GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: It’s mad, mad, mad... electricity.

Post Subject: Storms and the vibrating electric value chainPosted by scooter on: 1/19/2011

"I wonder if it possible to built an electrical equivalent of the “heavy snow storms emulator”?"

The past month or so we have enjoyed several days of good electricity in Boston and last night I wrote to Romy noting that this was by far the best electricity day I have experienced. For the record, this winter has hit Boston cold weather and a few good snow storms. Last week we had two feet of snow, last weekend recorded single digit (fahrenheit) temperatures, and yesterday we had five inches of snow and a long ice storm (which likely coated all of the ariel power lines). That said, some days the this winter electricity has been only OK.

So last night's music was some jazz programing on WERS (mistakenly thought it was WHRB) and it sounded fantastic in every way; not like a jazz club or recording venue but perhaps how the musicians intended the music to be - if you are a musician you will get that if not I can't explain. That got me to thinking of the "perfect storm." That would be a good live broadcast from Boston during one of these ice storms where the entire "value chain" benefited from fantastic electricity, from recording microphones, to broadcasting equipment to the end-user's home equipment.

My uncle recently rewired the house and he said he could feel some of the romex was "vibrating" before he rewired but had no explanation as to why. That got me to thinking about a different type of emulator that would reduce vibration. That would be to encase incoming wire from the power company in some liquid or foam compound to reduce vibration (maybe what the snow and ice are doing). Ideally, the power coming from the street would be underground so that would provide a good run of dampening in the front yard or alternatively one could insulate the inside wire somehow within code.

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