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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Re: Current demand should not be a problem. posted by Patster on December 17, 2006 at 17:05:14:
I'm assuming your audio equipment is grounded. If not, what follows does not apply.The AC 'ground' is there for safety, so that if a live wire inside a piece of equipment comes into electrical contact with the case, the AC circuit breaker will trip before a lethal voltage develops on the case. The actual connection to the earth is farther away than the circuit breaker box, so the impedance to earth and the neutral wire is not negligible for RF noise in most cases. This does not matter for safety, but it does matter for most audio systems' performance.
Noise that gets onto the safety-earth wiring gets into the audio equipment through deliberate or parasitic coupling from the chassis to the audio ground. This means it acts in series with your signal and degrades what you hear.
The problem with many power conditioners is they couple noise from the AC hot-neutral to the AC safety-earth. This may also be happening in your Blue Circle device, or maybe not: the web site has a comment about how early models would cause ground-fault interrupters to trip, but that this issue has been fixed. This means they used capacitors from hot to AC safety-earth in the early models, whose charging current would cause the GFI devices to trip. They either eliminated these or made them smaller in the later models. Since I don't know which, and how old your unit is, I suggested the experiment of replacing it with a standard simple power bar (without filters). The lesser-quality outlets may cause some loss of detail with the standard bar, but the absence of a hot-ground capacitor would prevent this pathway for noise to get into your equipment and give you a more relaxed sound if this pathway is important.
If you don't hear a more relaxed sound in this experiment, then your Blue Circle device is probably a good thing to have. Larger and more elaborate power conditioners have larger metal boxes and are more effective at coupling noise to the AC ground. Of course, there may be one that does a better job of filtering and avoids AC ground noise contamination, but the only technique I know of for this is patented and not likely to be found in audiophile gear.
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Follow Ups
- No, not in general. - Al Sekela 20:49:29 12/17/06 (2)
- Re: No, not in general. - Patster 21:13:16 12/17/06 (1)
- Alan reports there is no ground connection in the BC. - Al Sekela 11:02:14 12/18/06 (0)
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