Electric Mainline

[The Black Adder]

Hi guys...

Ok... been reading this superb thread of wonderful tails of woe and yore:

http://www.theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11464&highlight=schuko

What I'm looking for is a good step to get my mains in order as up to now I'm using basic B&Q jobbie power strips and standard bundled cables..

(Don't hit me!)

These are the things I'm thinking at the moment.

Schuko plugs... Now is this a good route to go down in terms of sonics and safty?

What I mean is that the mains plug is protected by a 13A fuse so nothing else really needs to be I take it as everything has an internal fuse anyway. I mean.. whats the point in having a secondary mains fuse?

Should or Shoudn't I get a couple of Belkin PF30's - I've had the PF40's in the past and they are great but too bulky for my new setup to be. So, the PF30's are a little leaner and a nice way of tidying up the cables and a safe way of organising them behind my unit. PF30's with Schuko's?

In essence I'm simply after the following but should it be filtered or not?

A power strip (Normal or Schuko)
x3 Power cables - Mark Grant or Cables R Us.

What am I wanting out of this?

I'm after an improvement in sonics but also safty and tidiness.

I've no idea if my sockets are really noisy but I feel they are a little as the PF40 seemed to bring more harmonics to the sound.

My bloody fridge make me speakers pop too so RF is obviously getting through, is this really a bad thing?

Budget is £300 - I could just spend it all on records of course or in the pub.. lol

Cheers
Joe

[HighFidelityGuy]

The fuse in the UK mains plug is there for two main reasons. As added protection in the event that the cable between the plug and equipment is cut or otherwise damaged (causing a short circuit) and to protect the cable against overloading in the event that the equipment tries to draw more current than the cable or plug is capable of. The idea is that in a short circuit situation the plug fuse would blow quicker than the mains circuit fuse in your fuse box. However, that was back when fuse boards had rewire-able fuses which can take ages to blow or in some instances don't blow. Now that all homes should have fast trip breakers, the breaker would trip waaaaay before any fuse could in the event of a short circuit. So the only benefit the fuse has now is to prevent the cable from being damaged by excess current draw. However, providing the equipment has an appropriate internal fuse then that's a non issue as the internal fuse should blow long before the plug fuse. It's important to remember though that not all electrical equipment has an internal fuse, so you should always double check that before swapping the plug for an un-fused one. Also, I wouldn't even consider doing this unless you have a modern "fuse" board with breakers. :)

As for whether you'll get any sonic benefits from swamping the plugs I can't say. I've never tried it and to be honest I don't think I could be arsed with all the hassle and limitations it would cause. I would say that if you're thinking of going down that route then you'd be better off hard wiring all your power cables into un-switched fused spurs which are fed from a dedicated breaker board on a dedicated feed from your main breaker board. I know that would still leave you with fuses but it would take the plugs out of the equation and I think if you hard wire anything you have to use a fused spur anyway for it to conform to safety regs. :scratch:

[The Black Adder]

Cheers Dave... Thats cleared up part of my curiosity...lol

Who mentioned a cat?

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Schuko is audibly better than UK 13amp (even when fitted with 13amp fuse), and UK old 15amp system is better sounding than Schuko, and better and obviously cheaper than any plug you could possibly use is hardwiring.

This is from 1st hand experience.

[The Black Adder]

Yeah, I remember talking about our rather cost cutting 'ring main' in the UK. My amps are hard wired so it's just the pre that has an IEC.

Tempted with a Schuko power strip just for the amps.

[Welder]

You can piss about slapping sticky plasters on the problem and spend a small fortune on after market cables and plugs. I won’t say they don’t make any difference but in the end there are only a few “this will sort it” options.

A dedicated mains. If you’re prepared to chuck £300 at the problem you may just be able to get one installed at that price.

Full mains regeneration. Very expensive but undoubtedly effective.

Balanced mains transformer. Been a bit of discussion about this here on AoS and most comments have been favorable.

At your level of kit Joe a dedicated mains must be a worthwhile investment. If not, then a balanced mains transformer will cost around the same.
You can add the fancy plugs and wires later if you feel the need but until you’ve got one of the above you’re pissing your money away imo.

[The Black Adder]

Hi John.

Yeah... I've been toying with a balanced supply and also a dedicated supply but the house is up for sale so a dedicated supply would be a waste of money unfortunately.

I've been looking in to one of these.
http://www.airlinktransformers.com/transformer/bps2110s-balanced-power-supply.asp

But I've not been able to find out how it would wire up to my mains socket because I doubt if it's just a plug.

[Welder]

That’s the type of thing.
However, I would be looking at least 3kva to give plenty of room for peak currents.
Basically get the biggest you can afford. I tried out a 1.5kva unit and while it worked I didn’t think it had enough grunt for even my modest power requirements.

