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clarkjohnsen wrote:

Since all audio folks know that the wall gives us highly variable power (voltage being just about the least important aspect), it occurs to me that a way to measure it that includes all the various parameters would be highly desirable. It further occurs to me that possibly someone in industry or research already has developed such a device, without suspecting its audio application. So I'm looking for suggestions on where one might look.

Well, Clark, this is the question that I keep asking for years but I am not sure that the answer is out there. It would be similar to have a devise that objectively and accurately indicate a right polarity of Absolute Phase in any room and any playback. Sure it would be nice to have such a devise and even to build an algorithm around it that would automatically set a right Absolute Phase but I would argue that it is possible. The same is with electricity. I might know what would be the required parameters to have electricity to sound properly but in so many instances electricity has own mind and I never was able to detect any pattern with a certain level of predictability.

Unquestionably the distortion of the sinusoidal waveforms is one of the keys. The waveforms distortions are the result of present in sinusoid any other micro-sinusoids. A stable and free from distortion waveform of voltage is the very much essential. Running a distortion analyses on AC fundamental I think that the waveforms that have less than 1% distortion looks like good enough for audio. Then we have a current waveform. It is very useful to view voltage oscillogramm right along with current oscillogramm off a current probe. Interesting that if in voltage oscillogramm must be perfect in vertical and horizontal demission then it looks like current waveform are not so critical in time domain but they are very critical for amplitude in relation to voltage. The current waveform might very corrupted in time domain with no impact to sound but as soon we have clipped  current waveform then sound goes to toilet. Running a wide spectra spectrum analyzer and trying to see noise in lines at hundreds kilohertzs or megahertzs level is also very useful… However there is a catch in there. The presents of high distortions and noise are the assurance of bad sound, nonetheless the absent of distortions and noise are unfortunately not the assurance of good sounding electricity.

I have seen as my system powered from clipped sinusoid sounded very good. I have seen as adding another power treating device changed nothing measurable but improved sound. I have seen as perfect waveforms (from PS Audio regenerator for instance) did not do well sonically. In other words… go figure.

I would be less paying attention to the “industry or research” and those people operate by objective data and they hardly know anything about sound and nature of objective sonic evaluations. The best that they can come up with are their idiotic double-blind test – the crutches for the Morons who have no idea what to listen while they are listening. So I do not see that the “industry” would even address the problem of bad sounding electricity.

There is another two factors why I think the sound of electricity enigmas will never be addressed at institutional level. The first factor is the fact the electricity is different at each zip code and different part of the day or each hour – so we basically shoot at very moving target. The second factor is that there is no real need to “industry” to resolve this problem. The cry of a few hundred of isolated freaks that their power lines do not sound good is really nothing for the industry’s interest. It would be fun if some kind of “Columbia Pictures” or “Warner Music Group” file a Class Action Law Suit against power industry for supplying “bad sound electricity” – but to fantasies about it is similar as to have a fantasies that someday US public offices would have a mandatory IQ test to qualify to do their jobs…

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