Hi Bryon,
Good comments by everyone above. My take is as follows, the bottom line of which is essentially what Elizabeth said:
"Dirty power" will consist of some combination of harmonic distortion (i.e., frequency components that are at multiples of 60 Hz, sometimes including multiples that reach into the upper treble and beyond), broadband noise (a mix of essentially all frequencies across a wide range), and voltage spikes that occur periodically or intermittently, which in turn will contain a considerable number of spectral components at various frequencies. Inevitably some extremely small but non-zero fraction of all of that spurious frequency content will find its way through or around the power supply of each component and into the signal path.
In addition to perhaps causing a directly perceivable reduction in background blackness, any and all of those numerous frequency components could, to some small extent, intermodulate with the audio signal, resulting in new spectral components at frequencies equal to both the sum of and the difference between the frequencies of any or all of the spectral components of the music and the frequencies of any or all of the spectral components of the noise or distortion. That will occur as a result of non-linearities in the components in the system, and no system is perfectly linear.
Given that the power line spurii and any musical note will BOTH be comprised of a great many different spectral components, the resulting sonic effects as perceived by the listener can be pretty much anything, conceivably including reduced resolution, less accurate reproduction of timbre, and imprecise imaging.
Obviously those kinds of effects will have little if any predictability with respect to either their magnitude or their character, and will be highly dependent on both the design of the system components and the characteristics of the power source.
In principle a power regenerator should eliminate or at least greatly reduce these effects, but as you've probably seen some people report reduced dynamics or other adverse effects when a regenerator is used, especially in the case of power amplifiers.
Best,
-- Al
Good comments by everyone above. My take is as follows, the bottom line of which is essentially what Elizabeth said:
"Dirty power" will consist of some combination of harmonic distortion (i.e., frequency components that are at multiples of 60 Hz, sometimes including multiples that reach into the upper treble and beyond), broadband noise (a mix of essentially all frequencies across a wide range), and voltage spikes that occur periodically or intermittently, which in turn will contain a considerable number of spectral components at various frequencies. Inevitably some extremely small but non-zero fraction of all of that spurious frequency content will find its way through or around the power supply of each component and into the signal path.
In addition to perhaps causing a directly perceivable reduction in background blackness, any and all of those numerous frequency components could, to some small extent, intermodulate with the audio signal, resulting in new spectral components at frequencies equal to both the sum of and the difference between the frequencies of any or all of the spectral components of the music and the frequencies of any or all of the spectral components of the noise or distortion. That will occur as a result of non-linearities in the components in the system, and no system is perfectly linear.
Given that the power line spurii and any musical note will BOTH be comprised of a great many different spectral components, the resulting sonic effects as perceived by the listener can be pretty much anything, conceivably including reduced resolution, less accurate reproduction of timbre, and imprecise imaging.
Obviously those kinds of effects will have little if any predictability with respect to either their magnitude or their character, and will be highly dependent on both the design of the system components and the characteristics of the power source.
In principle a power regenerator should eliminate or at least greatly reduce these effects, but as you've probably seen some people report reduced dynamics or other adverse effects when a regenerator is used, especially in the case of power amplifiers.
Best,
-- Al