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PS Audio Noise Harvester AC Cleaner Review

mansr

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15 coats of polished nickel over high-purity copper
That sounds like a bad idea. Pure copper is too soft to provide good contact pressure. It needs to be alloyed with something to make it springier.
 

anmpr1

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That sounds like a bad idea. Pure copper is too soft to provide good contact pressure. It needs to be alloyed with something to make it springier.
The entire thing is a bad idea. But it is an expensive bad idea, and that's what matters. Paul's got to butter his bread.
 

sergeauckland

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From what I've read of the regs, UK mains has a maximum impedance of 0.25 ohms, so a 10 amp load will drop the mains by no more than 2.5volts.

My house built in the 1970s has a 'company' fuse at 50 amps so electric showers are pretty much out, and we have to be cognisant of how much we switch on together. Our cottage in France had a 30 amp fuse so it really was a case of turning the electric fire off when boiling the kettle. We tripped the main breaker several times when we first got there. Fortunately it was a breaker we could reset, unlike our UK house which has a proper fuse. If we blow that, we'll have to wait days for somebody to come out and replace it. I've asked for the fuse to be upgraded but the street wiring won't take more! How's that for stinginess?

Even small flats these days seem to have more capacity than our house, but then in the 1970s, each room only had a couple of sockets. Just our kitchen now has 20 sockets.

S
 

solderdude

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I would be interested to hear opinions on this solution, both the tester and the filter.

https://greenwavefilters.com/

It would be even more interesting to buy the EMI meter and see how cheaper solutions work.
I expect this device to be similar to the other parallel cleaners.

As has been mentioned before... all differential mode (between L and N) noise is already removed by the smoothing caps in the rectifier present in all mains fed audio equipment.
The issue of common mode noise (groundloops) is not solved by these devices.
 

ssips

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Maybe the PS Audio directstream only magically measures well with these plugged in during measurement.
 

Herbert

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There is a Japanese electronics standard for AC mains filtering which many companies follow. In addition, such circuits are required to pass emissions tests. I showed this in an Onkyo teardown article I wrote a few years ago: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/inside-of-an-audio-video-receiver-avr.7/
i-JSxzdTB-X2.jpg


I noted the same thing you did in the article.

Thanks! I am in Europe, so...
My gear dates back from the early eighties to the mid nineties, a Nakamichi-amp being the youngest.
Found AC filtering only in early CD-players.
I.e a Philips CD-304 has the filtering - The CD-304MKii still has the pcb, but no parts on it.
Also inductors for denoising DC-voltage before an IC was obligatory - until (cheaper?) capacitors came up.
Would be interesting to find out what is more effective...
 

ta240

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I would be interested to hear opinions on this solution, both the tester and the filter.

https://greenwavefilters.com/

"They deploy state-of- the-art EMI filtering technology to “short out” (or shunt) erratic surges and spikes of electrical energy (i.e., dirty electricity), "

Isn't that what these do?
pr3i44046a.jpg


I've seen the videos with the tester and wondered if it is tuned to measure a specific frequency that their 'filter' actually does cause to drop
 

Count Arthur

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"They deploy state-of- the-art EMI filtering technology to “short out” (or shunt) erratic surges and spikes of electrical energy (i.e., dirty electricity), "

Isn't that what these do?
pr3i44046a.jpg


I've seen the videos with the tester and wondered if it is tuned to measure a specific frequency that their 'filter' actually does cause to drop

I think the Greenwave filters are parallel, rather than in-line and probably work in a similar fashion to those sold by Russ Andrews: https://www.russandrews.com/mains-zapperators/

A few years back I found a circuit design somewhere on-line and built 5 of them for around £40:

Filter02.jpg


Filter04.jpg


I can't find the circuit diagram now, but as there are only 6 components, I reckon I could work it out. However, as you can see, I used hot snot to put them together, so I'd have to break them to see the back of the board.

In any case, I don't think they do much. :rolleyes:
 

ta240

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That is pretty cool. I looked around for schematics for DIY and never found any. I did find a write-up by one guy that suggested putting capacitors across every outlet in your house. That seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.
 

Milesian

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It would make sense to have a way of analyzing potential noise on a circuit, before implementing a solution for a problem that may not exist. I’d be interested to hear of anyone’s experience and/or recommendations for a tester.
 

pozz

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As I understand it, it was the distributor or store who didn't want to cooperate with ASR, and not Accuphase the company? I don't know the numbers, but Accuphase appears to have a marginal presence in the US. When Teac was distributing them (in the '70s and '80s) the company had a larger media footprint. It was not uncommon to read Accuphase reviews in the three big magazines. But with the boutique 'high end' nonsense of the time they were mostly viewed as an expensive alternative to Pioneer or Sansui, and Japanese gear in general was looked down upon. For the 'conservative' buyer, and for the equivalent dollar, Americans could buy McIntosh.

PS is a different bag. Cosmetically the gear is not up to Accuphase standards (or Mac for that matter). I guess it's cheaper than either of those two. Design-wise? Bascom King has authentic 'high end street cred'--no question. That said, I'm not sure why he'd hook up with PS. No shame? I guess the spread is there for him.

