he said « chop the cheddar of it? » it’s what he said ? ( like sucked the life). Apparently not sucking the dynamics as a lot of power conditioners.
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Yes, he is saying that some power conditioners suck the life out of the music and reduce the dynamics. But then he says, you need a good one, because it will reduce the noise floor without reducing the dynamics and that will give you better sound quality than increasing your amplification.
i understood that. It’s just the expression i am not sure of: chop the cheddar or something like that, in the beginning of the video.
He says “choke the sh#t”, which is a bit French!
results of the hificritic review on power conditioners or powerblocks effectives
Equipment £/1% of improvement
Isotek Aquarius 83 ___________________________________________
Vertex HiRez Taga 92 ___________________________________________
Nordost QB6 100 ___________________________________________
Vertex HiRez Balanced Taga 108 ___________________________________________
Shunyata Venom 180 ___________________________________________
Isol-8 Substation 207
(I shall discuss this further in the Conclusions section.)
Power blocks of various configurations can work very well but i’d still start with dedicated mains. Get this right first and then do the other tweaky things if you need to…
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i have it already…however for some the results are not often as promised.
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Hi
Related to power blocks, I have a single dedicated spur only a couple m from the distribution box for my Naim gear and use a 5m 2.5mm three core cable to 4 mains outlets. These then connect to my equipment via 4 power lines.
I am splitting the 4 outlets to 2x2way MK logic outlets which are then combined locally 5m away at the spur socket outlet.
I have:
555PSDR feeding NDS
SN2
HiCapDr feeding SN2
Melco N1ZH music server
Any suggestions what to connect to each pair of mains outlets would be appreciated
Cheers
Steve
you have a near 20k source ( nds/555dr/ melco n1z) fed to the SN. Not common. Perhaps a future upgrade of the electronics ?
@Mike-B, @Darkebear, or other should respond to your question.
Yes, I’m thinking about that. Either SN3 or probably better fit 282 and 250 DR (I have the hicap)
Problem is room to put the second Fraim rack. It won’t realistically fit!
My speakers are Fact 8, interconnects are superlumina as are speaker leads.
Steve
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you can put the hicap under the rack, on a little wooden shelf. 282/250 will give better justice to your source. I have the same source, however only the n1/2a. My goal is the z model.
Most people conceptualize the mains supply all backwards and view their equipment boxes as passive items connecting to a mains circuit that has noise on it from elsewhere and just needs to be a low resistance to the house input box to be optimal - all of that is wrong.
The noisiest items are in fact the HiFi power supply boxes - inside they rectify the mains by near-short-circuiting it at 100Hz (UK) to generate DC for the HiF circuits. This process is very noisy and much more noisy than anything going on farther away. The high-frequency large-amplitude noise pulses near the HiFi cause the most noise.
To optimize results you need to look a lot closer to the main sources of noise on the mains - the HiFi itself - and try to contain that noise and optimize the routing of mains cables.
Avoid long runs of cables and long parallel runs from the house mains input to your HiFi individual powered items for best results.
All of this aligns with what people actually find when they experiment, rather than imagine they know what is happening. So you will expect the items closest to the HiFi Mains sockets to be most important hence the HiFi power lead items like Powerline, then the mains blocks (people also find these important when they actually try them) to group all these together and null-out all the circulating currents in a small loop - big-loops pick-up problems and also radiate them, so keep things simple.
In your case, group items that connect to each other: so 555PS(NDS) and Melco - then SN2 and HiCap(SN2) - if the HiFi boxes pick-up their mains feed in the same sequence the boxes also connect their signal feeds then the loops formed will not form a complex-mesh of circulating currents but more simple individual loops - lower cross-modulation… essentially cleaner more dynamic sounding with less ‘mush’.
My approach works on my system - all I’d advise is a good dedicated mains circuit to the HiFi in addition to separate the other house noisy items somewhat - nothing is perfect but it helps.
