Variac vs. Isolation vs. Balanced Transformer? ALL

Oh and it seems most variac deals are a type of Brush run motor, due to needing brush replacements on some of them, this would mean to me they make some noise… That will not work, I would rather have a passive type method to accomplish all this anyway if possible, but I guess for the most part iso and balanced transformers will be the only possible way while stepping up and down voltage in the process.

Thanks Zargon!
Yeah sweet system you have there. I would love to just go all Dedicated like that, but for the time being I am looking to keep the system self contained and moveable vs. hardwired built in. I will have to take advantage of existing circuits for the time being. it

Gbart, You are absolutley right… They are built to tolerate 110 to 130 volts… However that is not the range they sound best in! For sure the best sound comes from most gear in the 115 - 118 range… Mainly this is due to circuits sound more hyped up or "Grainy" with higher voltage mostly from amps bias being thrown off, gotta remember this gear is built and tested on a bench running a variac of sorts feeding them dead on dialed in voltage for testing. I have heard regenerators and even cheaper monster power centers (yeah the ones with the cheesy red digital readout) sound pretty good when knocking that voltage down.. The higher the voltage the less beef you get it seems, thinned out, less amperage, bass is not as strong, and most people complain their gear sounds bright but its simply the wall outlet is really high!

Trust me I had one time solid state amps that had manual adjustable bias banks on the transistors.. I was running about 126 volts from the wall… Brought the bias MA into range to counteract it and bam they went from ragged, tipped up mid fi sound to nearly the best smoothest balanced gear I had experienced! Now of course this was not a solution, because as you say you would go crazy daily going inside with mini screwdrivers adjusting the gear each time to get optimum bias etc… due to your varying voltage from the house.. This is why killing the issue off at the front right from the outlet and leaving the gear at the factory set adjustment would be best. Anyway I have made a decision and purchase..

Balanced / isolation transformer… It will have about a 5% loss bringing my wild voltage down to about 122, and in theory in turn give me 61 volts per phase on the output plenty low enough now being split into a balanced load for any gear to run much more optimally for the most part. Nothing fancy, nothing current limiting or adjustable just one continous clean output more or less regardless what the wall is doing, each leg will not vary much more than between 58 to 64 volts lets say which is not gonna be any kinda real shocker vs. how much difference there seems to be when running straight AC at 115 vs. nearly 130! Big difference in audio and video in my opinion.

By the way hi grade test equipment for accuracy and hospital gear and instruments are of course very sensitive much like your audio gear and for best consistent performance trust me they DON'T trust the Power company to get them 110 to 115 volts all day! They take many steps and pieces of power gear to make sure this is done internally.

Thanks for the suggestions.         

Jea48, I purchased a Balanced transformer that will be 60 - 60 v out… The 5% loss is supposedly just from going thru the transformer, it is a 1000 va size, and I am told by the manufacture there will be about a 5% loss in voltage essentially giving you a slight step down in the process.

AS for light bulbs I have been using the ergo style flourescent newer curly Q looking type with no issue, but they have their own balast circuit built into the base which is why I think they cost more so this is probably why they don't burn the element as they are stepped way down from that internal ballast anyway unlike a cheapy 50 cent incandescent bulb.

Gbart, well hopefully there is no loss! But for some reason there is a claim of up to like 5% maybe saturation or something with most transformers? Still it should be better due to obviously cutting the voltage in half on and spreading on 2 phases… As for sound in the lower voltage range they are not really designed to be on 120 from my understanding, but most is tested on the lower range of 110 - 115 v. However as for sound the higher voltage I believe adds certain noise at certain frequencys in the line. The U.S. standard for the most part is 120 volts, and the fact is they have to be able to spike to 130 I guess.

No real scientific reason on my end this is just what I have normally experienced so some type of regulation beyond just saying okay whatever I am being fed from my garage on the circuit box is good enough seems a little off now having high grade power supplys in each audio component.

Jea48 actually this is a "Balanced transformer" so it will output if there is no loss 128 volts / 2 = 64 volts to the hot and 64 volts to the neutral on the duplex.

My Results:
Okay so the Balanced transformer does not seem like a bad thing! Meaning for the little I got to test listen it did not seem to remove anything from the music or overall dynamic presentation, however what it did do was remove a slight amount of "Anxiety" maybe in the presentation… Seems to have very slightly laid back the soundstage where it moved backwards about a foot and became about a foot wider, might have a little better balance from left to right so to speak.

Vocals have a bit of a more left right quality of being less accurate and more blended with air, the bass is VERY tight, it may have literally made the low frequencys lose a little of the Bloat and more of a dynamic yet buttery type punch, more cushion if that makes sense. There is not a final verdict, but its pretty cool! Worth the money?

Very tuff to justify something like this one way or the other, its worth it due to knowing it has an effect to the AC power in the house whether its gonna be detrimental or beneficial depends on a lot of things… In this case I would say I give it a 5% effective rate, that means a bit better control and distortion is minimized even further, for 5% at this level it costs money because there is very little you can do to make perfection, and this system was damn good already so just a little bit is nice but maybe not gonna make miracles..

For the time being I am of course happy with it, I like having it, and it does solve one Ergonomic problem that is not a big deal but being picky, it gives me ONE power switch to turn on and off the amps without opening 3 doors on my unit everytime! Anyway and of course the pride of ownership, and I upgraded the CRAP out of it last night removing the ground shunt capacitor pack setup in it to the AC recepticals, and put in buss bars replacing the cheap terminal strips… I am told these ground shunt filters are great for eliminating common mode noise but can end up being a downside to audio applications robbing you of some dynamics and they are somewhat dangerous if they fail and you don't have a GFI outlet connected to it… From what I am told these shunt filters if one cap fails and there is no GFI outlet your done.

Bigshutterbug, I believe it! As I stated above most audio gear regardless of its "designed voltaged range" will perform better the closer you get it to 110 volt side of things opposed to the high 120 and above in my experience.. Some don't understand it, or don't want to believe it, but it does work. By the way what is the exact make and model of the transformer you purchased? Do you have a diagram to configure it to lower voltage and balanced operation? I have seen the website and this project you refer too, I saw it was from like 1999, not that the year makes a difference, but anyway what size is the transformer? 500 va, 1000 va? Thanks

And again remember this kinda very specific and really major foundation stuff of an audio system in most peoples minds that get done last!! Room acoustics, and the power feeding your system is totally overlooked and probably accounts for 75% better results than a 1000 dollar preamp to a 10,000 dollar preamp.

Actually where can you buy that transformer now? Any links? I just hooked up another transformer balanced, yes it is easy, I was just curious what the one you are using looks like. What gauge wire is coming off there? Mostly I noted that even some of the higher power transformers are only in the 22 to 18 gauge range, strange as you would think even though that is enough to carry pretty high amperage mostly for what we are talking about somebody would make one with some at least 12 gauge beefed up wire. Anyway thanks