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Is plugging a head into a power conditioner bad?

#101
Floyd Eye said:
What about this unit?

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Seems like a ridiculously expensive thing to me, but does it protect your gear? Choke off power?
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Ask the manufacturer of your amp if you should use one. IMO, snake-oil, pure and simple, just like their cables. They should be sold here:
http://www.machinadynamica.com
 
#103
#104
OK, so what you're really saying is that these cables sound better ( which I know for a fact that they do) but they are overpriced?

Hard to argue with that from a consumer POV I guess.





Do major recording studios use voltage regulators?
 
#105
Floyd Eye said:
So you don't believe there is an audible difference between Monster/ Mogami/ Zaolla cables and Rapco/ Planet Waves/ Whirlwind cables?
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There is no audible difference between well built cables using the proper type of cable.

You can make them sound different by making your cable a filter (see - Monster Bass cables), or they can sound bad due to improper construction/wiring (see using unshielded cable for microphones)... but any competently built cable out of good wire - you won't hear a difference.
 
#106
aborgman said:
There is no audible difference between well built cables using the proper type of cable.

You can make them sound different by making your cable a filter (see - Monster Bass cables), or they can sound bad due to improper construction/wiring (see using unshielded cable for microphones)... but any competently built cable out of good wire - you won't hear a difference.
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So you can't hear the difference between a Rapco cable and a Mogami cable? ;)


Your post here seemed to state the obvious. I mean " No difference between well built cables". That's like saying that there is no audible sound difference between Monster cable A and Monster cable B. My question was can you hear a difference between Monster and Rapco or Mogami and Planet waves, etc...
 
#109
Sten said:
More expensive cable do not necessarily have better R/L/C values, but may have.
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Some expensive cables have better than average R/L/C and shielding. But some don't, and some very reasonably priced cables are just as good as those costing not just 10 times more but 100 and even 1000 times more. Price is no indicator of cable quality, just an indicator of the gullibility level of the customer base that the company in question is targeting.
 
#110
Bluesbob said:
Except my surge protector can be mounted in my rack case and has a re-set (yours may too, I dunno), has lights so I can see the controls on my amp, wireless, tuner and compressor, gives me a read-out of the voltage and allows me to set up my rig in under a minute, while keeping everything neat and out of the way and protecting the PA and my bass amp, as well as providing a common ground.

My surge protector is a Furman Series II with SMP. I can't believe how expensive these have gotten, but I bought mine for $89.00 (plus shipping) a few years ago. I had ordered the plain-vanilla version, but the eBay retailer I bought it from was out of them at the time, so they sent me the one with the digital voltage read-out - for the same price. Sweet!
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Yeah, I don't have any rackmount stuff besides my amp, which is in its own homemade case, so I just use a regular hardware store surge protector. I don't know what kind, it's pretty mundane.
 
#111
Basically there are rackmount surge protectors that get the job done and there are rackmount surge protectors that get the job done and empty your wallet.
The only reason I have tripplite gear with noise suppression is that it helps lower the noise floor of my studio. Some really nice sounding stuff has not so great power supply filtering. Certain synths and mic pres come to mind. Also some tube gear with unfortunate heater circuit implementation.
 
#112
Calaverasgrande said:
Also some tube gear with unfortunate heater circuit implementation.
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Using AC heater supplies does give the potential for induced noise, but retrofitting the heater supply to DC is an easy fix at minimal cost. The main source of noise in older tube amps is inadequate B+ filtering, because of the relatively low value caps used. Modern caps get a lot more capacity from the same size case, so re-capping with higher values is possible and can give a lot cleaner result, especially with amps that are so old that the filter caps are no longer close to their rated capacity anyway.
 
#113
Poor internal grounding schemes is another culpert, something that is not usually an easy fix.

Note that with tube amps with tube rectifiers, there is a limit to the peak current the rectifier tubes can provide, so increasing cap size beyond this peak charging current limit can damage the rectifier tube and even the power transformer. Even with an input choke, this should be researched before modifying.
 
#114
agedhorse said:
Poor internal grounding schemes is another culpert, something that is not usually an easy fix.
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+1. I've seen a number of amps that were chirpy because of this. Burst oscillation is what I mean by chirpy, sometimes into the 100's of kHz. Some amps needed essentially rebuilding. Some just needed cleaning, retightening, and/or soldering to chassis all the screws.

agedhorse said:
Note that with tube amps with tube rectifiers, there is a limit to the peak current the rectifier tubes can provide, so increasing cap size beyond this peak charging current limit can damage the rectifier tube and even the power transformer. Even with an input choke, this should be researched before modifying.
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++++1.
 
#115
I'm curious as to surge protectors, as they are always recommended for home computers. Just how common is it for electricity to " surge " and don't modern built homes/businesses have surge protectors already built in ?
 
#116
jnewmark said:
I'm curious as to surge protectors, as they are always recommended for home computers. Just how common is it for electricity to " surge " and don't modern built homes/businesses have surge protectors already built in ?
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my home built 2 years ago allegedly does. but not everyone has a new house ;)

as for how common it is to surge, i live in florida, where lightning is a pretty regular occurence in the summer, so you'll get occasional surges, sure.
 
#117
jnewmark said:
I'm curious as to surge protectors, as they are always recommended for home computers. Just how common is it for electricity to " surge " and don't modern built homes/businesses have surge protectors already built in ?
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Surge protection was virtually unknown prior to the PC, because it so rarely caused damage to anything that it wasn't worth the cost of having it. Computers need surge protection because their circuits are far more delicate than other electronics. A well engineered computer power supply would have all the protection it could possibly need built in. But in the battle for market share based on low prices computer manufacturers opted to build them cheap, instead of building them right, putting the onus of surge protection on the owner. That's what gave rise to the entire surge protection/power conditioning industry, and the subsequent perceived need to provide what the sound industry had managed to get along perfectly well without for 75 years.
 
#118
Floyd Eye said:
So you can't hear the difference between a Rapco cable and a Mogami cable? ;)
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What KIND of cable?

Instrument cables I've never noticed much difference. Mic cables it seems like there is slightly better shielding on Mogami cable.

...and Mogami stuff will last longer due to better build quality.


Floyd Eye said:
Your post here seemed to state the obvious. I mean " No difference between well built cables". That's like saying that there is no audible sound difference between Monster cable A and Monster cable B. My question was can you hear a difference between Monster and Rapco or Mogami and Planet waves, etc...
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Barring any strange wire usage (like Monster and intentionally making the cable act as a filter), a complete lack of shielding, or a really noisy environment - no.

...and neither can anyone else in a double blind test.
 
#120
aborgman said:
In general your standard MOV based surge protection won't stop lightening. It'll jump right across the burned MOV.

Whole house system work significantly better.
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Correct, the dissipation energy of typical "el cheapo" power strips are far too low to protect from significant lightning. Also, since lightning is essentially a very high frequency AC signal (or has real high freq. components), the ground path to earth must be very short and direct. Any stray inductance in the ground/earth lead greatly decreases the protection effectiveness of a transient voltage protector of any type.

Whole house systems are far more complex, larger and more effective. They include series inductances in all incoming conductors to limit high frequency energy during an "event", transient voltage surge supressors specific to the fault application (may be a combination of devices) as well as some form of spark gap type fail-safe device to ground/earth primarily as fire prevention in the case of really large voltages. The earth/ground path is short, direct and substantial.
 

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