Digital Contamination of the Power?


Is digital contamination of the power grid for our audio gear from our servers, DAC's etc.... that big of a deal?
128x128keithmundy
Interesting thread from 2009, relating advice from Charles Hansen of Ayre that the best thing you can do for music is unplug your TV and DVD player. Some think digital contamination is big issue, others disagree. Easy to test in your own room.
Any form of contamination degrades system performance.

Most cables contaminate within themselves - you don't appreciate the effect it has on your system until you get rid of it.

Only cables with advanced internal architectures are capable of reducing/elimiminating internal contamination - and yes - they make a significant difference to system performance

Regards

Charles Hansen is right, anything with a smp power
supply can contaminate into the wiring of the house, and it's airborne efi as well.

Do an experiment, tune a portable AM radio down low on the dial around 700khz, so there's no music and it's not muted, just static, then go near to a smp power supply or class D amp and you will hear what rubbish rf rubbish emits from the speaker of the am radio.

I had a smp wall wart pugged into the power of my house, I was driving up to my house and the radio in my car started squeal, the closer I got to my driveway the worse it got, I pulled up next to the room it was in and it was really squealing bad. I pulled the smp wall wart from the mains and the noise from my car radio stopped.
It was using the whole houses wiring as a transmitting antenna for it's rf rubbish to contaminate anything close by.

I say ban all smp's and Class D amps.

Cheers George
Wow! Interesting experience for you George. I wonder if just a good quality power cord can take care of the noise or if one needs to actually employ some other device to inhibit the back contamination from the digital sources? That's all for the responses.
Keithmundy,
I use Shunyata Ztron Alpha digital power cords. Shunyata make these solely for digital components to alleviate the problems discussed so far. And they work very well in my set-up, compared to the non-digital cords.

Jon2020hi.
Sorry to say but a power cord won't stop the digital noise or switch mode noise rubbish from entering the household wiring, and if your hi-end gear is close to it, the airborne rubbish as well.
It emanates like a cancer through the wiring and through the air.

Cheers George
George,
Agreed. The power cord may not stop all of the hash but it does reduce it somewhat to the point of being significantly audible. We do the best for SQ with what we can have and what works, even though the problem is merely partially solved.
Cheers! J.