I removed all my mains fuses and replaced them with copper bar years ago , there are no safety issues with this because my mains conditioners have built in RCBO type protection . I am told the uk are the only countries to put fuses in mains plugs anyway.
Overall i did not notice a large improvement ,although it seems to improve transient response, and bass "tightness." Treating all connections with caig deoxit d5 and re-tightening makes a big improvement too.
I understand where you are coming from Fred and it's a classic doubter's argument. No twiddling of the volume is necessary when you try these devices at home for yourself! I can empathise as I was once of the same mindset. You should try the gear, you might be pleasantly surprised? Balanced against the cost of completely revamping your hifi, such upgrades, although not costing pennies, can be considered cost effective.
Although this is off-thread, for further info, in my experience the worst interference comes from within your own Mains setup. There can also be cross-contamination between hi-fi components e.g Switched Mode PSUs feeding hash back into the Mains where it is picked up by your other, perhaps analogue supplied, components? To give a practical example I once wrote to Naim to obtain their blessing to use a competitor's Switched Mode Power Supply on one of their pre-amps. They said this was ok but cautioned me that if doing an A-B comparison with Naim's analogue supply the test might be compromised against the analogue supply because the Switched Mode would pollute the results obtained from the Naim....
So if the manufacturers are worried - shouldn't you be too?
I enjoyed your amusing story the other day, and it raises some profound questions : Some technology, especially the Quantum stuff, is so technically obscure as to seem like Black magic/Voodoo to anyone. Another question concerns perception. The brain/ear relationship as you rightly imply represents the other unseen half of our hifi system....with the Room/electronics being the first half...
Hi Electro. Strongly agree and you are an example to us all. I even went so far as to solder all my appliance fuses into place, including the Mains plugs, during a "Mains tightening phase" .
hi bill & electro. I was sceptical about mains conditioners especially the price on most of them- but last year we had a surge that blew the transformer on my nine month old panasonic tv - lucky warranty still active - tv fixed i bought a belkin pure av mains conditioner with surge protection noticed improvement in picture quality immediately - connected to hifi with similar results got all my system hooked up through them now - well pleased.
As for thread subjects - been through other sites and was amazed at negative responses to these subjects ! - - carl.
Hi Carl. Good to hear you are enjoying your AV system! I only wish I'd discovered the Mains accessories 20 years ago instead of the mere 8 years I've been using them.
Getting back to your original question, someone (was it Fred?) asked if the Demag device worked on vinyl? Received wisdom indicates that Virgin Vinyl is completely free from metallic/ferric particulates but non-virgin vinyl is not...
I also believe that someone does indeed market an LP demagnetiser! You place the LP on a turntable sized platter and it does the business for you. Given the sensitivity of MC cartridges to stray magnetic fields, they may be onto something....
In my opinion though this may be the last resort - the ultimate accessory for the man who has everything and is trying to squeeze that last iota of performance from his system .
I'm lost for words, but thinking about it my amp is battery powered, and capable of enormous current delivery, the mains is only used for CD, so maybe inadvertently removed the problems.
'Balanced against the cost of completely revamping your hifi, such upgrades, although not costing pennies, can be considered cost effective'.
Sorry but with the best will in the world I cannot believe that soldering a fuse in place can produce results as good as 'revamping your Hi Fi', confused.
Hi John. The upgrades referred to in that particular response were Mains upgrades i.e. Mains Purifiers, RFI suppressing Mains cables, Wall-Wart Transient suppressors, Lightning strike protection etc? These are strongly recommended.
Fuses : Although this was an exercise I performed 20 years ago (my system has been completely revamped since then and the soldered fuses are long gone) fuses can be tarnished and loose in their mountings. Soldering was a good way of ensuring good mechanical contact and a sound connection. (quite apart from their internal construction...) Wiith finance being scarce, this was a good "free" upgrade along with the usual terminal tightening and cleaning.
"....the mains is only used for CD, so maybe inadvertently removed the problems."
John, oddly enough, the CD player is one of the most favourable recipients of a clean supply...
Be wary though....some units/players use Switched Mode PSU. The beauty of RFI cables is that they are non-invasive Mains filters which will help to eliminate the Mains noise feedback from the unit they protect. 2 filters for the price of one....
John. Battery powered amp? Was it the awareness of Mains noise and the desire to obtain "Sunday night listening quality" every day that inspired this ?
Are you a 2-channel or 4/5 channel enthusiast BTW ?
Hi all. - If compact disc, DVD etc is prone to electromagnetism =static charge why are we not informed by information on the covers of the said discs? surely this should be the case ! - - Carl.
Hi all. - If compact disc, DVD etc is prone to electromagnetism =static charge why are we not informed by information on the covers of the said discs? surely this should be the case ! - - Carl.
Yes, yes, yes, quite right Fred, for all the talk about 'mains' I have never personally heard a click or pop through the mains. As to a previous comment that CD players are prone to such interference, sorry but IMO switched mode supplies are very immune to mains disturbances, note they rectify and smooth the mains AC, then recreate a new low voltage supply, one can actually miss a good few mains cycles before the output changes, they also have some serious EMI suppression if only to stop their emissions going back down the mains and affecting other gear, very necessary to gain CE approval, and all equipment has that approval.
".... they also have some serious EMI suppression if only to stop their emissions going back down the mains"
John, not back down the wires I hope! Every product may meet EMI standards but this does not prevent it being improved by RFI cancelling gear...