I’m not a fan of multiple radial runs for each HiFi box as it is wrong thinking of how it all works - I tried that and it has a cold dead sound in my system I did not like, so I group all my HiFi together as described and it works for me.
As always try it and if you are happy you have your result.
DB.
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Darkbear. Thanks, I’ll give that a go as I can experiment a bit. As usual I am constrained by practical positioning. Short of replastering 3 walls, my dedicated spur has to be 5m from the rack (only one place for the rack).
FrenchRooster. My HiCap is currently on a small granite slab on the floor! Basically a granite chopping board. Not enough shelves at the moment
Steve
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I’ve made great progress just putting Naim glass etc under my Rega Aria phonostage. The 552 below befitted with less mush as you put it. While the preloved 552/500 was settling in over 5 months turning the Aria off didn’t noticeably make a difference but a week ago the glass made a big difference. I can’t be sure I didn’t just stop the Aria mains cable touching an interconnect, but I have checked from time to time. The position of the Aria relative to the 552 has changed a bit. It has a small toroid.
Your advise on spacing has helped a lot.
So before this I was planning to put the dedicated radial on a new Consumer Unit. What change would this make in your experience?
Phil
I’d not necessarily change your plan.
All I can say is that I just put in a set of Raidials and a Ring from separate fused mains circuits from my single house CU - tried all these as options and decided the Ring arrangement sounded best so settled on a normal wire gauge house mains ring circuit but laid ‘flat’; so that geometrically it folded back on itself linearly but electrically it was a ring - if that makes sense. I discarded the Radial mains circuits - I still have them available next to my HiFi but they don’t work as well as all HiFi onto the One Ring (to rule them all).
This was because I figured I wanted a low RF cross-section and that is a single run of mains as a single radial - or a flat ‘ring’ which I preferred. All other options subtended a larger geometric cross-section loop and let-in ‘nasties’ that I think were causing my rejection of these options.
I just wanted a tested easy to install option - the above worked wonderfully for me.
I think it is more about keeping all your HiFi connected mains stuff neatly in a small subtended geometric area from other things in the neighborhood or house mains, rather than lots of massive-gauge wires for each box. That is just my personal opinion though.
There are fields with noise that can couple-in through open loops of wiring, so keeping these loops made between mains and interconnects small is sensible IMO. Then you want the mains wiring to stand-off any directly injected noise onto the wiring by other noisy equipment by having these make their own way to the CU on the normal house mains - and having your HiFi as an island on its own mains circuit is how I see it. These two necessarily connect at the CU but I prefer one connection and not lots of them each forming multiple interacting loops.
…it is why I home-auditioned all these and decided what I liked.
DB.
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My experience was that running the dedicated supply from its own consumer unit was key. Running it from the main house CU gave no significant benefit that I could hear.
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I’ve been using Shunyata Research products for years, with great success. For an expensive 500 series setup I’d be looking at a Shunyata Triton v3. With a Shunyata Sigma EF power cord. Power is all Shunyata does and they nail it. If you have a dealer see if you can get a home trial. Also a PS Audio P20… or two P10 the PSA units are active power regenerators. Like a little personal power station. Also Synergistic Research does some very innovative things also worth a home trial
Last year I have bought an 8 way PowerBlack Distribution Block from Custom HiFi Cables and I am very satisfied with its build and sound quality . The cables are star-connected as with an hydra cable and one can choose the length of the individual cables and the type of the connectors. If I am not mistaken it costed around £1200. I have a modest system but I am not sure I would like to have anything more expensive (let apart esoteric) even if I had your system.
The Custom Hifi Cables PowerBlack cable outperforms the individual Powerigel leads in my system and the Powerline, too. The Powerigel has bested anything else so far, including the Powerigel Plus. I now have the Powerblack Block on order and will report back. They make them to order and mine will be working out at £530 with a 2m inlet lead and 4x1m outlets.
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