As far as Paul? My guess is that in his case it's simple opportunism. My guess is that he knows it's bogus, but has to keep the doors open, and gullible audiophiles can be sold pretty much anything. I see he's teamed up with Audioquest. That's all anyone needs to know.

On the other hand, if you are worried about your wall socket receptacles, PS has your medicine. For a price. How much? All you need to know is that it's 'got the grip of Mickey Mantle'! Personally I'm holding out for the Barry Bonds upgrade mod. LOL

View attachment 69315

The Power Port Classic is our AV Grade high-end AC receptacle that is the starting point for any properly built system. By installing the Power Port AC receptacle in your room you gain an immediate improvement in performance over a standard wall receptacle.

15 coats of polished nickel over high-purity copper, with the “grip of Mickey Mantle” and polished nickel plated hardware, this is a must have in your system.
I think you're underestimating Paul. He's serious. Whatever doubts he might have had he suppressed long ago.

Exhibit 1: One of the most accomplished pieces of propaganda I've seen in the high-end. A smoothly edited hybrid documentary-advertisement which puts together historical narrative, factual summary and audiophile commentary. Pretty good sound work, of course.

 

GXAlan

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It would make sense to have a way of analyzing potential noise on a circuit, before implementing a solution for a problem that may not exist. I’d be interested to hear of anyone’s experience and/or recommendations for a tester.

Noise on a circuit and measurable/audible performance are different.

Those Entech wide-band analyzers are pretty easily found on eBay and provide one method for comparison. You can see and hear the effects of a line conditioner as it converts the broadband noise into audible noise through manual gain. How this translates into actual performance is different.

Years ago (2001 or 2002-ish), while living in a large apartment complex with "dirty AC", I was able to do a reproducible test where an overclocked gaming PC pushed too far could go into a scenario where
a) plugging into a regular surge protector would cause a system lock-up when running a stress test benchmark
b) plugging into a Monster Stage 3 v.2.1 filter prevented the same system lock up.

It was a very unique set of circumstances, but was reproducible. At the time, PC power supplies had not yet undergone their renaissance and ripple/voltage sag was a real problem and overclocking was still the realm of "hardcore gamers/enthusiasts" rather than available through Dell/Alienware.

Since then, however, the main role of line conditioners are high-performance surge protection and/or control for soft power-on or adding 12v switched outlets IMHO. As I mentioned earlier, I have sent Amir an Audioquest PowerQuest3 for measurement and I expect it to have the same outcome as the PS Audio Noise Harvester.
 

captain paranoia

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Trying to draw 24,000W would burn the house down.

Let's say you have an 8kW shower, 8kW immersion heater and an 8kW hot tub. I don't think that's an unreasonable load scenario in a modern house. You could add a modern electric oven for another 8kW...(oven circuits are often 40A these days). And not many houses burn down as a result...
 

MC_RME

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It would be even more interesting to buy the EMI meter and see how cheaper solutions work.
I expect this device to be similar to the other parallel cleaners.

The Greenwavefilters have an output socket, so they seem to be normal filters like the ones TA240 showed. I am still astonished that these can filter within the audioband to make an audible difference with that EMI meter. Maybe the EMI meter takes ultrasonic noise and shifts it down to audible frequencies...
 

solderdude

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I think the Greenwave filters are parallel, rather than in-line and probably work in a similar fashion to those sold by Russ Andrews: https://www.russandrews.com/mains-zapperators/

A few years back I found a circuit design somewhere on-line and built 5 of them for around £40:

View attachment 69353

View attachment 69354

I can't find the circuit diagram now, but as there are only 6 components, I reckon I could work it out. However, as you can see, I used hot snot to put them together, so I'd have to break them to see the back of the board.

In any case, I don't think they do much. :rolleyes:

These look like they are Y capacitors to neutral and a bigger cap between L and N + either 2 TVS in parallel ?
You would have to use different TVS on 20V and 115V mains.

Isn't that what these do?

These are common mode filters (so these actually direct common mode crap to safety ground) and also have some differential filtering.
They are designed to prevent crap that is generated to go on the mains and/or to filter incoming mains.
 

Vortex

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Here's mine, almost as beautiful as the AC iPurifier. Real 100-years-lasting sputnik design.
filter1.jpgfilter2.jpg

Ok, just got it yesterday as a gift to do something with it if I want to.. I'll probably play around a bit with that to see what kind of effect it has on my system at all. Previously it was part of a big 3-phase computer power supply. I assume I can connect the phases on both sides with eachother and use this then on my single phase AC mains (230V/50Hz).

:cool::D
 

pozz

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Here's mine, almost as beautiful as the AC iPurifier. Real 100-years-lasting sputnik design.
View attachment 69379View attachment 69380

Ok, just got it yesterday as a gift to do something with it if I want to.. I'll probably play around a bit with that to see what kind of effect it has on my system at all. Previously it was part of a big 3-phase computer power supply. I assume I can connect the phases on both sides with eachother and use this then on my single phase AC mains (230V/50Hz).

:cool::D
Where'd you get it from?
 
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