Hi all,
Please bear with me, as I am not at all a ‘techie’. Today, on the advice of my hifi dealer, I replaced the standard 12V power supply of my router with one from iFi. I can’t swear I hear a difference (maybe it sounds a little ‘tighter’), but it certainly doesn’t make the sound worse. Then I thought: wait a minutre, the ethernet signal from the ‘cleaned-up’ router then goes to two switches (one on which my Nucleus resides and one in the living room). The latter ‘feeds’ a wireless access point that sends the signal to my SX2. So, this means three devices are in the chain that are not on ‘clean’ current (not to mention the SX2 itself and the power amp). Doesn’t this undo the possible positive effect of the iFi on the router? Should I buy three more iFi’s and better power supplies for SC2 and amp? Sounds like an expensive route to go.
Then I thought: why not tackle the issue at the source? If I could install a ‘cleaner’ in the circuit before the power is distributed throughout the house, wouldn’t that be the ultimate solution? Or would that be even more expensive?
Perhaps I’m missing something about what various issues are tackled by different solutions here.
Thanks for any insights any of you has to offer.
The best thing you can do is install a dedicated mains supply for the hifi. There are lots of threads about this on the forum. Keep all computer stuff such as router and switches on the usual house mains.
Just be aware that there is a lot of rubbish out there and people make a lot of money selling stuff you don’t need. I’d be highly dubious about the benefits of the power supplies you are talking about. I bought a special linear power supply for a Netgear switch once and it made no difference. Then it stopped working after a few months anyway.
Thanks. Forgive my ignorance, but I’m not entirely sure what a ‘dedicated power supply’ is? I’ve been reading some of the posts on the subject, as you advised, but they all seem to assume that one knows what it is… Is it what I referred to as the ‘filter on the source’? If I google it and look at images, they all show meter cupboards with extra boxes, so I guess that’s what it is. If so, why only apply it to the ‘group’ your HiFi is on and not the entire system, while you’re at it? Is that to really isolate from the rest?
On a different note: when my HiFi system is on and not playing music, my speakers emit nothing but dead silence, which I think is a good sign, right? Or is this unrelated to the benefits of clean power?
I forgot to mention that I live in Holland (220V) and currently all my equipment is plugged into ungrounded sockets. This doesn’t seem to cause any problems, though.
It’s nothing about filters. You have a separate consumer unit (where the fuses are) for the hifi, with a cable direct to the socket. You keep all computer stuff off this separate supply.
Got it. I thought I could place a box on the existing wiring but I need to run a new cable to the place where my hifi is. Thanks! I will make enquiries about the cost of all this. One last question, if I may. Does the dedicated mains supply do anything other than just separate the circuits?
Are you living in a detached house or an apartment? If in an apartment, the dedicated circuit is questionable as you most likely cannot split off the hifi circuit directly at the building supply.
In my case, I live in an apartment (Germany) and already had (by chance, god bless the sparky who did this when the building was erected) a separate circuit for the hifi. I am lucky because I have transformer hum only very rarely and then not bad. Several times, when it occurred, I turned off all other apartment circuits for testing, i.e., absolutely all other power consumers in my apartment were off. Made absolutely no difference whatsoever, so I guess the problem comes from the outside or the neighbors, and in an apartment there’s little one can do against either, apart from some filtering in front of the hifi, which is not cheap to do right (if possible at all).
If you cannot isolate your apartment’s power supply from neighbors, changing one or even more power supplies within your apartment may not achieve anything (even if we assume that the PSes have any effect in the first place) unless you also invest in your neighbors’ PSes. But only way to know is to try, I guess
I’ve had better luck actually with the iFi AC iPurifiers than their wall warts (I actually think the $15 wall wart Uptone sells is better). Stick a few AC iPurifers in spare sockets and it will clean up the sound without changing it, plus rest easier with surge protection. I have two in the server/network closet power strip, two for the front end gear upstairs (which are on dedicated outlets) and one for the office UQ.
I actually have the good fortune to live on a quiet country road, with the nearest neighbours hundreds of metres away on either side, so that’s no problem, electricity-wise. In my case, I would only need 15 metres of cable from the fusebox to the living room, so it’s worth a try. Thanks.
As I don’t see them having an ‘output’, do I understand correctly that such a purifier is just added to a spare socket of e.g. the strip my equipment is on to work their magic? At 119 euros they are not real cheap…
Correct, use them on a spare outlet. No, they’re not inexpensive, but compared to a lot of power conditioners they are. Plus, they’re moveable and no waste - by that I mean you’re not buying a $$$ power strip conditioner with 8 outlets to only end up using a few of them.