From what I recall the unit I had came with mains plug and lead but looking at the more powerful units it looks as if you would have to fit your own lead and plug.
I cant see this being difficult and I’m sure the suppliers would give assistance if necessary, even do it for you at a small extra cost.

If you’re moving you can take it with you and funds permitting install a dedicated mains at the new place and run the transformer as well.

[Ali Tait]

Yes, from what it looks like, you just need to wire up a lead with a plug to the unit Joe.

[Ali Tait]

.. and the 5kVA one is not much more.

[The Black Adder]

Sound... I'll look in to that a little further then, many thanks guys.

Just one thing, the 5kVA one has screw output terminals opposed to sockets.. do you know what that means?...

It's a shame I can't go the whole hog though... Maybe another day... in another house..

[Ali Tait]

Without looking, it probably means there are no mains sockets on the case. Shouldn't be a problem, there may be enough room in the case to jigsaw out some holes to fit your own mains sockets. Otherwise, just wire say a 6 or 8 gang extension to the screw terminal outputs.

[Wakefield Turntables]

I've just read this thread and I'm going through something of a similar process. I'm just in the process of upgrading my power leads. My current situation is that I have a dedicated mains supply wire off from the main ring coming into the house. I then run all my equipment through an Isotek GII Nova, then each piece of equipment is supplied with shielded Isotek Elite mains cables (See current)

Current

Main Ring > Dedicted Supply > Isotek GII Nova > Elite power lead > CD player

Would i see any benefit from running the GII nova through a balanced power supply with added Schucko power leads (see proposed) ??

Proposed

Main Ring > Dedicted Supply > Balanced Power Supply > Isotek GII Nova > Schucko power leads > CD player

[MCRU]

Hi Guys,
Plenty of suggestions and all will work well, no mention of a dc blocker though, fundamental IMHO. I would personally not buy a mains re-generation unit as I think you can achieve 9/10 of the performance using 1/10 of the money.

If Joe is selling his house it makes no sense to do anything to the mains until he has moved as who knows how far his hi-fi will be from the nearest wall socket. Some 4mm thick CY cable with 6mm earth for the supply to the dedicated consumer unit seems to work well in the last house I visited a few weeks ago, again it depends where the consumer unit can be placed as if buying a new house the work can be done when moving in, the unit could even go near the hi-fi like Marcos.

Once that is sorted if Joe can go that way next is the wall socket, then connection from wall socket to mains block/mains filter/mains conditioner then power leads to each component. There are myriads of choices and it's dependant on budget, in my experiences over the last few years it's worth spending as much as possible on the mains as it reaps considerable benefits, if the £300 Joe mentioned is in addition to a dedicated consumer unit or it's not possible to fit one in the new house then use that money on a dc blocker to connect to a simple 4 or 6 way mains block and use your existing power leads, when funds allow up-grade the mains block then the leads, one thing I am sure of as I have done it many times already, you will be happy with the sound I reckon.

If you spend the money on just one component or spread it about on cheaper mains leads it won't sound as good as my first idea.

One famous person I know has up-graded his mains leads on a monthly basis one by one as funds allow, the end result is a system that is sounding better than it ever has before.

Hope that helps.

[Ali Tait]

David, so how how do you achieve nine tenths of the performance of a mains regeneration unit for one tenths of the price then?

[MCRU]

With a well designed DC blocker and a good mains block. Works most times but obviously not all the time as you cannot please everybody. I get plenty of phone calls and e-mails from dis-gruntled punters who have bought Mains Regeneration Units and wish they hadn't.

[Reid Malenfant]

A DC blocker is only any use on equipment powered by toroidal transformers, EI transformers are far less susceptible to DC problems as the cores are totally OTT.

In fact any equipment powered by an SMPS can be powered via DC @ 340V with no problems at all, after all they do rectify the mains & then feed capacitors :)

Any filter will increase the mains impedance & while this may not be too noticeable with front end gear it definately will with high current stuff such as power amplifiers. Like any decent amplifier a mains regenerator will have (or damn well should) decent common mode rejection ratio & any crap on the mains should be vastly less than any filter can possibly supply. Not only that a filter only filters, but just about every mains regenerator i know (in fact i can't think of one that doesn't!) converts the mains to balanced about Earth ;)

So better filtering, balanced output etc & at the end of the day a much stiffer supply due to amplification & feedback means that no filter can honestly compare to a decently designed mains regenerator ;)

I will never be without one again to power my front end kit :cool:

Filters are fine for preventing components from interacting with each other, but not much cop for getting rid of shite on the mains :rolleyes:

[Welder]

@ Andrew

What it seems you have form your description is a spur from a normal household ring.
The whole point of a dedicated mains supply is to avoid the household ring and the household main fuse box and preferably return earth to a local ground, off the national grid.
A spur from a ring may help provided nothing else runs from the ring to feed noise back into the ring the spur is taken from, but otherwise I can’t see any benefit.

