It’s because of the way surge protection works. It monitors the voltage/current on the mains and limits any spikes by shunting the excess current to earth. Hi-fi systems are dynamic in their power requirements, not steady state. When there are loud dynamic swings in the music the surge protection will tend to limit the current available and so compress the dynamics of the music. In an ideal world this wouldn’t happen, but nothing is perfect and these devices don’t function perfectly in this regard. For general use it is of no consequence at all, but for hi-fi use it makes them unsuitable.
A codicil here though. Whilst a surge protected block is fine for general use if required, don’t use one on the same mains circuit as your hi-fi. It will still affect the music badly. In fact I wouldn’t even have one connected anywhere in the house, even if you have a dedicated mains for the hi-fi. This will share the same earth as the rest of the house (unless specially and seperately earthed) and so anything connected anywhere can still potentially have an effect, though it will be reduced compared to if you don’t have a dedicated hi-fi mains.
I’m surprised to say the least and that differs very significantly from my own experience but if you don’t hear a difference then you don’t. Presumably you use the Tacima solely as a protection against possible damage from mains surges then?
To be honest, I have just used them for so long that it has become a habit. Like so many things Hifi accessories (including power blocks etc) I was taken in by the marketing. Whether they are effective in case of surges, I have no idea. There are some that believe they don’t and some that say the gas module in the Tacima will only be reliable for some 5 years. Go figure.
When I received the N50, I plugged it into the mains as the Tacima was hidden behind the rack. A couple of days later I switched it back on and experimented with the included Naim power chord vs the screened one I had, no difference. I then put the little Naim on the rack and plugged it in to the Tacima. No difference I’ve noticed and if there was one it’s not worth breaking ones head over it. I am power block/mains cable agnostic and simply would not spend a lot on it. Makes no difference to me but like I mentioned months ago I would be happy to perhaps buy one of Naim’s better power leads used to do an A/B. I can simply move it on if necessary. Alternatively if anyone wants to lend me one for a week … .
Regarding throttling amplifier dynamic power by surge protectors, I am no electrician but isn’t the amplifiers power supply including reservoir caps there for exactly that? If the amplifier doesn’t receive the voltage required it would simply stop working no?
It’s easy to be taken in by marketing and reviews in hi-fi magazines. Few of us could probably claim to be completely immune to it. I know I’m not, and it recently led to me wasting £5K on the purchase of a Melco music library/server. I was taken in by the good reviews and the notions of it being superior to CD playback and a much better and “modern way”. Only after living with it for a number of months did I realise that, for me at least, the reality was different and simply didn’t match what I had read and been convinced by. I behaved stupidly and I should have known better by then. I have learned after many yeras to trust my own ears rather than marketing or reviews. But this was an unfortunate and costly lapse of judgement.
We must all be guided by our own ears and experiences. Your experience with your Tacima, rack and cables surprises me because it is so different to my experiences. But it is no less valid. This is one of the fascinating things about our hobby. If I had been with you listening to your system when you made these changes and I had heard differences when you didn’t then would that have made me right and you wrong, or me a more careful/better listener than you? Of course not. Whether there are any objective differences would be impossible to determine. Either one of us could be imagining things. You could be imagining that there was no difference when there was in fact one. I could be imagining there as a difference when in reality there wasn’t. There’s absolutely no reference point. We each of us have our own reality of what we hear and that leads us to form views about things. The mistake some people make is to believe that their own views are the correct ones and that if other people have different views then they are mistaken. I’ve certainly fallen into that trap in the past from time to time but I hope now I’ve learnt not to.
Even so one still holds a view informed not just by one’s own experiences but also by the weight of evidence from other people that one considers rightly or wrongly to be relevant. One takes a position on these things which one believes in. I believe that surge protection is very bad news for the music. I remain open minded so that if convincing evidence and experience to the contrary came my way then I would no doubt form a different view.
It wouldn’t stop working because it’s still receiving the correct average mains voltage it needs. What happens is that during loud music peaks the voltage/current demands far exceed the average. Surge protection limits this so that it restricts the dynamics of the music. I’m no expert on amplifier design but yes I believe the reservoir caps are there to enable fast and sufficient current delivery on music peaks but if the available mains current is starved by surge protection then because of the continually shifting musical dynamics asnd associated current demands the caps presumably simply won’t have time to recharge fully before they are next called upon to deliver.
Perhaps this is more obvious if KW amplifiers are used at very high volume? I really don’t know but with the amplifiers I have used in the past, all around the 100w or so mark, it did not seem to impact.
Some also seem to think that bus bars in power blocks are a no no (I assume the Tacima uses them) and that internal cable wiring is preferable. I take the pragmatic approach and think that electricity doesn’t know if it is a cable or a bar. Its not a tiny sound signal. Perhaps I am wrong but it certainly never caused my a sleepless night.
The expensive Chord M6 and S6 blocks that I use have bus bars in them. Chord found that this was more immune to HF noise than other configurations. I don’t think bus bars are inherently bad, it’s more that they have a bad reputation because most blocks that use them are of poor quality generally and the bus bars are very flimsy.
@70sPete …. please don’t get negative about busbars. A busbar in real world electrics is a very common and regulated connection method used in power distribution and industrial installations.
Busbar sizing is regulated by standards IEC 61439-1 and BS EN 61439-1.
The metal strip conductors found in most all domestic power strips are not busbars, hence why I call them ‘daisy chains’.
These have been found to influence the optimal positioning of various audio units. The current loading and resultant voltage drop of one device can affect others depending on their place in the chain. This is assumed to be due to the integrity of the plug/pin contacts and the current-carrying capacity of the metal strips
From what I’ve seen of the Chord busbars, the size (mm/2) look to be more than able to carry the current with no volt drops of any domestic audio. But they are busbars and not daisy chain.
I don’t agree with some of their rational for using this connection method over radial ….
I prefer radial connections in my own power dist unit.
I have no idea personally whether or not this is valid. I read that they had tried various wiring configurations during development and found that using bus bars provided the most immunity from HF noise, particularly over star wiring. But that was in the overall context of their particular design. It’s entirely possible that in another context, such as your own home made distribution unit, another configuration might prove to be superior. Experimenting with these things at home tends to be extremely tedious and involves powering down, swapping over, waiting for it to warm up again…. Too much for me to bother with. If I was going home made I would just use some Crabtree sockets daisy chained as I have done very successfully in the past. I can see the merits of a radial arrangement such as yours but what would concern me is the introduction of another connection in the mains path. But then perhaps this is outweighed by avoiding daisy chaining….