Semanon
Super Member
This is what I would like to add. Sequencing power on and off would be great for my vintage stuff.
Power conditioners Snake oil?
- Thread starter Carbsandcaps
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That feature - which I think is FANTASTIC - is available on power strips. I have this one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058DHO1W
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0058DHO1W
Bill Ferris
Lunatic Member
I don`t know what model (it was very tall, large and heavy) Monster power protector my childhood friend bought back in early 2000s or so to protect his big $8k at the time very large Pioneer plasma HD TV.One functional advantage for me has been the trigger and switched/unswitched outlets. The HTS-3500 mkii trigger input can handle from 3 to 30 volts and controls the power state of the unswitched outlets. I had a lot of equipment in my home theater system and the Monster unit allowed me to control what was on only when the AV preamp was on, and which devices were on all the time, and which outlets (power amp) were delayed switched with the "timed" outlets. Each outlet type (video, cd, power amp, etc.) is labeled to imply it has it's own filtering specific to each device type (no idea if there are significant differences between the outlets).
There are pass-through filters for coax and phone jacks (!)-- the coax filter did help with a cable issue a long time ago (too long ago for me to remember, I don't think I am using the filter currently).
Back in the day when these were popular, I remember people saying that Panamax had better performance than Monster. The Monster units look a lot better than Panamax to my eye, and are very well built. I really don't know if either one is better or worse, but Panamax used to be talked up as better back then.
This is what the back of the HTS-3500 mkii looks like: switched/unswitched/timed outlets -- on the right coax filters, trigger, and phone jack filters
This top view shows the text discussing the implied difference in filtering and switching for the various outlet types:
But he finally wore out the Pioneer just last yr. and replaced it with a very large LCD one, and that Monster Power AVR/protector is still surge/spike protecting and regulating the AC to his HT system as I type.
My Monster HTS-3600 mkii is still going strong from having bought it for $200 in 2006 on Amazon (love that Amazon's order history saves forever)
Audi0
Super Member
There is fine line on marketing with these devices. Surge protectors and surge suppressors. The suppressors are usually dressed up devices that look like a surge protector but don't have proper trip out devices in them. Like a breaker.
There is alot of snek oil with marketing of these devices. Makes devices sound better etc. Not so much the general purpose of the device.
You may notice a difference in sound if your ac is extremely dirty.
I run furman elite.
Monster devices can be noisy on the chokes.
The one the op posted I had similar problems with as well.
There is alot of snek oil with marketing of these devices. Makes devices sound better etc. Not so much the general purpose of the device.
You may notice a difference in sound if your ac is extremely dirty.
I run furman elite.
Monster devices can be noisy on the chokes.
The one the op posted I had similar problems with as well.
Bill Ferris
Lunatic Member
And the outlet that their plugged into AC`s ground integrity/reversed outlet`s wiring and device`s current protection condition monitoring status LEDs absence !
After a strong power blip/nearby lightning strike event, I make it a point to check all mine`s LED protection status.
Some strong power blips, whether lightning based or man made, will sometimes trip my house`s various GFIs, whether load center circuit breaker installed, or outlet type, and really close by powerful lightning strikes to the local HT grid have even tripped my shop`s benches 20 amp breakers from the surge/spike`s energy being shunted to ground by the various protectors MOVs directing the massive surge/spike current to ground.
No equipment damaged yet after restoring the breaker back to on (thank you Tripp-Lite ISO-Bar, & Panamax !)
Plug your TV straight into the wall and watch it like that for a day or two, then plug it into a power filter... mine looked like old an 1960's TV using Rabbit ears... When I plugged it into a Furman PST-8 it was instantly crystal clear.
I put many ultra-isolators and line conditioners in my house long ago. None have made the outlet voltage worse. Most of the stuff I bought is mil-spec or hospital-grade, and they have lasted.
One thing is for sure: an inadequate power supply can be heard in the phono pre-amp or any other low-level amplification. If you measure the AC riding on top of the DC power of a phono pre-amp, it can range from 4mVAC to 20mVAC or more. With headphones, you can hear around 8-10mVAC at volume.
Do you hear the AC noise on the intro? Original PSU. 14.2mVAC riding on DC.
With Meanwell Hospital grade PSU. 4.4mVAC riding on DC.
One thing is for sure: an inadequate power supply can be heard in the phono pre-amp or any other low-level amplification. If you measure the AC riding on top of the DC power of a phono pre-amp, it can range from 4mVAC to 20mVAC or more. With headphones, you can hear around 8-10mVAC at volume.