Anyway, back to Joe. Make a few of these up mate.

http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/804d5814a713111abe787b5a1bfec23f2022dfefa0ab070088 c77f3a0e4992d02g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=4u23h1so2rmg6rh&thumb=5)

Each of the three strands comprises two 99% ofc copper 1.5 mm wires twisted together and sheathed by full coverage mylar foil and 90% coverage tinned copper braid. Buy yourself some old 15 amp round pin plugs and sockets and make up a distribution block and wire the round pin plugs to your kit.

That will give you something to do in the evenings ;)

(not that I've ever taken any of this mains stuff seriously or tried various solutions over the years you understand)

[The Black Adder]

Sounds good John... I think I might have to do DIY on the leads unless someone has some Mark Grant cables going for cheap... lol

Where do I buy the wire from?

Not up on the 15amp stuff... I need to look in to that. Cay you still buy this older tech?

Regards
Joe

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

R S Comps
Farnell
Rapid Electronics
Or here http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_kw=15amp&_kw=stage&_dmpt=UK_Computing_CablesConnectors_RL

[Welder]

Yer man Richard has it sorted above ;)

Regarding the cable, Farnell Electronics is where I bought mine but it was the low smoke variety and very stiff to work with. I’m sure they do something more flexible to similar spec and prolly looks nicer too.

Maplins (cheap) for the distribution block case and a pad saw or similar to make the cut outs for the sockets. I used 2.5 mm solid copper wire to link socket to socket and I screened it with mylar foil and heatshrink over the top. You can always weld in a simple filter if you fancy it.

Bear in mind its apparently better to hard wire your mains leads directly into your components rather than have the convenience of IEC plugs.

[The Black Adder]

I think a DIY mains block is out of my realm of confidence to honestly feel safe to be honest. I wouldn't know where to start.

Is the 15A stuff still recognised under BS?

I'm a bit confused now... Sorry gents...


Do I need the power strip to plug in to a 15Amp socket on the wall using a 15Amp fuse?

Does this mean all of my gear need to be plugged in to the power strip with 15Amp plugs & fuses?

If I used a balanced unit does that need to be plugged in to the wall via a 15Amp plug too?

[Welder]

The only bit imo you need is the balanced mains transformer.

If it was me, in your current circumstances I would start using a standard rectangular 3 pin plug with a 13 amp fuse connected to the balanced unit plugged into a standard 3 pin wall socket.
From the balanced mains transformer you will need a method of distributing the power to the individual components of your stereo.
You could in the short term do as Ali suggests and buy a distribution strip and wire it directly into the balanced mains transformer, given the higher powered models don’t come with output sockets.

If you find this improves things (I’m pretty confident you will hear an improvement) then once you’ve moved, you may want to try to improve things further.

I would start by replacing any mains leads on your components that have an IEC socket with a twisted 1.5mm core, screened flexible cable soldered directly to the appropriate terminals/circuit board. This shouldn’t be particularly difficult.

What has been suggested here is the 15 amp round pin plugs in the link from Richard perform better than the standard rectangular 3 pin plugs commonly in use.
The round pin plugs I use don’t have fuses and possibly this a reason for the reported improvement. Your stereo components should have internal fuses for protection. Plug fuses protect the wire, not the equipment at the end of it in theory.

Of course, if you use the round pin plugs then you need round pin sockets to plug them into. This is where making your own distribution block comes in.
Here’s a pic of one of mine in use prior to sorting out my dedicated mains and rewiring the component mains leads. I had recently moved in and still getting sorted. It has 4 round pin sockets and 2 IEC outlets on the side.

http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/e374b7ad82f8fda433ed72af33aedd462g.jpg (http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=5ag34gfvk7125k4&thumb=5)

They really aren’t hard to make.
I don’t own a camera otherwise I would take some pics of my current setup for you.

The final step is to wire the balanced transformer directly to the ring or spur getting rid of the wall socket and fuse. I can understand people not feeling happy about this.

The overall objective is to remove as many plugs/sockets/fuses in the path and replace all the standard mains cable with higher spec screened stuff basically.

I don’t know if such a setup conforms to current BS.

Imo a setup like this will perform equally as well as all the after market and rather expensive plug sockets and cables.

As with everything concerning mains electricity, if your not confident about what your doing leave it alone or get someone who does know what they’re doing to do it for you.