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Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

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Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#301

Post by jonsen »

hwillis wrote: post #234
andrewvc wrote: post #16

Even if you buy into this theory, how is this cheaper or better than using batteries to power your gear?

Batteries have significant and unavoidable source impedance. When the current goes up and down, as it does once per cycle, tens of thousands of times per second, the voltage of the power bus would move up and down slightly. You can obviously regulate it, but the whole point of what these guys want is an absolutely clean input. The voltage of the grid will fall MUCH less when you pull current.

Power from the grid is AC. It falls to zero a hundred times a second.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#302

Post by Semaphor »

Udik wrote: post #279
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine might be a better comparison (at least a Rolls and a Toyota look different). Many could tell the difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar), but not a whole lot of people can tell the difference between a $20 bottle and a $200 bottle. The law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty quick with both wine and audio. I think with audio once you’re in over a…

> difference pretty well between a $5 and $20 bottle (hint: the $20 one is the one not loaded with sugar) Wine loaded with sugar??? AFAIK, in a dry wine all the sugar is converted to alcohol- even in the case it's been added before the fermentation, which is still pretty rare, at least in major wine producing countries. That is definitely not the difference between a $5 and $20 bottle of wine (in Italy you can still…

This is incorrect, there is always "Residual Sugar" [0] in wine, even when it's dry. Of course, GP is also not correct as there are plenty of wines with high RS that are very expensive while I can get a 7g/L RS wine for around 4€ here.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetness_of_wine#Residual_sug...

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#303

Post by contingo »

tlrobinson wrote: post #269
thaumasiotes wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do $1,000 aftermarket wooden knobs (with no detectable physical effect) differ from, say, a $1,000 bottle of wine (which cannot be distinguished in a blind taste test from a $5 bottle)? They're just class signifiers. The difference I see is that audiophiles are less prestigious than oenophiles, but I don't see how you get from there to "audiophiles have a mental illness".

There's a slight difference. AFAIK oenophiles don't typically try to use pseudoscience to justify their purchases (or encourage others to make purchases) If someone told me I should buy a wine because the doorknobs in the winery were special wooden knobs I would also question their judgement/sanity.

You evidently haven't encountered the biodynamic viticulture people, who are everywhere these days. They will tell you to buy a wine because its grapes were harvested when the stars were in a particular alignment and the moonlight a particular intensity.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#304

Post by pseingatl »

The "can" attached to the pole is called a "pot." At least in the U.S., four homes are normally attached to a pot. But sometimes, you might have as many as eight. When eight are attached, you will have power drops, momentary losses of electricity. Without a UPS, your desktop will turn off. Or your stereo system will--flash on and off. Intolerable. The solution is an additional pot. Or this man' solution, a pot of his own. It's not so crazy, in areas where electricity is affected by a tropical climate or... not enough pots. I learned this while struggling with electricity issues after surviving Hurricane Wilma and talking to the repair crews.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#305

Post by dbuder »

andrewvc wrote: post #16

Even if you buy into this theory, how is this cheaper or better than using batteries to power your gear?

You'd have to charge the batteries while the device is not in use and it wouldn't really work anyway because you'd get droop when the current draw is high. The guy in the article probably can't hear the difference, but I'd actually like what he has installed, apartment power lines are very noisy and mine is so bad that light bulbs last about 6months so I'm a bit wary of plugging in anything valuable.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#306

Post by Izmaki »

agumonkey wrote: post #145
Spooky23 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s bad ground. There’s some sort of shoddy electrical work in the wall. In my home, a previous owner cut a cable too short and connected the line to ground via a paper clip. Could have killed us.

talking about ground effects, uncle car honks when he actuates the wipers; very comical and instructive at the same time

Lol :D

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#307

Post by Izmaki »

gerdesj wrote: post #43
Izmaki wrote: post #3

When I'm playing music on my stereo from my PC through USB, turning off the lights on my bathroom on the other side of the wall will momentarily kill my USB driver and as a result Spotify stops working. Electromagnetic interference is no joke.

Hire an electrician. While you are at it, get them to do a quick inspection of the rest of the 'leccy stuff at your home. Throw away any power bricks/wall warts/devices whose name you cannot pronounce easily or can't even read. Clear the fluff out from behind your fridge. Fire is no joke and given the EMI in your place I suggest you take it seriously. I'm not suggesting that fire hazards are exacerbated by EMI but th…

I live in an apartment with little or no connected ground. We had weird laws once that allowed electricians to cut corners which they did. If its serious, I could try to convince the landlord... Hmm...

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#308

Post by d21d3q »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #297
tlrobinson wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a DAC can "open" or "close" "the stage" by low quality processing of the signal In principle a low enough quality DAC certainly could affect "the stage", but in reality even cheap ones are likely good enough. > There is no way to convince these people they are wrong I'm pretty sure many of them don't want to be convinced since it would make their hobby pretty boring. I also wouldn't be surprised if industry players…

No, cheap DACs are not “good enough” unless you’re completely indifferent to audio quality. There’s certainly woo and outright fraud in audio. But there’s also attention to detail. Professional studio engineers will spend $3000 on a high-precision digital clock for their DACs because it makes a clearly audible difference. Software people don’t understand that human hearing, and human sensitivity to timbre and distort…

Can you elaborate more about $3000 digital clock for DAC?

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#309

Post by camtarn »

tgtweak wrote: post #278
andrewvc wrote: post #16

Even if you buy into this theory, how is this cheaper or better than using batteries to power your gear?

DC to AC converters in common inverters (where your battery power gets turned into AC wall current) are usually digital (mosfets usually) and unless they're running at 96khz+, which is probably not the case even with "pure sine wave" inverters¹, they could also introduce some noise. Additionally, if you were charging the batteries at the same time, that charger could be carrying some noise into the DC current. Visibl…

I'd love to see somebody sell an old-fashioned motor-generator set for generating absolutely pure sine-wave current from a noisy input. Give it a really heavy flywheel and maybe some complicated flexible interconnect between motor and generator, to remove any effects of the input power. Or, even better, have the motor crank up some sort of mechanical/hydraulic/pneumatic power storage, then switch off to let the generator run for an hour or so.

Re: Audiophiles in Japan Are Installing Their Own Power Poles

#310

Post by fvdessen »

deltron3030 wrote: post #293
stcredzero wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know people that work in IT and still pretend that audio transmission over USB can add jitter to music and that a DAC can "open" or "close" "the stage" by low quality processing of the signal. Audio transmission over USB with cheap converters and poorly chosen levels can result in loss of sound quality. I'm pretty sure you can tell the difference between 8 bit, 12 bit, and 16 bit sound. Choosing levels poorly can r…

Good DACs and ADCs are useful for recording studios who have a lot of analog outboard gear (where the signal leaves and enters their digital setup multiple times). But for normal listening where there are only one or a few conversions, the point of diminishing returns is pretty low. Most of the perceived gains in quality of higher end equipment (DACs, Amps etc.) come from the higher voltage of the outputs (where you…

I have a decent hi-fi audio system at home, and there is a clearly audible difference between playing from my high-end CD player, and playing FLAC from the audio out of my Macbook.

The difference is not one of loudness but of 'energy'. A snare hit played from the high-end cd player sounds like someone actually hitting a snare; you can feel there's actual energy in the hit, while the macbook out sounds flat, even at higher loudness.

I'm not sure what is the exact cause but I've always guessed that it comes from the qualities of the built-in amps in the DACs.

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