The fallacy of ac treatment


I see a lot of threads related to managing and tweaking the ac powerout end of electronic systems. Much has been said about dedicated wiring, termination and even the right kind of extension cords to use. I work for an electric utility; and that's the extent of my credibilty here. The majority of you will no doubt be far more erudite wrt music hardware. Just a thought, though: domestic ac distribution goes thus: power station-step up-city-step down-subdivision-final step down. As far as the utility is concerned, you and all your neigbours are collectively the load for the step down tranformer. Any inductance/capacitance created by your neigbour running motors/tubelights, etc is felt by the lot of you. Additionally, the voltage frequency will almost always move around a tolerance from 50hz as the whole country turns on the air, off the lights - changes all the time as peaker plants ramp up etc. Nothing can change that- the frequency of the grid supplying your city is the frequency in the mains at your house. So what's my point? Well only that how much difference can the last 10 feet of cabling, etc make when the other hundreds of miles are outside of your control? And more importantly, frequency is one of the most imp parameters for measuring electricity quality (your expensive hand-coiled toroids are entirely subject to the f in the primaries) and nothing other than running an f generator can shield you from that. Methinks all the improvements you see from ac cord treatments are pyschosomatic. But that's cool.
snobgoblinf669

Showing 2 responses by carl_eber

Snobblob, Methinks you haven't heard a PS Audio 300, which does re-generate the frequency, BTW.
I agree with Redkiwi. i've tried many power cords, and they all sound different. If anyone else does the same, and they do not sound any different TO THEM, then that's fine. Just don't tell Redkiwi, or me, what we are hearing, or not hearing. I COMPLETELY AGREE that the order of difference when changing a powercord, approaches that of changing a speaker cable. I suspect that most anyone could hear this difference, providing that they are listening to their system and it's effect on the reproduced recording of the music, and NOT to their listening room functioning as some kind of echo chamber, where such changes (as AC cords or cabling) get drowned in the sea of low resolution. I've heard this in most of the systems I've visited, and in all the ones where there was not proper room treatment.