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Thanks to this thread I made some positive changes to my rig yesterday. I have mostly 12 volt ambient lighting in my listening room and the wallwarts that I had been using were causing issues with dropouts with my digital music. So the noisy wallwarts got removed and I had been using a couple of 100 amp 12 volt lithium batteries to power the lighting. Problem solved and no more dropouts.
Yesterday while thinking about the snake oil nonsense I remembered I had an extra Belkin conditioner and decided to try using the wallwarts though the conditioner to power the lighting. The batteries got unplugged and I plugged in the 3 12 volt dc power supplies into the back of the Belkin. I was pleased to find my dropout issues did not reappear. The belkin also lowered emi on the circuit it's plugged into by an additional 50 units. I'm thinking it must stop what ever crap the cheap wallwarts are sending back to the line. Win win and no more charging the lithiums every few months.
The better pc units do in fact work. Although none of the monster units that I had pass through here worked as advertised. One of them being the monster voltage stabilizer that I had great hopes for. The display bounced around like it was stabilizing the voltage but my meter confirmed the voltage was the same at both the input and output. The 3500 I had added emi as did the lower level hts unit I had. Cool thread though; and now I can use my lithiums on my boat trolling motor where they belong
Yesterday while thinking about the snake oil nonsense I remembered I had an extra Belkin conditioner and decided to try using the wallwarts though the conditioner to power the lighting. The batteries got unplugged and I plugged in the 3 12 volt dc power supplies into the back of the Belkin. I was pleased to find my dropout issues did not reappear. The belkin also lowered emi on the circuit it's plugged into by an additional 50 units. I'm thinking it must stop what ever crap the cheap wallwarts are sending back to the line. Win win and no more charging the lithiums every few months.
The better pc units do in fact work. Although none of the monster units that I had pass through here worked as advertised. One of them being the monster voltage stabilizer that I had great hopes for. The display bounced around like it was stabilizing the voltage but my meter confirmed the voltage was the same at both the input and output. The 3500 I had added emi as did the lower level hts unit I had. Cool thread though; and now I can use my lithiums on my boat trolling motor where they belong
In my opinion cheap, generic wallwarts are the bane of good audio.
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Yes; I agree. Clean power is one of many essentials to great audio. Another issue I found today is my $100 lithium smart charger is far worse than the cheapo wallwarts for adding noise to the lines. The struggle for clean power is real.
My solution is old-school isolation transformers and Hospital-Grade power supplies. The IT people at work got me into Meanwell Hospital (Medical) grade PSUs.
https://medical.meanwell.com/productSeries.aspx
Topaz Ultra-isolation transformers can drop line noise well over 100dB. I wish they were as cheap to buy when I first got into audio and guitar amps.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/top...ansformers-for-affordably-clean-power.857448/
The article is correct about not knowing how noisy your line is until you add a good noise suppressor. It makes the music's quiet passages much blacker. Lowers the noise floor.
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RunOutGroove
Addicted Member
I have a similar kind of thing hooked up in my system, might even be the same model, I don't know. I bought it as I was using a plain old power strip, but ran out of outlets and this thing had more of them as well as protection and conditioning features. I also have a PS Audio power conditioner, one of the smaller, low end models. It was given to me by a friend who'd got a really great audio system and said that he felt that the thing was worthless... that it didn't make any improvement. I lent it to the guitar playing of my band (I'm the drummer) who had issues with a noisy amp and claimed that the PS Audio power conditioner improved things. I'm skeptical that it's doing much, but since he had his amp worked on, it's not as noisy and I'm tempted to get the thing back from him to try on my stereo. The only problem is that it doesn't have enough outlets, but I wonder if it would be worth plugging the Monster power bank thing into it? I figure that it can't hurt to try, right?
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
There is a company (Stromtank) that produces "audio grade" battery power supplies. Their TOTL model S5000 is $31K. It's suitable for even higher power, power amplifiers.
They also have lower priced models such as the Model 1000 @ $16K
Bill Ferris
Lunatic Member
I wonder how clean my house`s power is right now as 10 minutes ago the grid unexpectedly (no thunder storm(s) went down and I`m currently on my whole house genset backup !
So its just my inhouse created dirty power, since my 2 drop transformer sharing neighbor`s dirty power connections are disconnected from my house`s electrical system, via my genset`s 200 amp transfer switch !
All 4 operating stereos, DAC. and the distributed WAV. ripped music player resumed playing after my 25 yr. old Generac genset auto cranked up and switched over.
It`s 84` outside, and the HVAC is currently engaged and blowing 76 ` temp air upon me, and I can`t help to smile about the situation from my personal POV.
