Long post sorry...
I'm not sure what to do about filtering on my system. Up front I'll say that I don't have a major problem here, this is much more about marginal gains, and I know I could just chill out and stop overthinking things, however these marginal gains collectively are all adding up to a decent improvement on my system.
I had an electrician in last year to sort out a ground loop which a contractor introduced into my house, while he was here he installed a new socket on a dedicated spur for the hifi. He stated that there are still faults in the house but it will take a lot of time & money to try to track them down. Things were massively improved, I can't hear a ground loop issue anymore at the hifi.
I think I have other problems but I'm not sure exactly what all of them are, or the best way to find out and solve things. Can I here a faint mechanical buzz at the speaker, maybe, in itself it's not an issue however with my limited understanding I wonder if DC might cause different types of distortion elsewhere as well.
I'm a technology geek and the house is full of power supplies, many low quality which I suspect are pretty dirty. An example is the PSU for the switch which shares a cheap filtering power strip with my streamer, if I move the streamer off the power strip I get a tiny improvement.
So the question is what do I do to identify the sources of issues versus just scatter gun treating problems. There's a long list of options and I'm not sure what to try. I don't really want to spend £100s or even 1000s on fancy conditioners if I can avoid it, would rather spend the money of kit instead.
I've also got speakers with onboard power amp and DAC - so in my head I can see a case for doing some filtering there as well, though using the power strip I have with filtering current limits the amp (no obvious negative sound quality but this would require some A+B testing to confirm).
There's also the old chestnut of the quality of the supply into the house and how neighbors might affect things.
So what to do, the list of options is very long:- ferrite cores on PSU round the house, isolation transformer, "hospital grade" PSUs around the house (feels overkill), Power strips with filters (not sure there are ones which won't current limit, is that a big issue though?), plug in devices which "clean up the power source", DC blocker, mains conditioners.
I've seen relatively cheap EMI detectors which might help identify the sources of problems, not sure if there are similar DC detectors, I think there are also fairly cheap RFI detectors out there as well.
So I'm sure people will say I'm overthinking this, but I think it's worth putting some effort into seeing if I can make any improvements, I'm not talking about wasting vast amounts of cash, so if things don't help all I've wasted really is my time.
I think I've now got a basic grasp of the electrical engineering side of things to understand the issues and solutions, but no doubt there will still be gaps in my knowledge...
Where to start?!
I'm not sure what to do about filtering on my system. Up front I'll say that I don't have a major problem here, this is much more about marginal gains, and I know I could just chill out and stop overthinking things, however these marginal gains collectively are all adding up to a decent improvement on my system.
I had an electrician in last year to sort out a ground loop which a contractor introduced into my house, while he was here he installed a new socket on a dedicated spur for the hifi. He stated that there are still faults in the house but it will take a lot of time & money to try to track them down. Things were massively improved, I can't hear a ground loop issue anymore at the hifi.
I think I have other problems but I'm not sure exactly what all of them are, or the best way to find out and solve things. Can I here a faint mechanical buzz at the speaker, maybe, in itself it's not an issue however with my limited understanding I wonder if DC might cause different types of distortion elsewhere as well.
I'm a technology geek and the house is full of power supplies, many low quality which I suspect are pretty dirty. An example is the PSU for the switch which shares a cheap filtering power strip with my streamer, if I move the streamer off the power strip I get a tiny improvement.
So the question is what do I do to identify the sources of issues versus just scatter gun treating problems. There's a long list of options and I'm not sure what to try. I don't really want to spend £100s or even 1000s on fancy conditioners if I can avoid it, would rather spend the money of kit instead.
I've also got speakers with onboard power amp and DAC - so in my head I can see a case for doing some filtering there as well, though using the power strip I have with filtering current limits the amp (no obvious negative sound quality but this would require some A+B testing to confirm).
There's also the old chestnut of the quality of the supply into the house and how neighbors might affect things.
So what to do, the list of options is very long:- ferrite cores on PSU round the house, isolation transformer, "hospital grade" PSUs around the house (feels overkill), Power strips with filters (not sure there are ones which won't current limit, is that a big issue though?), plug in devices which "clean up the power source", DC blocker, mains conditioners.
I've seen relatively cheap EMI detectors which might help identify the sources of problems, not sure if there are similar DC detectors, I think there are also fairly cheap RFI detectors out there as well.
So I'm sure people will say I'm overthinking this, but I think it's worth putting some effort into seeing if I can make any improvements, I'm not talking about wasting vast amounts of cash, so if things don't help all I've wasted really is my time.
I think I've now got a basic grasp of the electrical engineering side of things to understand the issues and solutions, but no doubt there will still be gaps in my knowledge...
Where to start?!
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