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"But it sounds better at night...."

A well-traveled topic that I raise yet again.  On the "are power regenerators snake oil" question, the response that has made most sense to me is: No, if you have some material issue with the power supply coming into your home.  If you live in an area with what I will call normal modern power infrastructure, and have quality components, you will probably not notice a difference.

But I live in a city, do not suspect any power problems, and feel with a pretty high degree of certainty that my system sounds better at night.  This is a common sentiment, attributed to more activity on the electrical grid during the day.  Can these two positions be reconciled?  Why DOES the system sound better at night to me and many others?


Is our perception straight-up wrong, and the result of some bias or non-auditory reason why listening at night is a better experience?

Maybe when listening at night, one average for most people, the system will have been on longer, and therefore be more warmed up?

Is our perception real, and supports the proposition that baseline electrical system usage does materially affect many systems, and you don't need a clear power "problem" to benefit from a regenerator? 

Let's rehash it all again gentlemen!
 

mathiasmingus
siesp's avatar
siesp
4 posts
 

A friend built a dedicated room separated from his house, dedicated lines panel grounding rods, Cardas room ratios etc.

His  JC1+  monoblocks  amplified system had variations in sound at different day times.  Night performance was not what we expected either.

After breaking our heads for months he got an APC power system Isolation transformer + UPS and the results are astonishing !!!! In spite of the praised Bybee technology they have, we were really questioning the amplifiers performance.  After the power system installation, tremendous improvement on the music presentation, clarity, definition etc. No placebo effect at all. Checked with several audio friends that were trying to solve system issues.

kdogsy
23 posts
 

@siesp so the isolation transformer gives you a clean power source separate from any external noise and what does UPS do ?

edcyn
1,876 posts
 

There are a lot of factors involved. Right now at 10:30 in the morning, I'm getting truly excellent sound via a CD quality feed of some Aaron Copeland via Idagio. Dallas Symphony. Beautiful tone and dynamics. More than good-enough imaging. Can't complain...

siesp's avatar
siesp
4 posts
 

@kdogsy The continuous UPS deals with voltage surges , spikes, sags, frequency variations and provides a steady Voltage to the system. 220 is fed to the UPS then we have the isolation transformer to feed the system.

stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,368 posts
 

...and better on Sunday

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