Does this make any sense to you? It isn't an attempt to sell anything, in fact I think he said a power line conditioner didn't affect it.
http://www.decware.com/paper03.htm
I can agree with late night listening being special, at least here, but I attributed it to workday being done and isolation from cares, distractions and daylight.
The mains harmonics thing sounds like so many angels dancing on the head of a pin to me.
Clark in Peoria
Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears
In my place, the sound always gets great after 1:30AM, for yeaqrs and years late night man the system punches. I always just thought everyone else closed, houses turned everything off for the night, and the power was at its best. Never thought line harmonics or anything like that!
But late nite is great nite listening.
scottyj
I WANT some of what he was doin'.........
You can't rely on the power company for good power quality or power factor or voltage regulation. They try to keep the quality fairly decent as bad power quality (basicly other junk on the lines, strange harmonics and the like) can cause them problems with there transformers and protective gear. They try to maintain powerfactor as close to unity as they can, although each customer can mess with it, because the farther powerfacter is from unity the larger conducter they need to transmit the same power. Your voltage is nominal and subject to change as loads change if your voltage were to vary as much as plus and minus 15 percent during the day and you recorded it and confronted them with it they would probably say "so". But you can absolutley depend on them to deliver you 60 hertz. Not 59.99, not 60.01 but 60. Dead on 60. There is a grid. Actually there are probably more than one but a grid will be made up of several states and before connecting to it you have to synq to it and once you have locked on to it you can not get out of synq with it. If you "give it more gas" you'll put more power on the grid and if you "take your foot off" the grid will run you like a motor. If you had a generating facility large enough that you could push out of synq which would mean that you overpowered the grid and sped up and didn't take the grid with you that would cause a major blackout. Used car salesmen and televangelests get into the fringe HiFi area and make some money. This guy may too, but he should have picked a different parrameter to fix. Frequency is the one thing you can count on. Now having said that most of your equipment wouldn't care if you were off a few hertz. Ferroresonant regulators go out of wack if you're out very far but they aren't common in stereo gear. Any turntable or cd player that relys on the 60 hz for it's regulation will be off speed, but these days most devices make their own synq signals . Flim Flam
People who haven't seen it may get a smile from this.
http://www.roger-russell.com/notone/notone.htm
http://www.roger-russell.com/truth/truth.htm#norelco
Exactly.Originally Posted by Thom
I used to have a fair amount of respect for Mr Decker.....no longer, after reading that magical hogwash.
Grid-connected electrical utilities must be synced to a precise, non-varying frequency, otherwise switching stations would explode on a regular basis.
Powerline harmonics do exist, just not in the way Mr D describes. 60 cycle hum is accompanied by lower level harmonics of 120Hz, 180Hz, 240Hz, etc. These harmonics aren't affected by the variances of voltage or other parameters of utility power, and are constant. The ability to filter them out depends entirely on the filter circuits of the device in question. These circuits don't magically reconfigure after midnight either.
Even if allowed, minor changes in line frequency would have no effect on audio gear, with the exception of devices utilizing syncronous motors (like my Hammond organ).(add/edit; and clock-based DACs, etc.)
Since I happened to have the hum sheild off of an old Wurly piano I'm working on, I thought I'd show a screenshot of idle amp output. The 60Hz fundamental component and related harmonics are EMI induced in this case (picked up from radiation of nearby line wiring) instead of passing through the amp's filters, but the effect is the same.
Most of the crap that can be found on your power line will come from your side of the transformer. That is just you and a few neighbors. I like the $100.00 + per foot power cord. For your power cord to make any difference in your sound it would have to have something drasticly wrong with it and /or the power supply in your equipment would have to be shit and if you can pay that for power cord and the power supply in your equipment is shit, shame on you.
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#thetruth
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#expensive
I'm sure that where most people live the ambient sound level (yes there will be exceptions) will be lower at that time of day but I would be surprised if at a later time he didn't come up with a way to more closely aproximate the 2 am conditions during the day for a nominal fee. I knew a man who had a sound store I don't remember the name of it but I introduced him to some of his lines, anyway he had a large variac with a voltmeter and he kept the voltage in his listening room right at 125 or 130 I don't remember exactly what voltage or how he decided it was the "right" voltage but he was convinced that was the voltage where every thing would sound its absolute best. He sold Dalquist, and Rogers, and Rega and others back in 1973. These days if he was in busines I suppose he would be selling variacs with voltmeters, back then it was his "secret". And then there are the magnets for your fuel line, as if with the manufacturers strugling to make cafe standards, if that worked every car in the world wouldn't come with a magnet, already. It's kind of interesting, some of what Roger Russel has to say. I never was a fan of Mcintosh speakers, but you can hardly say he's not an authiority, or an industry insider with a lot of experience. (refering to the link)
I don't have my head in the sand but I'm very pessemistic about any power conditioners serving any purpose other than keeping the voltage constant. I am just broke anyway. If someone tossed me $100K for audio equipment with no mandate on what equipment I bought......I would spend no more than $200 on any line conditioner and in addition I wouldn't spend anymore than $500 on interconnects. You see at my age (50) I don't have to convince myself that I can hear the difference because I can't! I have great ears but I could'nt hear the difference when I was 20, 30, 40, I'm not going to hear it now! All my money would be in speakers, then amps and preamps. I'd have enough left over to try analog again with some mint vynil. Late night seems to improve everything because of one's ability to relax. Of course it could be possible to hear all that I'm missing prior to 6 pm with no outside interuptions and a nice bowl.
I have a lot of respect for that Gentleman!
it
Just had to try out the new multiple quote option.....cool!
I thought it was interesting where he said McIntosh started using expensive speaker wire so people would quit fixating on the cheep wire and listen to there speakers. SO you really cant say "If it didn't make a difference xxxxx
wouldn't use them". That might actually be a true statement but the difference may not be what you think it is.
Their power amps sure were tough. I had a 2105 and one day one channel had a lot of distortion and then it would quit and then it would come back on with a lot of distortion. Turns out the speaker wires on one channel were dead shorted so it would play distorted till it got too warm then it would cool off and turn on again. When I untwisted the wires it was good as new. That was in 73 when some amps would blow up just from running without an load.
I s'pose magic is in the eye or ear of the beholder, to me, the real magic is the emotive effect provided by the musicians' manipulation of their voices and instruments, and not in the hardware I use to reproduce it. This can easily be proven by removing the hardware entirely, and catching a live show. The magic's still there, only better. The circuits and transducers we consider so important are really just struggling to do their best at.........doing what some musician already did.
It is all about the music for me too. I can still admire the equipment that gets me closest to the musicians, and I wouldn't blame anyone for doing likewise. But I do hopefully listen to my music, not my equipment.
Many years ago I was told that one possible consequence of going out of phase with the grid was the generator "ripping" the shaft out of the turbines. I know what he really meant by that, and it would be expensive.
Please don't be too hard on Mr. Decker. He wrote that a long time ago, and he wasn't trying to sell anything. Just shooting the breeze.
Clark in Peoria
Information is not Knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom
Too many audiophiles listen with their eyes instead of their ears
If I don't get shot now, I'll Know that either we,ve no philharmonic type violin players on board or we do and he/she is a pasifast or their gun is jammbd. There has to be some of this with musicle instruments too. Million dollar violins?
I'll bet there is, they just don't want to toot their own horn!
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