Hi.
Has anybody tried, or is using, an Airlink Transformers balanced transformer, without any type of filtering, supply unit?
And/Or a Connected Fidelity AC-2K balanced transformer supply unit?
What are/where your findings?
Thank you.
Kind regards.
Roger.
I certainly recall reading several people having done in the past. Have you tried the search facility, e.g Airlink balanced?
Airlink Transformer BPS100230MP: one of my best upgrades
Can you say a bit more about it please?
Equitech are another manufacturer of BPT.
There’s not a whole lot to say about them. If they are rated properly for the circuit they provide excellent passive noise rejection (the balanced part) and also reject DC offset entirely since that cannot traverse a linear transformer.
As passive devices they don’t have any active mains conditioning in their truest form but rejection of common mode noise and DC offset is usually a significant benefit.
As they are common in industrial applications and hospitals (for both noise and safety, machines like nMRI and CAT need to run off them) you don’t necessarily need an audiophile device. A medical grade one may be lower cost.
Bluesfan has posted a lot of useful info on his Airlink solution. Search Bluesfan Airlink and you should find what you are looking for.
Thank you to everyone for there responses.
I will go away and do some more reading/investigating.
Kind regards
Roger
it takes its current from a meter tail coming out of a 100A Henley block, and feeds a dedicated CU with two cables going to two single sockets; one for the power amp, the other for the source/pre-amp.
Clear, vivid and deeper sound all day long.
Recommended.
I use the Airlink CBS3000UKMP and have done for many years. For bps’s to work at their best you really need to know what your average mains voltage is, because it can and does vary from location to location in the UK. My particular bps has 3 taps for voltage, 230v, 240v and 250v. With Airlink though, you can specify the voltage and they will make one for your specified voltage.
As @sbilotta has said, you get clear, vivid and deeper sound along with a blackness that you will not get by any other means. Also that bain of a lot of Naim owners is banished into history, no more humming transformers. One thing to keep in mind though, never ever plug an SMPS into the bps.
Certainly check your mains Voltage, it can be a minefield these days, especially if you or your neighbours have solar panels which can significantly increase Voltage levels and fluctuations. An electrician should measure it with a proper calibrated Volt meter, but a cheap plugin one will give you a good idea of what’s actually happening.
The bigger balanced models from airlink like i have, have 3 different input voltage tags to choose from.
For the price you won’t do better, you can keep your expensive mains blocks as a balanced unit will be hugely better.
What is the reason balanced PS’s don’t work well with SMPS? I have a Plixir BPS and there it’s the same.
SMPS’s are responsible for the vast majority of mains pollution within modern households. If you plug one into the “clean” side of a bps it will then pollute everything else plugged into that bps. In other words you may as well not have bothered using a bps in the first place.
I use a Topaz ultra Isolation transformer (10kVA) with zero filtering, wired for balanced power output. It’s the premier .0005pf interwinding capacitance baddie (31 series). Weighs over 400 lbs inside of its weather proof safety enclosure.
Best single upgrade I’ve made in my system.
Heading to bed. More thoughts tomorrow.
My Hifi radial takes its current from a meter tail and feeds a dedicated CU with two cables going to two single sockets too.
But I don’t have a balanced transformer in that circuit.
Sounds like I’m missing out on something.
But the meter is on the wall outside my sitting room, and the dedicated CU is immediately on the inside of the same wall.
Depending on how big the balanced transformer would be, it may be too big to fit in my sitting room?
Ideally you don’t want a balanced power transformer in the listening room at all.
In the unusual event you have DC offset and any of your main hifi units are humming as a result, a BPT will move that offset from the transformer in your hifi to the BPT itself. As a result, they might actually hum. The best place is hard wired in circuit near the CU which is hopefully somewhere no one will ever notice a soft humming. Many may be close to silent if the mains if fairly good.
I’ve heard of people mounting them on utility poles outside the house altogether.
To be honest, I’d probably look at a BPT after other things like having a dedicated earth installed for the hifi and if your mains uses a TT grounding system, also use it for the neutral on their hifi circuit. Usually such changes are not super expensive and a dedicated earth for the hifi circuit is going to go a long way to isolating the hifi from the rest of the house.
There’s no humming in my system at all that I’m aware of.
The system sounds really clean and really good.
So perhaps I don’t need anything more.
But it is possible that a better earth rod would improve sound quality even further.
It depends how much room is required
and what depth it needs to be dug to.
I don’t know whether I have a TT grounding system. From memory I think it says PME in the meter?
Those are all questions only your sparky can answer. Including whether your property can use TT to provide and isolated neutral too. Regulations vary by country, region, and existing property.
Listening to the system now in the early morning in the UK, it sounds sublime!
Clean as a whistle.
If somebody said I could always have this sound quality, never better or never worse, I would not be at all unhappy.
It’s the kind of sound I’ve always dreamed of having: enormous in scale and delicate in reproducing the sound of real instruments in real rooms.
yes well “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is sadly not within the scope of understanding for 99% of audiophiles.
I think most live by the motto, “I’m gonna f%%% with it until I’m finally unhappy with the result and then f%%% with it some more.” 
