This thread is a good one or me as I'm new to high end and have been researching the ac topic in search of a treatment for myself. Although I dont see why anyone finds this complicated. The ac from the wall "untreated" is full of RF and EMI. FYI this is much worse than just 15years ago with the advent cell phones, microwaves, cordless phones and the airwaves ie tv/radio, being chock a block full. The trick seems to be cleaning the power as best as possible at the wall. Then you need to treat it with respect from there to your equipment The best possible in the high end computor world is to use power regeneration ie . regenerate the power so in fact you are running off of battery power. Now you have virgin power so to speak and from there use heavily isolated cords and plugs. This would cost thousands to do properly to have enough juice for power amps but would be easier for source componets. When Omhwy61 doesnt hear a difference with highpriced cords it likley because his PS 600 is doing the job its supposed to. And all he needs from there is well shielded and terminated cords. In fact im learning you can make great cords yourself. A local high end dealer who has been tinkering inside every amp he has had for over 20 years as a hobbie recently went looking of a spool of speciality ac wire. From some where near Seattle he has a roll of military surplus wire. Nickle plated copper strands from a submarine constructor used to carry short bursts of high current. He uses hubble ends and a layer of insulation and a nice nylon cover and sells it for $100/foot Anyway he sells tons of this stuff. But the point is there is nothing stopping you from doing your own if you're willing to go looking for the right equipment. Question? I've read about some members talk about dedicated grounds. Could someone tell me if this is just more than a dedicated circuit. Cheers steve
The fallacy of ac treatment
I see a lot of threads related to managing and tweaking the ac powerout end of electronic systems. Much has been said about dedicated wiring, termination and even the right kind of extension cords to use. I work for an electric utility; and that's the extent of my credibilty here. The majority of you will no doubt be far more erudite wrt music hardware. Just a thought, though: domestic ac distribution goes thus: power station-step up-city-step down-subdivision-final step down. As far as the utility is concerned, you and all your neigbours are collectively the load for the step down tranformer. Any inductance/capacitance created by your neigbour running motors/tubelights, etc is felt by the lot of you. Additionally, the voltage frequency will almost always move around a tolerance from 50hz as the whole country turns on the air, off the lights - changes all the time as peaker plants ramp up etc. Nothing can change that- the frequency of the grid supplying your city is the frequency in the mains at your house. So what's my point? Well only that how much difference can the last 10 feet of cabling, etc make when the other hundreds of miles are outside of your control? And more importantly, frequency is one of the most imp parameters for measuring electricity quality (your expensive hand-coiled toroids are entirely subject to the f in the primaries) and nothing other than running an f generator can shield you from that. Methinks all the improvements you see from ac cord treatments are pyschosomatic. But that's cool.