I highly respect @Francis Vaughan ’s feedback. What changes to Amir’s testing protocol would you recommend to capture the reduced noise from resolving grounding issues?
OK, the problem is to create a situation that the device claims to solve, and/or construct a test for the veracity of how good their balanced output is at solving them.
There are a few questions, with a few nuances.
Does a balanced power feed help with ground noise in practice? To test this finding a system with a known problem would be a good start. (Interestingly Amir occasionally gets equipment for which no amount of fiddling with grounds can cure noise pickup. Maybe one of these would be an interesting subject. But it might be too simplistic.) We can test the system with conventional tied neutral in the power feed to all the components, and then replace all the power connections with balanced. Does the noise reduce? However, on the test-bench this isn't a trivial ask.
If we find that there is a useful improvement it might lead to the construction of a synthetic test. That would take quite a lot of effort. I'd need to think about how a suitable test rig could be set up. In some ways one is trying to emulate the problems real world equipment gets into in real world setups in a contained manner.
The other question is about just how good the balanced power system needs to be. We might argue that the Equitech is over-engineered. They make a big song and dance about the benefits of their design. Is the additional effort and cost reflected in benefits in actual use? One thing would be to create a simple balanced power feed with an off the shelf isolation transformer. Measure how different the performance is.
Finally, test the actual quality of balance of the Equitech and the off-the-shelf transformer. How much differential noise is actually present? Is the Equitech better? Needs to be done at a range of loads. Partly to check performance, but also the check Equitech's assertions about how important this is.
This is a week or so of work. So isn't going to happen.
OTOH, just find yourself a system that has a bad ground loop problem and see if it fixes it whilst allowing for full correct and safe connections of all the equipment. If it does this, it works as advertised.
It really needs to be underlined that this device isn't a power conditioner. There is nothing magical or clean about the power it delivers except for attempting to create a balanced feed that results in vanishing ground currents, and do so in a system that retains safety. Everything pivots on the ground currents.
The utility of this device in a domestic setting is a whole separate matter. I have a whole range of issues with that.
