PS Audio Noise Harvester

[ExtremeSkeptic]

Wrong answer. It makes no sense that a tweak that improved the sound of a system would enable MP3s to sound good. Sounds more like your tweaks have the sound so coloured that it no longer sounds good at all.

Valhalla + 128 kbps mp3 sounded better than Vishnu + wav.

I assume you have a Valhalla power cable at your computer then.

I use 2 meter Valhalla for my computer. I have wrapped it with ERS Paper. I have a Magix levitation foot under the PSU, and Feet of Silence under the computer case. Both wrapped in ERS Paper.
Like I said earlier in this thread, I'm using Premier Power Plant to power the computer. I bought the Premier just for my computer because my P300 Power Plant required loud cooling.

I suppose your computer is full of all the best Burr Brown DACs.

My $5000 CD player had blurry brown DACs. Horrible muddiness... That's why I changed to something else.

You are probably water cooled so you don't have to hear that pesky fan.

I have Zalman Reserator for CPU and graphics card. I don't know of audiophiles who use fans.
Harddrive should always be in closet. I have taken care of the vibrations also.

Headphones don't annoy other people but they don't produce volume. With headphones it will never sound like that kettle drum is in the room with you.

I need detail and consistency. My room is smaller than a prison cell so I can't use loudspeakers anyway. I do most of my listening at night when people are sleeping. The apartment has thin walls...

The truth is that MP3 is compressed data that gets compressed by selectively throwing away bits you may not need. They are okay for casual listening in the background but they, like headphones, are not for serious listening.

MP3 is good enough for tweaking. When I can't hear huge improvements with my MP3's anymore then it's time to upgrade.

 

[speco2007]

BTW:
Did anyone happen to notice if the noise harvester and other PS Audio products are UL listed? I've not seen mention of it on the PS Audio site, though I must admit that I haven't looked explicitly for that.

None of them are UL listed. They say UL is not as tough as the europe one they use. Although none of the gear they sell would be allowed in any of my touring audio racks. The fire marshalls would make us remove it at any gig we would ever have tried to use them at.

 

[speco2007]

Not that IM is difficult to measure, once you decide to do it. Just inject two or three frequencies that don't divide into each others and record the spectrum. If any new spikes show up, you have IM.

Hans

Ans IM is very audible even at lo level because it is so offensive. It is not like HD which can sometimes sound ok because of the harmonics.

 

[speco2007]

I gave Mr. McGowan an earful on the IM problem as well.

Since Speco is using a noise source (pink noise I would assume,) IM would show up in a slightly higher over all noise level when not using the noise harveste - if the noise harvester were actually reducing power line noise.

I've been perusing the user manual for Premier Power Plant. Someone mentioned that PS Ausdio recommends removing the ground pin to avoid hum, and the manual really does say that. Can you say "safety hazard?" Youch!

They also sell power cords with a ground pin that unscrews and say thats the way to solve ground hum issues. Yet even in the very manuals for the products they sell on the first pages it says how dangerous this can be. They all claim its perfectly fine, I went for days showing them real science why its not even code from the book, but it didnt matter. They all just laughed.

 

[elgarak]

Most homes in Europe don't have grounded AC outlets. I have been running my system ungrounded my whole life. After I started tweaking I noticed the grounding wire wasn't connected to the AC outlet, so I connected it. My tweaking has made everything safer.

Major BS!

I grew up in Germany, and grounded outlets here were standard LOOOOONG before they became standard in the USA.

Schuko has and is always grounded, not as pin, but as stripes at the sides of plugs, and spring loaded swipers in the outlets. Schuko is not the flat ungrounded Euro-plug that may be used for plastic housed equipment.

Alternatively, most Schuko plugs have a hole for a grounding prong sticking out of the outlet. This type of outlet, however, was not used in Germany in my lifetime (it's a French standard).

ES, even though outlets in Germany have only two holes, they are always grounded, with springs.

EDIT: Sorry about my harsh language. Hadn't read all of the thread. Advice to ES: Do not assume that Norway = Europe.

 

[jsiv]

I want to make it clear that I do not support any of ExtremeSkeptic's arguments.

I just wanted to point out that the lack of ground (and in Norway, neutral) is relatively widespread even in the civilized world. Whether that is true for Germany or wherever ExtremeSkeptic is, I have no idea.

I'd certainly be careful with messing around inside the outlets unless you know for a fact what the other end of the cable is (or isn't) connected to. ES's whole setup sounds like a recipe for disaster.

As for audio equipment, everything I own appears to be double insulated and use standard ungrounded two-prong europlugs. Infact, with the exception of my computer, pretty much everything I own does. Maybe I'm not high-end enough.

 

[Hindmost]

At least we have created a new power source...with Maxwell spinning in his grave; we should be able to harness a few gigawatts.

