GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

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

Post Subject: If it was that bad I would not keep using the PPPosted by Lx_ on: 12/22/2011

Romy,

I have reported the issues I have with my PP here, though that was quite a while back. I do not have anything as severe as you suggest: I do NOT have ANY transient issue, meaning I cannot hear any click or pop or whatever when an external device turns on or off. Rather the effects are a lot more subtle and require a good setup and experience to detect. But once you know what to look for it is not hard to hear what is wrong.

The effects on sound can be described either globally or in details. Globally the music flows less, the sense of musical phrasing is diminished, sound tends to tighten, feel constricted, dynamics are also reduced. When trying to analyze what is wrong, one notices that timbres are less accurate, dynamics suffer and transients are handled less favorably. The effect is similar to a reduction of clock quality. Yes it has occurred to me that the clocks in my soundcard may be subject to noise and that may explain the problem, but since the PC is plugged to PP which is supposed to filter noise out it does not explain where the noise comes from except through PP. And since degradation is clearly synchronized with external appliances turning on/off this is not a case of airborne/electromagnetic/weather/night effect phenomenon (not that I deny those).

I have not tried to measure signals as I do not have proper equipment (only a quality multimeter, no scope... yet). But more importantly since the effect is really small I do not feel that standard consumer equipment would be able to detect anything. The APS guys did not detect anything when they performed checks on my unit (not that I consider in any way this as proof that the problem cannot be measured).

For now I can only assume that the noise comes through PP. I hope that it comes through ground, because I may then be able to isolate it (either with dedicated ground or completely floating). Your experience seems to suggest otherwise, which would be bad because it would mean something is wrong inside the PP.

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