As if to illustrate the point, I strongly recommend that when you use your CD player, you should unplug your VCR from the Mains (i.e. if of recent manufacture) Chances are it contains an SMPS (mine does) and this actively interferes with the sound of your hifi system even when VCR is in quiescent mode....The same argument could be applied to other unnecessary appliances which are drawing current, if you have no Mains Cleaning in place e.g. mobile phone battery chargers etc.
(Another cheap upgrade : if your amplifier has an LED display you should deactivate it - if switchable. The oscillator will definitely cause sound damaging interference. I found this out a year ago quite by accident.)
..and why, out of curiosity, did you power your amp with batteries...?
I will take one point at a time here, in reverse order, the battery thing was more to make the amp portable, as I have a portable CD player, between the two I have a portable Hi Fi system.
Virtually all VCR's and CD players have SMPS, that is the norm, however I personally don't have one. or any other SMPS gear, so maybe I am missing the point.
John, not back down the wires I hope! Every product may meet EMI standards but this does not prevent it being improved by RFI cancelling gear.,
That is the point entirely - the equipment is so well protected then there is nothing more to protect it, most SMPS are so well protected that they do not suffer any 'mains born interference', they have to be to gain that CE approval, now I know that most 'power conditioners' contain a VDR and some better ones an inductive element, but for the most part that is all, these components cost a few pounds but when built into a fancy box may retail at several hundred, you are buying a perceived dream not a reality.
Now that is what marketing and sales is all about, sell a product that actually costs nothing for a few hundred pounds and you are onto a winner, that is what a large part of the Hi Fi industry is into, particularly the 'accessories' industry. Note that most of the main manufactures do nothing to promote these 'accssesories', they remain 'shtum' and say nothing, well I wonder why.
Note that the former costs about £9, the latter 20p, quantity 1.
Of course some nutters do buy boxes that are, in effect, 50Hz oscillators followed by a large power amplifier. I wonder if the owners of such behemoths complain about the audibility of crossover distortion in the power supply
The two of you appear to wish to bargain with the Engineering Industry and bypass the cost of manufacture, housing fabrication and drilling, Electronic/Mech assembly, Electronic test, Inspection and QA, and other Overheads (Overheads at least 3X the basic cost of putting employees bums on seats - or higher than that if London/Edinburgh district councils have anything to do with it!) and you simply wish to offer them the basic cost of the components ! Very decent of you !
(...and this from obvious electronic journeymen who purport to know the business. Shame on you.)
Equipment which is manufactured anywhere other than China is naturally going to be more expensive, but take heart in the knowledge that indigenous workforce/s greatly appreciate your business!
Just to reinforce what I was saying earlier, I did make some of my own filters but I always need more, and you can keep adding as many as you want. It's surprising just how many conditioning devices you can add before the difference becomes too small to notice. Once again I cannot emphasize enough how beneficial this is. A friend of mine did have a bash at making his own RFI suppressing braided Mains cable but I wouldn't recommend it unless you happen to be particularly good at knitting....(long lengths - with a collection of wire gauges) - much easier to leave it to the specialists...
If you do not wish to spend your money on such a hi-fi investment that is, of course, your choice...
OK Bill, now although the original reason for battery power was portability, it's unlimited current capability does give it an effortless portrayal of 'base slam' and 'transient' presentation. Yes I do understand the economics of manufacturing, but to offer a 'low cost' product in some fancy metalwork does nothing to improve it's sonics. IMO mains borne interference is 'a non existant' problem, plating a mains cable in any shape or form really does nothing for EMI suppression, if a SMP has all the filtering to stop crap going back down the mains then it is equally effective at stopping any interference from entering it, so whilst we may think of SMP as an enemy in the world of audio nirvana, it does have some plus points, however equally well a large analogue power supply with a screened transformer will be 99% immune to any high frequency noise on the mains, please note these observations are not from listening but from sound engineering principles, incidentally the same principles that created the CD and DVD player in the first place. Just to reinforce what I was saying earlier, I did make some of my own filters but I always need more, and you can keep adding as many as you want. Sorry if a filter is correct and works then why would you want another?
Many truths in life are hard to find, many are buried in myth and superstition, I believe the Hi Fi industry has more than it's share, after all if the studios who create our beloved music take no notice, the manufactures take no notice and the broadcast studios take no notice, have they all 'got it wrong', are you saying something that the professional audio industry needs to know?
When it comes to the supalties of SMP I wonder how many of you out there have 'trendy down light' spots in the listening room, how many of these are 'energy efficient' electronic transformers, so what are they, Oh no, more switched mode power supplies, now these often wipe out 'long wave' radio, but they are in the ceiling and not 'in your face' so can we conveniently forget them?
If as has been stated on this site that 'removing an LED' improved the sound then IMO you either have hearing 1000% better than most, or you are completely deluded.
Rod is a hero of mine. He became well known as Snake Oil Exposer extraordinaire...
One of the Important things about Rod is that rather than sit in an ivory tower and rubbish the Electronics Market in a purely theoretical manner....Rod obtains the offending item, tests it to within an inch of it's life in the Lab, then reports back to us interested parties...
It was good to see that Carl was open minded enough to at least try a controversial product and did something practical, and most importantly used his ears.
The context of Carl's original question was superior sound reproduction. This is one way of finding out. In fact your ears are one (or 2) of the most discerning tools in our armoury. Any lab engineer worth his salt will never condemn on the basis of pure conjecture. You need to prove that something does or doesn't work before anyone will take you seriously.
(Rod proved that RFI suppressing Mains cables work BTW but the other types didn't...which is just as well as I already had 3...)
.
