Power conditioners/regenerators advice

Wrong place for the cage. Here you go.

Honetly, no idea at this point. If you can try moving the laptop around, see if that makes the difference.

 

it's the stock apple power plug, maybe I'll get a new one. I ordered a different cable too that might be shielded better. Totally bonkers. My house is haunted.

Another weird thing is that there is no buzz when I have my Timless 7hz iems plugged into the same amp on the same rig.

It's like Audeze headphones pick up something from the air.

 

I went nuclear and wrapped my computer’s power cable in braided copper and wrapped the power strip that the computer is plugged into in a sheet of fine copper mesh. It looks pretty awesome my laptop power cable now matches my OCC copper headphone cables.







But the noise just changed. Now when I touched the copper braided tube the noise went away and came back if I wasn’t touching it.

so it really seemed like a ground issue.

I noticed on eBay that the seeker I bought my balanced isolation transformer from us no longer selling them. So maybe it had an issue?

I just tried unplugging everything from the balanced isolation transformer thinking maybe it’s got a ground issue and I plugged everything into a zero surge instead.

so far no noise! But it could come back. It came and went before.

 

If you're in an old house, watch out for the house wiring being grounded at more than one point. Here in New England we have franken-properties where two separate houses might be connected via a water pipe that was blocked off decades ago but never severed. I had horrible RFI/noise (enough to distort a CRT -- remember those) in a two hundred year old farm house that I fixed by taking a hacksaw to a water pipe that ran into the stone foundation but appeared to go no-where, but was in the direction of neighboring house that used to be part of the same property. That pipe was on the opposite side of the house from the grounding rod at the mains, and was apparently enough to cause a ground loop on the first floor of the house.

 

Static shock when plugging in digital and analog components in the same conditioner

This experience is pretty silly indeed and I didn't realize until now.

I always have my DAC, raspberry pi streamer, preamp and power amp plugged into the same Furman power conditioner/surge protector and noticed some weird behavior such as 1) every time I turn on my DAC, it would trigger my power amp to turn on and send a pop noise to my speakers; 2) I get static shock every time I touch the chassis of my DAC or preamp during playback.

Couple nights ago, I touched the aluminum chassis of my DAC in the middle of a song, and got a static shock that my DAC, while its still powered on, stopped playing music. I turned it off and turned it back on, and let it played for another couple of hours and it played just fine. I always had static shock whenever I touched my DAC (to turn up or down the volume) when its turned on but this was the first time that the shock actually caused the DAC to stop functioning in the middle of a song.

Silly me, I always thought maybe my hands are dry, my basement is dry and its winter time......, until I spoke to a friend who advised me its most likely some grounding issue and I should not plug my digital gear with my analog gear in the same power conditioner/power strip. I don't really understand the logic behind it but thought I would give it a try anyway.

So I had my DAC and raspberry pi streamer plugged directly to the wall outlet and no more static from touching my DAC or preamp.

I suppose I will just put in a regular power strip/surge protector for my DAC and Raspberry pi going forward then.

 

My office carpet is really static prone, even rolling round in my chair I can build up a decent charge. Touching my amp or dac often gives me a little shock, and I will lose digital lock for a fraction of a second.

So long as the equipment is properly grounded, the charge should go harmlessly to ground.

 

I have now grouped all digital devices - dac, rpi4 (both powered by allo shanti lps), Cisco network switch and google mesh point in one surge protector.

power amp, preamp, avr in the furman power conditioner.

seems like the static is gone.

Deric

 

I just bought an iFI Powerstation in a desperate attempt to quell the noise issues that plague so many of my amps. I think I also have a ground loop which is super mysterious (I guess they often are) but I thought this might take care of some of it.

I'm weary of all the electronics in there though. Has anyone tried this thing or have any thoughts about it? It's replacing a balanced isolation power transformer.

iFI's website makes it sound like the power it puts out of every socket is cleaner than an LPS so you'd think it would make a big difference.

Either that or f**k up the sound with too much electronic crap in the power chain.

 

I recently solved 120hz hun issue I was having… turns out my gfi breakers were humming and failing. Causing a lot of electrical noise if my equipment was on those circuits.

breakers replaced and now silence!!

 

@rhythmdevils do you have cable for TV/internet? I recently placed one of those coax ground loop isolators you can find on Amazon etc. at the point where the service enters the cable modem, and was shocked to hear how much this cleaned up/eliminated transformer hum I was getting in a couple of toroidals in my system. This was after I dismissed it as a possibility and tried a ton of DC blockers and such. Anyway, they are cheap if they are applicable for you. I think should also work for satellite?

 

please share your impression on the ifi power station as I am curious as well

thanks

Deric

 

I've tried one of these years ago as well, mostly as a safety measure. It resulted in my cable modem not being able to maintain a proper signal and I lost internet access. When it did maintain a signal, it was very weak in level. I've since found out that the coax cable inside the wall that hooked up to the wall jack was frayed and letting in interference, but have not tried the ground loop isolator again.

Just a cautionary tale to check modem power levels and ensure you maintain your normal signal quality and internet speeds if you use one of these isolators.

 

Not a bad point. My incoming coax literally is one continuous run draped across the roof of my apartment building from some unknown sort of junction/amplifier and then comes down and in through my outer wall (second floor), so there’s a bit less room for signal loss, maybe.

Gotta love the cable companies.

 

Our town has pretty terrible wiring for everything. When we moved to our current house, I had a running battle with the cable company until they replaced the whole drop from the pole + some other gear to get decent internet service. In a previous house just a few blocks away, power was ridiculously dirty. Not surprising if one just looks up at the tangle of squirrel-gnawed cables hanging from the poles and the seemingly war-surplus power transformers.

Older houses around here seem to have pretty bad wiring, to the standard of the 1910s house we once owned in NJ. Our current house was built in the late 90s and wiring seems better, even though I still get transformer hum on my May, now filtered with an Emotiva CMX-2.

 

The house I live in was built in 1892 and God knows what has been upgraded since then. So it's likely a whole mix of patches and small fixes but problem spots. However, the room I live in was completely rewired for me, with almost every outlet being a dedicated line. but then that only goes to the box. Then who knows how the wiring is from there. We have a big yard, my friend used to call my house "Squirelville" because they're everywhere here. I had the same problem with the internet line and it was so hard to force them to replace the whole damn thing. It used to go out every time it rained. Took like a year to make them redo it.

I just want good sounds. Gods are you listening!? Give me clean power!!

 

Isolating all network components with isolation transformer plus banish them away from audio circuit works for me/ I also once put my preamp too close to my pc monitor turns out my optical hdmi cable radiated so much noise than normal displayport cable..

Lately I had a good deal on pangea 9ac se, plug 2 monitors /pc/dac in power strip then pangea to wall outlet.. everything went silenced since then and keep the sound quality quite consistent during the day.

Imo, if my power quality is good enough at the begin with. My audio journey might stop at cheap schiit stacks.. as if living in 300 units apartment is not bad enough

 

Your optical cable radiated?

This is the first time I've ever heard of optical hdmi, so if I'm being stupid, please excuse. but...

 

fiber optic / active optical cable / or whatever, just so you know this isnt 90s