General Power Conditioning / Regeneration / Distribution / Grounding

The Puritan is a balanced power conditioner, isn’t it? Is that the same as an isolation transformer?

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No and isolation transforme is a transformer with the one side, not touching the other side, and hence it’s supposed to clean the signal up from your mains. They’re more for safety than for sound.

The two types of filters are serial and parallel, I like the Richard Gray I have as it’s parallel and in theory they’re not supposed to have any sound changing effects since the current doesn’t go through a filter, it’s just some type of component sitting on both leads and will balance/inject current in the fluctuations, kinds of like a flywheel effect. The serial filters actually run the current through the filter and thereby are capable of having a sonic effect. Of course theory and practice differ and everybody has a solution to the problem in their own way.

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All they really do is remove DC, which can be problematic, I put a scope on mine to verify, and the mains is equally crappy on both sides, minus the DC. They also effectively result in live output balanced between live and neutral if there is nothing grounding neutral.

It didn’t resolve my issue, which I’m pretty sure has more to do with just the crappy sine wave, and the noise piggy backed on it. I was reminded how terrible it was when I put a scope on the AC going into my DC heaters for the 2A3 amp.

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I’ve read about this and it can be a deadly, but they are used a lot in workshops and hospitals despite this.

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Transformers output float unless you explicitly tie one end of the output to a voltage. This is extremely useful, and why a tube amp can output a balanced signal despite being single ended, they just tie a center tap to ground.
If the device you plug in is grounded, it’s harmless, but it can be an issue.

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You ever tried the niagara line? Ive been currious about anuz vs niagara 5000 but cant find much info on it.

I haven’t. I wanted to try ansuz or audience and found the ansuz first. I liked it and have been running with it since. It also helps that I like the audio Denmark sound

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:thinking:

You ever try plugging in the ansuz to the pp? Totally out of curiosity…

Nope. Sold the Power Plant as soon as I heard the Ansuz.

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Does the ansuz have surge protection? My piwer is si sketchy.

Which PowerPlant did you have? I kind of remember you mentioning it before, P15 or P20?

I had the P5. My back wouldn’t survive a P20

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No. Everything it is built around is to reduce noise and that’s it. No filtration. No voltage regulation. No capacitors, etc.

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I can empathize on that, P15 was a bitch to get out of the box and under the rack. It’s not moving unless I get a forklift inside :rofl:

Thank you, will search for your initial impressions moving from the PowerPlant to the Ansuz, if you already posted them in one of the threads.

A few days ago I got curious about my wall power, so I broke out the multimeter to do some voltage measurements coming from my dedicated 20A line. I found out that I average at about 122-123V which is honestly pretty decent (115-125V is usually the range of what’s considered “good enough” with US voltage).

Then I decided to measure what’s coming out of my conditioners, and I made an interesting discovery… My Deep=Core 1800 was reading the same as the wall, nothing bad there. I also understand the purpose of a conditioner isn’t necessarily to correct the voltage, but at least it wasn’t making it worse… unlike my equi=core 1800 mk2. Which was putting out a nice 127V. Now I understand that any electronic device that’s engineered well should be able to handle ±10% (108-132V) for input voltage, but 127V is getting up there.

Then I decided to measure my $150 CMX2+ (that I was using previously). And guess what, it was able to turn the 123V it was being fed into a perfect 120V. So I reintroduced the CMX2s back into my system, keeping only the Deep=Core to power my Plixir (powering my etherRegen) and Holo Red. After switching back I immediately noticed a reduction in transformer hum on my amps and dac. Which is surprising, because that means the CMX2s do a better job at blocking DC than the isolation transformer based equi=core.

At this point you may be saying volts shmolts I don’t care about that, and neither should you, how does it soundddddd???
tbh I haven’t spent a ton of time doing dedicated listening since the switch (here and there, but mostly background music while I work), I will say that it definitely doesn’t sound worse in any way.

Another thing I’m realizing after all of this is that I probably should’ve noticed the transformer hum was louder after powering everything with the equi=core. But a combination of sitting far enough away, and being distracted by other issues with my system (and life lol) is probably what kept me from noticing it… until now haha.

Anyways, I guess this is a glowing recommendation for Emotiva’s CMX2+ conditioners. They’re probably the best you can get for the money, only being significantly bested by stuff in the 2-3k+ range. I’ll definitely set my sights higher when I upgrade to my next power conditioner, but for now the CMX2s are back in my system and here to stay until I get something better.

I also just want to add a big ol’ YMMV. Just because the Equi=Core didn’t work great in my scenario with my powerline/system doesn’t mean it also wont work great in your scenario.

In other news my wife made a cool fox drawing and I liked it so much I made it my profile picture on here lol. Hope everyone has a great weekend and happy listening!

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Question about upgraded power supplies for network switches:
I’m not convinced why any upgrade would matter for my etherregen considering it is followed by a Sonore opticalModule with a Sonore power supply and only then my system basically starts with the K50 (being isolated from the rest of the network).
What are reasons why that part of the network, not even part of the audio system really, might help with the sound?

I can make up possibilities, but I agree with your assessment.

Speculating, they are both likely on the same circuit, and even if they aren’t they will be connected together at the breaker box, so back emf from the switching mode PSU could have an effect. Though given the ammount of junk on other circuits in the house and neighborhood I don’t has an effect.
The other possibility is even more suspect, time variance or amplitude variance of the signal on the optical line in some way impacts the output. I honestly can’t see a mechanism by which this occurs.

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I optically isolated, and called it a day from a worry standpoint at things upstream. Yes I’m using a linear power supply to power my Sonore opticalModule and I’m using an iFi power elite supply to power my Roon core and network switch, but that’s because I’ve got good power supplies coming out my… eyeballs. :slight_smile:

If you ever want to try it, put shitty power supplies in place and see if you can hear them. Might be fun. We’ve all got load of wall warts laying around.

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DC isn’t the only thing that makes transformers physically hum, too much input voltage can also have an effect. And a lot of off the shelf transformers aren’t even rated for 120, for historic reasons they are often rated for 115 or 117.
If you’re measuring voltage you need to check it throughout the day, it likely varies by a couple of volts depending on time of day. My power like yours is somewhat “hot”.

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