I second the Furutech NCF line optimizer.
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I had 12 of them at one time with a P10. the blinking lights get to be a strain in a dark room. Worked best with them all plugged into a power strip. They can wear out after about a year of straight use. PS Audio has replaced some at no cost to the user according to some blogs. I do not use them any more. Found High Fidelity MC 05s much better. |
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I have one
NoiseHarvester
that Ive plugged in several of the PSAudio Dectect outlets and the wall outlet with the amp. Nothing changed. Didn't matter which zone of the Dectect I plugged the NoiseHarvester in. I wasn't able to detect a difference. I was hoping I'd be able to see a better picture on my OLED, nope. I'm no longer using a Yamaha pre/pro for 2channel and I've bought a higher quality preamp, so, I can experiment. But, with the wall outlet box, my preamp and amp are both plugged in. Obviously, I'm unable to use the same outlet. But, as I've read, as long as I'm in the same circuit. We'll see what happens. |
I am also skeptical, but at the price it might be worth trying. At least it can function as test gear, even if there is no effect on the sound quality. The supposed effect of AC power noise is a mystery to me. I have a light over my turntable which is plugged into power from a dimmer. Dimmers are supposed to be a disaster near audio equipment: I expected to turn the light off while listening. However, the dimmer has absolutely no effect on the audio equipment. None. Nada. This is a relatively new dimmer. I have another decades-old dimmer installed in a portable junction box that I use for powering christmas tree lights. (If you drop the voltage a bit the bulbs last much longer). It causes a bad buzz. There are dimmers, and there are dimmers. |
Yes musicseller, your house it probably that dirty. I have a ton of parallel stuff in my house due to it being a dirty house and also a dirty suburban neighberhood I am guessing. The more I add the better it keeps getting though I may be topping off now. You may wonder whats up with my house, but over the couple years I have added 25 different parallel conditioners, two richard gray 400's and audioprism foundation 2 for parallel conditioning and being able to plug all these in. Two quantum symphony pros and a hydra as my main souce conditioner. I kept getting better as I kept adding. One of my problems is my theater has 13 lights on it and it uses the dimmer so this adds tons of noise to the system not to mention all the other lights on dimmers around the house. And yes, the noise harvesters go nuts with the 13 lights dimmed in the theater. Though its become less with all the conditioning. Yes Drubin, all the lights dimmed in the theater did effect the sound in my system. It clearly took life out of the sound. I have one of the dimmer switches behind me so when I am on the couch I can reach my hand back to dim the lights or just simply turn them off. So sitting listening to two channel I tried it on and off staying in my sitting position and it was clear how having them dimmed affected the sound for the worse. This test with the dimmer on and off was at the time before I add about 9 more parallel condioners, so it was clear that I still had a lot of conditioning at the time. I now don't hear the drop in sound quality with all the lights dimmed in the theater. I should out of curiosity, try dimming all the lights in my house and see what it does??? With all the conditioners I use 5 bc noise hound mk3, 6 quantum electroclears, 5 enacoms, 1 audioprism quiteline mk3, and 9 noise noise harvestors. The noise harvestor seem to be a good value and they are very easy and small. The bc 86, NH, and enacoms seem to give about the same amound of conditioning. The quantums are a completly different beast that works on different princables though they work well in my system. I think the important thing I was trying to acomplish cause I am no electrical wizard is having a variety of MANY different parralel conditioners. I think they all work differently cleaning different types of noise at different frequencies so as a team they may be getting a full spectrum of the garbage in the lines?? |
Musicseller: Try disconnecting your audio gear from the outlets while leaving the NH plugged in. If the light show remains, you've got a ton of noise coming in on that circuit. If the light show slows or disappears when plugged in by itself, your audio gear is generating at least part of the noise that the NH is picking up. Using this approach, one can plug the NH into various outlets and find which of their house circuits / individual outlets is "cleanest". Once the "cleanest" outlet is found, you can plug one individual component at a time into the other outlet of the duplex that the NH is plugged into. By checking the "light show" of the NH, you can now see which of your individual components generates noise BACK INTO the AC system. Be aware that some components will do this whether they are turned on or off !!! If you find an individual component that causes the NH to put on quite a light show, you may want to take steps to try and isolate / filter the AC coming in and out of that individual component. This can be done several different ways i.e. through the use of an isolation transformer, tuned AC filters, parallel line traps, etc... Another trick that one can do is to use the NH as a "test circuit" for various AC line conditioners. That is, plug the NH directly into the wall and watch the light show. Now plug the NH into the various outlets of the PLC / filters that you may be using and compare the differences. If the NH flashes at or very near the same rate in both places i.e. when plugged directly into the wall OR plugged into your PLC, the PLC / filter isn't doing much to control incoming noise. Sean > |
