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.
snobgoblinf669

Showing 1 response by sugarbrie

Your post seems to acually validate that just a dedicated AC line is not enough, since our neighbors pollute the power in the same way our own appliances do if we do not have a dedicated line. My Vansevers power stuff makes a huge difference and it is not my immagination. Mike Vansevers is an electrical engineer and pro audio guy, who, when he discovered he could affect the sound positively by altering the AC power, he changed careers and went into the power conditioning business. There are pages and pages of white papers on this web site that explain in great technical and non technical detail how power affects sound. On another note, photographers will swear filtering light improves a photograph. Is it true? We all have the same sun. Ever wear sunglasses?? Finally some people are born with better hearing than others; some will never be able to tell the difference.