Skipping Mains Plugs for Power Amps

[restorer-john]

So basically you want to go back to hard-wired power cords like were used 40+ years ago?

There's a good reason they used a very thick hardwired lead on the TAN-77es from 1987 pictured above. It can draw enough current (circa 30A) in low impedance situations to greatly exceed the capability of an IEC 3 pin plug/socket which is 15A.

Sony used IEC 3 pins in the 1970s on many integrated amplifiers, but never on their high powered amplifiers in the late 1980s and 1990s.

 

[Audioagnostic]

Sorry the moron hard wired into a power conditioner-surge protector not the amp.

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/dedicated-line-questions-2

Of course cut the guy some slack he also believes in magic mats in the breaker box.

Amateur. Imagine the soundstage after hard wiring directly into the mains.

 

[restorer-john]

Amateur. Imagine the soundstage after hard wiring directly into the mains.

He should have moved much closer to the power station instead.

 

[Mnyb]

Of all the tin foil hats thats in the several tens k$ into mains cables and such .

Has any of them thought about changing the main cable into the house for kicks ? if you really want to lower the source impedance that would surely reduce coupling between devices (weird current to one device would not distort the voltage much ) and give you better ground .

In a city this can be interesting in my streets we have these cabinets in the streets that connects several houses these are connected to many other such cabinets and is usually made to have the possibility to be a ring feed so the main cable cable trough all the boxes in the street and back to transformer kiosk(house/sheed ,what would you call it in English) are quite big sometimes 240 square millimeter cross section of aluminum. I know because i used to work with these things .

So if your house is old your cable from the street cable could be just 4-6mm square copper cable 3 phase 50hz 400/230 volt basically all free standing houses in Sweden have 3 phase mains and almost all apartments,( never seen anything but a 3 phase meter while i worked for the power company). Since the 90's most power companies just used 10 mm square everywhere.

So changing the 40 meters of cable to the box in street to something like 95mm square copper cable ? and then in your house mouth a sub central in the listening room wall feed by larger cables from your main electrical installation and then separate short wires to each outlet in that listening room.

Would be just as futile and sound the same but would actually technically accomplish something that these fantasy main cables does not do and cost less actually .

And you will now have industrial strength short-circuit power not that puny bang and flash when have an accidental short but a real ear shattering kaboooom and possibly some burns too . (there is a difference shorting 230v at home or at a steel mill, tried both .Even if the fuse is the same , the initial current the first milliseconds are quite huge with a really powerful network and transformer behind it all)

I lived in the country side too for a while. A heater fan i had in my car in wintertime made the toroids in my amps hum , really weak network there (half wave rectifier for the heater element in some settings on the fan)

 

[Chippyboy]

All you need / the solution is... good quality wall outlets/sockets with spring-tensioned receptacles /pin sockets. (Not sure of the right words.)

It varies per country and the wall outlets depend on when the building was built or renovated. There might be a trend to using cheaper, inferior products / contractor supplies.

The same applies to power strips - which is more typically a problem. Power strips and adaptors are unavoidable. The room will typically have 1 or 2 wall outlets and you have other appliances, not just hi-fi.
Contact is a problem, or potentially a problem. (Engineers' Blue will show it, you might be surprised to see how little contact there is. Receptacles in power strips become loose and the receptacle/contacts flex because they're made of thin brass or inferior/unsuitable brass. Some people modify them, upgrade them... drill out the plastic rivet things to open them, replace the badly riveted interconnecting strips with heavy gauge wire. (Household electrical wire.)

Better power strips...what is available depends on country. PDU (Power Distribution Units) - Look at suppliers of electrical stuff for network server rooms and so on. APC is a well-known brand...and I think there is at least one good brand in Germany.

Sorry but how do you imagine better power strips will improve sound quality? More snake oil I'm afraid.

 

[samwell7]

Sorry but how do you imagine better power strips will improve sound quality? More snake oil I'm afraid.

I've had cheap power strips which got a very poor connection, sometimes I'd need to wiggle the socket around a bit and leave it in a certain position for it to make contact.

If there's no sound (because the amp won't turn on) and then the amp does turn on with a better quality power strip (i.e. something that meets minimum requirements to be sold) I'd say that's a massive sound quality increase.
That's the only logical answer I can think of

 

[Mnyb]

I've had cheap power strips which got a very poor connection, sometimes I'd need to wiggle the socket around a bit and leave it in a certain position for it to make contact.