I, too, was skeptical beyond belief regarding the PS Audio Noise Harvester. I read the AVS Forum threads, which actually added to my skepticism but also somehow managed to futher tweek my curiosity. I ended finding one here on Audiogon (thanks again, Audiogon, for always having ads for what I'm looking for!) for $75.00, new and in the box. I plugged it in to the same circuit as my system is on, which is a dedicated line from a second sub-panel, with hospital grade receptacles, and sat back to listen. The first thing I noticed is that it flashes like there is no tomorrow. Is my line that dirty, or is just designed to do that? I don't know, but I do know that definition and detail have been enhanced. There is better delineation of instruments, and a more projected midrange. Are the changes radical? Well, no, they're not, but they are there. Is it worth a hundred dollars? Perhaps not, but at $75.00 I don't feel as though I was taken. |
Just want to give my experience with the noise harvester. I have had one in service for over a month. I honestly can't perceive an improvement or detriment from its use. Maybe my ears are shot. But what has fascinated me is the unpredictable behavior of the blue light. I have a dedicated music room with a dedicated circuit that includes three 15A wall outlets and an overhead light. Typically, but not always, the NH may not flash for the entire day until about 9 PM. After 9 PM it generally begins to flash, sometime once every few minutes while at other times a few flashes per second. I have also witnessed rapid flashing continuously for about 36 hours. Then again I have seen it remain silent for two days. No relationship to day of week. And I have deligently tried to correlate the flashing with operating in-house devices - but THERE IS NO CORELATION!. I have check the 3-5 times per second flashing at 3 AM when nothing (including the fridge, AC, and lights) were on. I tried to relate the flashing to rain, relative humidity, wind, temperature, etc., etc., ad infinitum, BUT NOTHING. Can someone please explain this behavior? As far as I'm concerned, at present the NH is nothing more than a noise sensor that presents curious patterns of external power line noise that I can't explain. Anybody else experience this? Thanks. |
Electroid, You may be mis-interpreting my comments. The rolloff of high frequency is on the power line, not on the reproduction of the recording. Yes, I can easily believe that if the RFI is reduced on your power lines that this would translate to a more relaxed and extended high frequency presentation without any rolloff. The removal of noise on power deliver is frequently described as translating to a "blacker" background on the music, which would allow a better presentation of low level detail and of high frequencies. |
Drubin: It would appear that your combo of gear / power cords / AC system seems to be working quite well for you. That is, at least in terms of the purity of incoming AC signal AND in having selected gear that has a low level of self generated internal noise from within the components themselves. This shows competency in design of the power supply and / or power cords, which hopefully carried over into other parts of the circuitry too : ) Sean > |
Hi Willster: Thanks for your post. While I heard calmer HF I did actually here more and better HF that was not simply rolled off in any way to my ear. In one of my reference recordings a soprano background vocal that is not close mic'd is easier to hear overall and the highest range of her voice is more present. Cymbals and other things HF are easier to hear and more accurate and have more of their highest harmonics audible. Whatever the Harvesters are doing is fine with me. ET |
Thanks for the quick response Drubin. I asked about your AC system / dedicated lines / aftermarket PC's, the placement of your Harvester's, the use of PLC's, etc... for specific reasons. I was trying to determine not only the effectiveness of the Harvester, but also how effective your dedicated lines, PC's, and PLC's were. Out of curiosity, is the Harvester that is placed on one of your dedicated lines tied into the same circuit as your Foundation Research PLC or is it on the other circuit? Sean > |
I have two dedicated lines for the system and I believe the analog is separated from the digital at this time but I'll have to check. I have a Foundation Research PC/conditioner on the CDP but that's all. Rest of the system does use aftermarket PCs but no conditioning. I have one Harvester on one of the dedicated lines and the other two on outlets on a non-dedicated circuit in the same room, which my subwoofer is also on. All of the Harvesters blink identically when they blink, and as far as I can tell, it is only when I have a light dimmer engaged. They blink more rapidly the more the dimmer is engaged, which makes sense. There are lights in that same room (but on a different circuit) that have dimmers and well as dimmers in other rooms, which may or may not be on the same circuit as some of the Harvesters (I can figure that out, but don't know offhand.) Interestingly, I have never noticed the dimmers affecting the sound of my system. It's possible they do and I just haven't noticed, and I can sometimes hear the noise the lights emit when dimmed, but otherwise no. I can feel your mind working, Sean. What are you thinking? |
Drubin: That is an interesting observation that you shared with us here. Is your system on dedicated lines? Do you have more than one line, and if so, do you have your analogue separate from your digital, etc ??? Are you running any other type of power line conditioner and / or aftermarket power cords, etc ??? Where do you have the Harvester's in proximity to your system, etc ??? Sean > |