So its just my inhouse created dirty power, since my 2 drop transformer sharing neighbor`s dirty power connections are disconnected from my house`s electrical system, via my genset`s 200 amp transfer switch !
All 4 operating stereos, DAC. and the distributed WAV. ripped music player resumed playing after my 25 yr. old Generac genset auto cranked up and switched over.
It`s 84` outside, and the HVAC is currently engaged and blowing 76 ` temp air upon me, and I can`t help to smile about the situation from my personal POV.
If it was me I'd be checking the emi to satisfy my own curiosity. I checked my portable inverter gen a while back and the emi was about 2,000 which is very high.
Today I decided to try running a pair of line conditioners in series. I was able to get an emi reading of 10 coming out of the 2nd conditioner which is by far the lowest I've ever seen it. Research tells me it isn't a good idea to do that with equipment plugged in so I won't be doing that. But my curiosity is now happy; 2 pc's in series does lower emi a lot
Sam08861
Super Member
I get piece of mind from my SurgeX SEQ. Have no real idea on the impact to sound.
www.sweetwater.com
~ $1800 new, but quite often easy to get on ebay for $100-200. (sales from regular server farm refreshes, etc)
There's a story that SurgeX was featured in the Independence Day movie saving a news truck that had the aforementioned unit in it, as a lot of the folks consulted for the scene really had a lot of faith in the units.
SurgeX SEQ 2U 14 Outlet 20A Power Sequencer
14-outlet, 20 Amp/120V Power Sequencer/Conditioner, with 2 Always-on Outlets, 3 Sequence Banks, and Adjustable 0-40 Second Sequence Delay
www.sweetwater.com
~ $1800 new, but quite often easy to get on ebay for $100-200. (sales from regular server farm refreshes, etc)
There's a story that SurgeX was featured in the Independence Day movie saving a news truck that had the aforementioned unit in it, as a lot of the folks consulted for the scene really had a lot of faith in the units.
My "power conditioner" is a rack mount thing that has almost nothing inside beyond a cap and a toroid. I don't really think its providing much useful filtering or surge protection. It has a voltmeter that works and an ammeter that only seems to work with purely resistive loads, so basically it never reads. What I use it for is a master power switch a power strip.
The other item is a big isolation transformer. That one probably does provide some filtering, and it certainly pulls DC out of the line but I'd be lying if I could tell you I heard any difference. The rack mount unit plugs into the iso transformer.
The other item is a big isolation transformer. That one probably does provide some filtering, and it certainly pulls DC out of the line but I'd be lying if I could tell you I heard any difference. The rack mount unit plugs into the iso transformer.
Bill Ferris
Lunatic Member
Well, with a small scale portable genset, I would possibly consider checking for EMI dirt on my house`s distributed AC circuits, but I probably wouldn`t be running the 4 room`s background music playing stereos because of conserving my lessor available watts available.
With 25K watts of available power, and all my stereo systems, less one integrated in my shop, and the car garage`s 100 WPC Sony receiver have 20 amp rated AVRs plugged into 20 amp dedicated circuits along with their integral surge/spike/EMI filtering, I`m not concerned with increased EMI from my low distortion rated waveform from the Generac enough to go to the trouble to re-check with my 120 v plugin wideband EMI meter.
I`m confident that being disconnected, via my 200 amp rated genset`s transfer relay while on my genset, from my 2 neighbors drop transformers would be a reduction in my overall mains dirt, as I`m pretty sure that my house`s power conditioning mitigates a lot of my back fed EMI to the shared 240v drop, whereas they most likely have little to no power line endpoint filtering, much less good quality surge/spike protection.
I did my initial system`s powerline noise ingress concern checking decades ago shortly after the genset`s installation 25 yrs. ago this month, with the house`s stereos using high quality headphones plugged into them with the system selected to a unused line level input with the equipment`s volume control maxed out while on my genset. and only recall very mild circuit hiss, as would be expected cranked up that way.
If I was to go to the trouble of connecting my 7kw gasoline powered Coleman, that`s a backup to the Generac, I would not be surprised if it`s AC output was a bit dirty, but I wouldn`t run any normally daily operating stereos but maybe a single receiver as I would only be on that Coleman to temporally provide some restricted/reduced selected circuits house power only while I looked into why the Generac whole house backup genset had failed to see if I could fix the issue myself in a timely manner.
Bill Ferris
Lunatic Member
And, may I inquire the brand/model of your low confidence in your RM "Power Conditioner", if I may, gadget73?
Just curious !
All mine with or without metering, are quite busy inside with MOVs, filtering caps, and even 10 gage wire low pass inductors in the 20 amp versions.