Anyhow...there is a difference between safety ground and a grounded neutral. In the US, the neutral has always been grounded--needed for a complete circuit. I would venture to say it is the same in Europe...but can't say for sure. The safety ground protects people from a hot short to the case.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/hsehld.html

glenn

 

[jsiv]

Anyhow...there is a difference between safety ground and a grounded neutral. In the US, the neutral has always been grounded--needed for a complete circuit. I would venture to say it is the same in Europe...but can't say for sure. The safety ground protects people from a hot short to the case.

I realize that, but when I said no neutral I meant that there is really no neutral line in the majority of Norwegian installations. You get 230V between two phases. Safety ground has only recently become mandatory on all outlets. Thankfully most devices are double-insulated and do not need it anyway.

 

[Paulhoff]

Where is JJ now that we need him again..............

Paul



Bypassing fuses, humbug

 

[Myriad]

Almost all the outlets in my apartment don't have the grounding pins, just 2 holes.

The apartment has thin walls...

(emphasis added)

Just wonderful.

- Internal components and cables wrapped in thermally insulating, electrically conductive, combustible material.

- Jumbles of power cables in close confined spaces.

- Bypassed fuses.

- I would bet, no fire extinguisher and no smoke detector.

- Thin-walled apartment.

This tells me very clearly, louder than any words you can say, "My current goal in life is to commit manslaughter."

Do you think you have the right to put other people's lives in danger so you can enjoy your music more? Could you possibly be that arrogant, callous, and sociopathic?

If you don't shape up, I hope somebody in that apartment building drops a dime to the landlord, or the building code department or the fire inspector or whoever has authority over such matters where you live. They'll be much better off when you're powering that death trap of yours from a street light, somewere outdoors.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[Blue Mountain]

[Leading portion clipped]
Skeptics always wanted a double blind test but now when it passed they say it isn't valid anymore. They never wanted it to pass, they wanted it to fail.

Uh, maybe I missed it ... where can I see this double blind test?

 

[Buckaroo]

Do you think you have the right to put other people's lives in danger so you can enjoy your music more?

The ironic thing is, most "audiophiles" that I know aren't interested in enjoying music, and indeed may be incapable of appreciating it. Instead, they're pathologically and irrationally driven to find a mythical "perfect" sound. The music itself doesn't matter. I'd bet ES falls into this category. Notice the conspicuous absence of any discussion on his part of the actual experience of listening to music. Instead we get vague and rather silly descriptions of how the system sounds. Never, "Wow, Pet Sounds is amazing through system X!" Instead, we get "the coloration of the sound is improved by the application of thousands of dollars of snakeoil."

Sad.

 

[osmosis]

The ironic thing is, most "audiophiles" that I know aren't interested in enjoying music, and indeed may be incapable of appreciating it. Instead, they're pathologically and irrationally driven to find a mythical "perfect" sound.

Exactly. It seems to me that much of this audio equipment is just a big, expensive dowsing rod with sounds and flashing lights.

 

[MortFurd]

I promised to explain the anomaly in the spectrum plots I posted the other day. It's a little late, and not the explanation I had planned. As for being late, I'm having to post this from work. A power supply went out yesterday sometime, and cut me off from the internet at home.

The explanation is not the one I had planned because I got thrown for a loop. Lame apparently doesn't always filter out everything above 16kHz. I don't know the rules for when it decides to extend the frequency range, but it does do it.

So, that's the explanation for the extended frequency range of the mp3 file: Lame did it for some weird reason.

Now I'll tell you about the oddity of frequency response measurements that I thought was the reason for that extension in the response plot.

The response plot shows the difference between the input and output signals. The reason that it can show a flat response in an area where you know there is a drop is because if your input signal doesn't have any content in that area, zero minus zero is zero.

Say you have a low pass at 16kHz. You would expect the response plot to show a drop at 16kHz. If your test signal (normally a chirp or pink noise, but in this case music) has a drop out that starts at 15kHz and extends to 18kHz, then the response plot would be flat from 15kHz to 18kHz, even though you know that the output has a drop above 16kHz. Flat because zip is equal to zip, which is a gain of 0dB.

Since the plot I posted was of music, and I KNEW that mp3 drops everything above 16kHz, I jumped to the conclusion that the posted plot was showing this peculiarity of frequency response plots.

So, in trying to brag about what I know about cross-ffts, I learned something about mp3.

You can still see the effect I was talking about at the high end of the following plot. The .wav (red line) audio finally begins to drop out above 20kHz. The mp3 (green line) is already way down at almost nothing. As the red drops to where the green is, the yellow (difference) begins to rise. It settles in around the mid line (baudline pushes that line down to -65dB so that it can be seen simultaneously with the original plots. The midline should actually be 0dB for identical audio.) The yellow line should (theoretically) be flat where the red and green both drop down so far together. In practice (and as the curve shows,) you hit the lower limits of 16Bit accuracy and the results become crap.



And for our friend ExtremeSkeptic, here's the difference between aiff and 320kbps mp3.