Well, from the comments about the guy that cut one open, it is probably a parallel line filter. The usual reason for combining 3 or 4 caps in parallel is to reduce ESR (equivalent series resistance) which also changes the resonant point of the circuit. The capacitive value adds when they are paralleled (the opposite of risistors). If you really think this helps, make your own with some capacitors. It will be a LOT cheaper that way. As a starting point make the combined capacitance around 1 microfarad. If you like diy you might want to connect them across the back of the duplex outlet so you don't use up a socket. Not having seen the inside of this thing it is also possible, since there was an inductor in it, that it is what's called a pi filter. It's called that because when you draw the schematic it looks a little like the symbol for pi. A little googling should provide you with more detail than I want to put into this thread. It's amazing how much is charged for things like this considering what simple circuits they are. There is nothing new about these filters other than marketing them to audiophiles for a lot of money. They work because the electrical circuits in your house tend to act like antennas. The filters roll off the high frequencies (rfi). To optimize them you should figure out where the first and last outlets are on each of your house circuits (not just the ones you are using for your stereo) and place one at both locations on all your circuits. |
I'm an iso fan but didn't realize how much gear piece #1 was affecting all the others and so on until now with the recent harvester tests. I have big CJ power amps that would need fairly hefty ISO's. Getting one for my P-300 which feeds my sources and passive pre (control aspect) and then one for each power amp would be nice. I would need three total. What tweaks are you doing to them? It would cost a good bit, have you tried harvesters vs ISO's or with ISO's? Do you like the double philosphy in that if you draw X current get an ISO that is rated at 2X? Thanks in advance! Nice post. And yes most of my noise is coming from my gear, it is not already in my line! ET |
Electroid ( and others ): If you go back in the archives, you'll find that i make mention of this type of occurance more than a few times. This is why i've talked about using a VERY LARGE isolation transformer ( with tweaks ) to feed the entire system and individual isolation transformers ( with tweaks ) at component level. The primary iso gets rid of most of the crapola coming in on the mains. The individual iso's catch what has "leaked into" the AC feed between the primary iso and the outlets. As most of us know, the wiring within the house can and does act as a long wire antenna for both EMI and RFI, so the individual iso's help to act as a secondary filter in this respect. On top of that, the individual iso's also keep the "internally generated garbage" of one component from being pumped back into other components via their common AC feed. That's because each component is now electrically isolated via the isolation tranformer. Iso's work going both ways. That is, they not only keep the garbage from getting into the component, but also help to minimize the amount of garbage generated within that component from finding its' way back into the AC lines to contaminate other gear. The end result of such an approach is that you have cleaner AC coming in for all of the gear with a drastic reduction of cross-contaminated AC at component level. Sean > |
I bought three and I am stunned! I already use a P300 on my sources that I would never do without to clean their AC. I have a Richard Gray 600 to benefit the high usage gear (my two amps) I wasn't sure they would help much. I plugged all three into the outlet my gear uses which is the closest one to my breaker panel. They didn't blink much until I started turning on my gear. As I turned on each piece the harvesters blinked more rapidly. It does say on their site that gear adds noise back into the line. Well, I put on my three favorite reference recordings and proceeded to be awed.......The little annoying silibance in vocals-gone! HF had a much more relaxed sound and was more present and easier to hear. The bass character improved greatly. I have heard other things increase and decrease LF output like power cords and so on but the quality of my bass got so much better and more detailed. Small improvement in image and just a much smoother overall presentation. A little more dynamic as well heard mostly in "bass control".... Me very happy. ET Gear: Grado/Rabco/Thorens 125/YSAudio Concerto Plus/Tele 12AX7's Trivista SACD Placette Passive CJ MF 2100 CJ MF 2500 3 speaker choices |
Here's another current thread over at AA. http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/449302.html Sean > |
As a matter of fact there are two long threads at AVSForm. You may also want to visit PS Audio's website and go to their forum. Bottom line, as with any accessory items, in some systems they will work and in others they will not. I tried them in two different systems in two different homes and in one they made a significant difference and in the other you really had to strain and maybe hear a difference. In the system they made a significant difference they have resided for about five weeks and the person loves what they do. They offer a generous return policy so it may cost you pocket change to give them a serious audition. I could describ what we heard but why biase you since you should plug them into your own home. OBTW, I caution you not to plug all of them into a cheap power strip because they won't work properly. We found this out by trial and error of trying to A/B them all at once. |