If there's no sound (because the amp won't turn on) and then the amp does turn on with a better quality power strip (i.e. something that meets minimum requirements to be sold) I'd say that's a massive sound quality increase.
That's the only logical answer I can think of

You mean broken power strips , definitely replace those , there is a minimum quality level somewhere . IKEA had to recall a power stripp costing about 1$ (10 sek) the starved children building the thing in some sweat shop in the third world had wired it wrong in to many cases.
Avoid child labor ,they have no sense for quality

 

[Chippyboy]

I've had cheap power strips which got a very poor connection, sometimes I'd need to wiggle the socket around a bit and leave it in a certain position for it to make contact.

If there's no sound (because the amp won't turn on) and then the amp does turn on with a better quality power strip (i.e. something that meets minimum requirements to be sold) I'd say that's a massive sound quality increase.
That's the only logical answer I can think of

That's the sort of sound quality improvement I had imagined. Sound vs total silence, is definitely an improvement.

Being slightly more serious though, I do wonder whether an expensive power strip with USB ports and surge-protection and goodness knows what else, might introduce electrical noise through the amp's mains inlet, which could be detrimental to sound quality? And to be safe therefore, you are better off with a cheap, bog-standard, unprotected £5 power strip!

 

[watchnerd]

Here is the article:

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2016...-own-concrete-power-pole-for-musical-clarity/

 

[SIY]

Here is the article:

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2016...-own-concrete-power-pole-for-musical-clarity/

I feel sad when mental illness is celebrated.

 

[Arno Fennix]

I feel sad when mental illness is celebrated.

In this case, makes me smile (like an audiophile lunatic I suppose )

 

[Katji]

Sorry but how do you imagine better power strips will improve sound quality? More snake oil I'm afraid.

I did not. Maybe the other replies helped you to understand.

 

[Arno Fennix]

I did not. Maybe the other replies helped you to understand.

I think it can be a case that poor power strips in comparison affect the sound in a negative way, which makes better power strips better. For me any improvement made could also be a matter of excluding things that might not yet be optimal. In that way other improvements can become more audible (makes sense?). Lowering the water level and other rocks will appear kind-a-way?

 

[BDWoody]

Lowering the water level and other rocks will appear kind-a-way?

Depends on how deep the water is.

 

[Arno Fennix]

Depends on how deep the water is.

And how tall the rock is ;-)

 

[watchnerd]

Last week we had a new Electrolux washer and dryer installed.

I needed an extension cord, but only a short one.

So I used a power strip.

The washer sounds great, much better than the old one.

Even my wife says so.

 

[MrPeabody]

All you need / the solution is... good quality wall outlets/sockets with spring-tensioned receptacles /pin sockets. (Not sure of the right words.)

It varies per country and the wall outlets depend on when the building was built or renovated. There might be a trend to using cheaper, inferior products / contractor supplies.

The same applies to power strips - which is more typically a problem. Power strips and adaptors are unavoidable. The room will typically have 1 or 2 wall outlets and you have other appliances, not just hi-fi.
Contact is a problem, or potentially a problem. (Engineers' Blue will show it, you might be surprised to see how little contact there is. Receptacles in power strips become loose and the receptacle/contacts flex because they're made of thin brass or inferior/unsuitable brass. Some people modify them, upgrade them... drill out the plastic rivet things to open them, replace the badly riveted interconnecting strips with heavy gauge wire. (Household electrical wire.)

Better power strips...what is available depends on country. PDU (Power Distribution Units) - Look at suppliers of electrical stuff for network server rooms and so on. APC is a well-known brand...and I think there is at least one good brand in Germany.

Can't you just feel with your hand to see whether heat is building up at the contact points? If there is a bad contact, the resistance at that point will be greater than elsewhere on the conduction path, and at that point there would be an increase in temperature together with heat dissipation. Right?

 

[levimax]

When ever I see people talking about magic power cords or outlets or regenerators I think if "clean power" is so important why not just use batteries?

 

[watchnerd]

When ever I see people talking about magic power cords or outlets or regenerators I think if "clean power" is so important why not just use batteries?

Or a computer UPS.

Or, if spendy, a lab power supply.

 

[Arno Fennix]

When ever I see people talking about magic power cords or outlets or regenerators I think if "clean power" is so important why not just use batteries?

Good thought, would love it, but at this moment it would be quite some struggle to keep on feeding power amps with batteries for a longer listening session. One day........solar panels charging a huge stack of batteries, when loaded disconnect the loading and feed into amps without mains transformers, rectifiers, capacitors....can't wait