 

[Project86]

The ironic thing is, most "audiophiles" that I know aren't interested in enjoying music, and indeed may be incapable of appreciating it. Instead, they're pathologically and irrationally driven to find a mythical "perfect" sound.

So true. And it's too bad, because there are those of us who actually enjoy the music and want to hear it reproduced in a clear manner, without spending more than we did on our cars (or houses in some cases).

I have some modest speakers that I enjoy. I can think of some other models that I'm fairly sure will offer better sound, that cost up to several thousand dollars more. But would there be anything to gain by stepping up from, say, a pair of $3500 Onix Reference 3s, to a $40,000 pair of Sonus Faber Stradavari, and then from there to a set of Wilson Audio Alexandria X-2s for a mere $95,000 more? I don't know, and I certainly don't trust the owners of these speakers to tell me. And it only gets worse for other system components. External DACs? Upgraded power cords? Strategically placed bottles of rocks?

I would be very much interested to have a solid test showing me that something does in fact make a noticeable (and therefore measurable) difference. I would love to have true double blind tests being done by music lovers (note I won't use the term audiophile) all over the place, so I could easily find out what is worth buying. But instead I have wacky companies like PS Audio selling nonsense for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

 

[ExtremeSkeptic]

I was using 3 Harvesters in my system. Synergy was almost perfect but there was a little bass missing. So I plugged in my 4th Harvester and now I get 20 times more bass than I wanted! It makes me sick. Everything is too heavy from top to bottom.

In my system 3 Harvesters gives too little bass and 4 Harvesters gives too much bass. After my 2nd batch of ERS Paper AC noise is more apparent now.

You won't believe how huge the difference is. Nobody wants a blind test video? Tell me how you want the video to be done.

 

[ExtremeSkeptic]

(emphasis added)

Just wonderful.

- Internal components and cables wrapped in thermally insulating, electrically conductive, combustible material.

ERS Paper was designed to be put inside the chassis of audio components. You don't know the texture of the cloth...Better do some research...

- Jumbles of power cables in close confined spaces.

Only 1 power cord is plugged in. 1 PSU = 1 power cord. I do frequent A/B-ing with other power cords to keep me sane. They aren't plugged in.

All my power cords are separated from each other because it gives better sound. The conductors inside Valhalla need to be separated as well.

- Bypassed fuses.

Non audiophile gear don't have any fuses inside, right? What about my tv or LCD?

- I would bet, no fire extinguisher and no smoke detector.

- Thin-walled apartment.

I have both.

This tells me very clearly, louder than any words you can say, "My current goal in life is to commit manslaughter."

I have entered Earth to prepare for our invasion with my alien buddies. We watched 'Independence Day' movie and it wasn't the way to go. We needed to enter inside in disguise...

Do you think you have the right to put other people's lives in danger so you can enjoy your music more? Could you possibly be that arrogant, callous, and sociopathic?

My alien buddies told me to build the audio system before they come back. We will listen to it in our spaceship.


I found this quote:

"It is not evil to eliminate people with lower level goals who get in the way of your own goal" - One

If you don't shape up, I hope somebody in that apartment building drops a dime to the landlord, or the building code department or the fire inspector or whoever has authority over such matters where you live. They'll be much better off when you're powering that death trap of yours from a street light, somewere outdoors.

Inspectors come to my apartment once a month.
They came inside my room and saw me in bed with headphones, they got scared and left the room quickly. Another time they checked inside my closet and didn't say anything.

 

[MRC_Hans]

I was using 3 Harvesters in my system. Synergy was almost perfect but there was a little bass missing. So I plugged in my 4th Harvester and now I get 20 times more bass than I wanted! It makes me sick. Everything is too heavy from top to bottom.

Any suggestions on how a noise shunt (being charitable) on your power line can influence bass reproduction?

In my system 3 Harvesters gives too little bass and 4 Harvesters gives too much bass. After my 2nd batch of ERS Paper AC noise is more apparent now.

Welcome to the realization that too much screennig can give you more noise instead of less.

You won't believe how huge the difference is.

Right.

Nobody wants a blind test video? Tell me how you want the video to be done.

How about you suggest a protocol? How will you test it?

Hans

 

[MortFurd]

I'm afraid ExtremeSkeptic is correct here. In Norway, grounding is a relatively new addition to the building codes. Most outlets in houses built up until the mid-90s are unlikely to have any grounding. The exception being wet rooms and kitchens.

I certainly have none.

[qimg]http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/6986/img2588ul2.jpg[/qimg]

My reaction was still appropriate. ES claimed no houses had grounded outlets.

I've only personally seen grounded plugs in about 8 european countries (and no outlets without ground pins,) and assumed that the other countries were in line with the trend.

 

[MortFurd]

ExtremeSkeptic:
Nice sig.

Now add the part where you were wrong as well. Your claim is that no houses in europe have grounded outlets. That is wrong. That some houses don't have grounded outlets doesn't not make your blanket statement true.