. |
Yes, unfortunately a lot of products sold are a bad joke. Your house is separated from the grid by a transformer. Any irregularities are coming from the other houses connected to the same transformer. Remember the main line is 8 KV or more. If you want the absolute cleanest power possible you need a large bank of batteries and a good inverter. You could drive your system with solar panels. Just stay away from class A amplifiers. All this stuff about power cords, conditioner and fancy outlets is nonsense. Spend your money on a better amplifier or cartridge. This will make much more of an improvement in your system. Audiophiles are extremely gullible and the market takes advantage of this big time. If you want to spend a lot of money making your system look nice wonderful but don't think anything is going to sound better. It is not. |
utput555
... my $500 power conditioner (name withheld to protect the potentially innocent) appears to not filter any noise per the Trifield readings. In fact, with some of my outlets the measures are higher through the conditioner’s outlets ... Can anyone explain?It's difficult if not impossible to offer any meaningful suggestion without knowing more. Telling us it's a "$500 power conditioner" tells us nothing. |
