PS Audio Noise Harvester AC Cleaner Review

[welsh]

I still feel burned for dropping $60 on AQ's "Jitterbug" which, as Amir previously showed, does absolutely nothing.

I have a Dragonfly Red and though it was far overpriced I do find it useful. But won't be buying anything from AudioQuest again in the future. Audio companies that put out pure snake-oil products, even if they produce some other good equipment, are companies I want to avoid.

I own just one product by Fraudioquest (not original, someone else coined this one), their rca hard splitters, which are genuinely useful. Even this always-inventive company failed to claim better sound in this case...

 

[Judas]

Maybe if we plug the Harvester into Judas it can reduce the noise he's producing.

LOL

 

[Judas]

What I want to know: when is the Noise Harvester II: Special Edition coming out?
It will, of course, feature a multicolor LED, indicating the relative magnitude of the bad thing that it is harvesting.
It will feature a phone app that will allow the sucker end user to select linear or logarithmic scaling -- of course.
McIntosh's vacuum tube engineers are being used as consultants in the design.

View attachment 115213

Nostradamus predicted it: In the 21st Century, vacuum tubes will glow green.



... but I digress.

Now you have gone to far. I love that green glow. I can't remember if it is present in that model. I'll check the next time I am Best Buy.

 

[Mnyb]

Why is there no tube noise harvester (yet)

 

[Judas]

Why is there no tube noise harvester (yet)

I can answer that. PS Audio hates tubes.

 

[Lambda]

Why is there no tube noise harvester

If you want to be sirius use a class A tube amp to generate 50/60hz AC from battery power

 

[welsh]

Already available: https://shieldheadwear.com/

I find that a colander is just as effective, if not as stylish.

Now now! I’m sure you know that such headgear is only for Pastafarians!

 

[welsh]

Like many of you, I've been reading the audio review literature for the better part of 40 years, likely by now several thousand reviews. And by happy coincidence, I've written professionally on the topic of the laws of nature.

Amir, I must say that I believe the above sentence is one of the best, if not the best, sentence ever written in an audio review. I did in fact, laugh out loud.

I’m interested in the nature of laws...

 

[welsh]

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

That’s terrible! Why, even prisons did better decades ago. Sing Sing had very high current available, by all accounts.

 

[welsh]

Piggybank picture gets me excited more than the any other reviews

We need an exploding panther!

 

[mansr]

We need an exploding panther!

Anyone got a high-speed camera and some black powder?

 

[welsh]

P. T. Barnum had the explanation.

To be fair, he also had the solution: ‘This Way to the Egress’. Keep ‘em moving along!

 

[welsh]

I don't think "fraud" is the right word to use with components like the titular noise harvester (FWIW).
Further, I don't believe (?!) I've seen the words caveat emptor in this thread.

I am just not sure there's a problem if people buy something and they're happy with it after the purchase that there's any real issue.
I mean, heck, people buy FCA automotive products!

The whole fashion industry -- and the cosmetics/personal industry, too -- pretty much trades on what (apparently) some would label fraud.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I think the "noise harvester" is a silly product. I don't think it is a criminally silly product, though.

A typical cosmetic product in the UK claims that it results in ‘up to 100%‘ elimination of grey hairs. Clearly, this claim includes the number 0.

 

[mansr]

A typical cosmetic product in the UK claims that it results in ‘up to 100%‘ elimination of grey hairs. Clearly, this claim includes the number 0.

Hair dye works, I'm told.

 

[welsh]

EL84? That's a little peanut pentode.

Not in my guitar amplifier! More like a juicy hazelnut...

 

[welsh]

Apologies if this has been suggested before, but given that it the harvester has a blinky light to show it's "cleaning" the mains, has anyone tried one on perfectly clean mains, perhaps by plugging it into one of PS Audio's own regenerators, or an isolation transformer, something like that?

Does the light still blink?

Walk towards the light.

 

[welsh]

This is of course impossible to answer unless you know at what time exactly John’s train left the station.

And the velocity of John’s stereo on another train...

 

[welsh]

Hello to you AMRM:l"
Your vast experience with audiophiles would mean you know they are hardly monolithic. I don't know audio0hiles who claim there hearing is absolute. The audiophile landscape is littered with skeptics. To me a statement like : all dacs "sound the same" is an absolute." It appears at least on this forum such absolutes are okay if they are based on measurements.
When it comes to sound reproduction the ear/brain interface is paramount. Its' (sound reproduction) sole purpose is to make us hear something. I see nothing wrong with trying to determine a stimulus for a particular response. Remember. if the ear/brain could not be tricked stereo would not work.
Your opinion can and probably does differ.

If I cross my index and ring fingers (try it!) and rub them up and down my nose, I feel TWO noses. Your (neurological) mileage may vary.

 

[HiFidFan]

Not every living huamn is a cook or artist. It's the job of the music writers and the producers.

A closer example would be a cook doing some fancy hand movement on your dish and letting you to believe it will tastes a lot better. And some people claims the air the hand movement moves change the temperature and smell of the dish enhancing the taste.

EQ and compressor are something producers would use to shape the sound. Music lovers will very likely to totally screw their sound up due to the lack of experience and trained ears. Just like some one goes to restaurant and add loads of black pepper and honey to every dish. That's screwed up.[/QUOTE]

I'd say these would both be involved in the creation of art.

If I like the artists art, or the chefs food, I trust their ability to create that art.

That has nothing to do with me comparing it to another piece of art, or replicating it. How is that relevant to needing controls when doing listening tests?

Maybe that's the thing...a lot of audiophile types want to consider themselves part of the art creation process.

I'll leave the art to the artists, and the engineering to the engineers.

Maybe this is the crux of the audiophile issue. Does one seek to hear, as close as possible, what the artist originally intended? Or do we want to "shape" to our personal taste, the sound coming out of our speakers?

This, I think, goes to the argument that the master/recording is the most important link in the audio chain.

Or, (borrowing the chef analogy) feel free to throw some A1 sauce on that Chateaubriand

 

[welsh]

oh

and

”At this point we have fully characterized the device. It is a high pass filter with very negligible effectiveness.“
A low pass?

So this is the opposite of a Harley Davidson motorcycle, which efficiently converts energy into noise?