They are made of very solid Acrylic about 50mm square. As most risers do they remove a sonic haze things seem to come out of more darkness. They are extremely well made and cost a lot but not a stupid amount
I need to improve my cable management skills after looking at some of the photos here.
Vibration causing microphony is a potential issue in low signal level cables, the lower the signal level the higher the level of any microphony may be relative to the signal, to then be amplified alongside the wanted signal. Microphony in a even a poorly designed/manufactured speaker cable will be at an extremely low level relative to the music signal level.
Funny enough I have dedicated mains , was reading some forums advising that. But it changed absolutely nothing in my case, or maybe a very subtle change. It was some years ago.
The best improvement was an audiophile powerblock with a high quality power cord.
As for cables lifters, it made more improvements, even if it was not night and day. But much less expensive than the bill for the electrician.
Hi frechrooster,
The only time I fitted a dedicated supply was at our previous property and I was never happy with the sound. After a few months I plugged everything back into the standard ring main and suddenly all the musical coherence and involvement returned. Maybe something to do with the mains in the area, I don’t know. But I would never bother with the expense and upheaval involved again based on that experience.
I had a dedicated mains put in when I had a 282/300 system. I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Everything sounded better. Then we had a room rearrangement, so I had to move the system to an area with standard mains ring…and heard absolutely no difference!
I’ve learnt over the years that I am extremely susceptible to confirmation bias. I can convince myself any new component or change is brilliant even if it’s done naff all. My cables are left languishing on the floor for this very reason.
That’s interesting, Barry.
Did you ever try plugging the system to the mains ring and then the dedicated mains and back again while it was in one position?
Is your system still in that same room?
Same here, small but noticeable difference
Cheers
At the end of the day, you can spend shed loads on fancy mains cables, mains blocks etc and still end up plugging into a house ring with multiple connections and other devices (mostly with switching supplies) sitting on it and wonder whether dedicated mains would have given more bang for buck…
My install cost me just under £700 – about the price of a new Power-Line. I think I wrote at the time that I was quite impressed with the improvement. I don’t A/B but one of the most effective demonstrations (if I need to convince myself) is plugging my spare Nait 1 into the lounge ring or dedicated supply. The little amp sounds bigger, bolder and cleaner on the dedicated supply.
The main thing for me is the day to day consistency in performance of my system. It doesn’t have off days, it doesn’t sound different whether the Plasma TV is on (very noticeable on the house ring) or other things are going on in the house. That one thing makes the install worth it. A couple of pre-loved Power-Lines were the icing on the cake.
At the end of the day there are so many variables at play ‘in the field’ as it were that I think it’s very hard to generalise on things like dedicated mains and cable risers. All we can say is that these things seem to make an improvement for some people and not for others. This doesn’t prove or disprove anything. I think the science / engineering / reasoning behind these things is at best rather shaky. More in the realms of what I would call pseudo-science. But if they work for you then it doesn’t matter about that one jot.
Very interesting and useful information, James (especially as you rarely comment on how changes effect SQ).
But I notice you’re keeping stumm about your cable risers!
Indeed. My speaker cables rise up from the floor to my amplifier terminals and speaker terminals. Seems to work ok
Quite easily. I can very easily take my low resolution oscilloscope and the correct probes and measure voltage and sine wave noise direct on the mains. I can probe after a transformers DC rectifiers and see the effects of that overlayed (if any) on the 50Hz ripple of a DC rail. Given a function generator or even just a test tone source, it is even quite trivial to see any effect left on a 1KHz AC audio signal. Those are all measurable and I literally have the tools in box to do that.
Now, whether what can be measured and in fact quantified results in an audible difference, sure, that is entirely subjective. But then at the extreme level absolutely everything is. After all there are people so tone deaf they cannot even hear the difference between a 800Hz tone and a 1KHz tone. We can never be sure of the human element. But can it be measured and quantified and compared? Yes and easily so. I’m not even an electrical engineer and I have the tools to do this and have do so in the past.
Danny Ritchie’s theory that the main benefit of cable risers comes from reducing static makes me think I will try to change them to some other material (e.g. acrylic, ceramic, wood, plastic) in future.
But also the main purpose of my pipe lagging rings is to keep cables away from the EM fields of other cables.
The downsides of other types of risers are that they are probably more expensive, harder, and they don’t automatically move with the cables.
In the past I used this too, a mains noise detector.
A small speaker makes mains noise audible. The difference in noise from any socket in the house, at any moment of the day, vs. my spur was huge. I still have the thingy somewhere.
Cool toy!
I want one!
I borrowed a similar one from Isotek from my dealer to play with. Not convinced, as first of all Isotek does not really say what it measures, and interestingly it had better, cleaner readings the more supposedly noisy things I plugged in.
Not kidding, it was unhappy with my mains after I switched off all circuit breakers in the apartment except the hifi circuit, where I plugged in the Isotek box.
Then I plugged in and turned on everything from fridge to washing machine to laptop and every cheap SMPS I could find, and then the box said that my mains was great.
And of course Isotek wants to scare you into buying their mains cleaner products in the first place.
This one is from Kemp Electronics, a well known Dutch manufacturer of mains (related) products. They sell a lot of other stuff too nowadays. At the time, they were ‘the’ go-to for installing dedicated audio spurs in NL. They installed my first spur too, about 20 years ago. I do it myself since then.
This device was developed primarily for their own use during installation work and for dealers to use at customers. It came with a booklet explaining exactly how & what it measures but I don’t have it anymore. Not many were made as there was little demand and they were not cheap.
The Isotek one is 1K as well, hence why I borrowed it
Would be interesting to know what yours measures, it’s at least more useful if they made the effort to explain