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Most "tweaks" I take with between a grain and a mine of salt.
However, recently a customer came in and mentioned a tweak I can find no fault with:
If you (Americans and Canadians) have equipment that can be switched to 220V, get a line run to your listening area, and switch the equipment to 220V. Why?
The way electricity works at our homes is that it comes off the transformer at 240V with a center tap. The center tap is neutral, which is connected to ground at your circuit box. Each "half" of the 240V feeds half your circuits.
That means that any "hash" present is mostly common mode across the 220V and not common mode on either 120V line. So if you run your equipment on 240V, most of the hash, being common mode, cancels. This is the same reason balanced signals are superior to unbalanced, and why internet cables use twisted pairs with differential input at the receiving end.
My customer reports that the improvement in sound is better than any fancy power cord he's tried.
Follow Ups:
Remember to buy smaller amperage fuses too.
.....the components will only draw half the current and run cheaper as a bonus (twice the voltage-half the current). I am big fan of european designed kitchen appliances (Porsche, Petra, Siemens, etc.) and buy them in Germany. Just pull 240vac out the back of your stove and terminate with a German power bar. The appliances seem to last much longer as well, in my experience
Edits: 08/01/22
Power is current times voltage. (watts)
1 amp times 120 volts is 120 watts.
.5 amp times 240 volts is 120 watts.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
"Still Working the Problem"
Adjust for power factor, in some cases.......But otherwise you're 100%
Too much is never enough
If your audio devices cannot accept or easily convert to 240VAC, you can retain the benefits by using stepdown transformers that output two 60VAC resulting in balanced 120VAC for your devices. I've done it for 20 years now and the benefits are the same as mentioned above. I do make sure to fuse both legs on anything I build where devices made for conventional 120VAC power only fuse the hot leg.
Does Core Power Technologies Equi=Core do something like that?
The advantage of using 240V lines was written up in an article in Audio Amateur sometime back in the late 70s early 80s but I can't find it now.The company's name you are thinking of is Equi=tech (located in Oregon). They sell balanced power applications to recording studios and residential users. I just bought a 120V 2RQ unit after trying one out for awhile. I got a lower noise floor and a much more 3D soundstage.
Another company, Torus Power, sells isolation transformers. I'm not sure whether these systems are balanced or not, but the aim is noise reduction.
Jon Risch had a write-up and a home-brew solution for this stuff on his website.
Edits: 08/02/22
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