Mains filter for powerline adapters

[Covenant]

I have powerline adapters everywhere in the house, they are the best invention since sliced bread. I don't suffer from mains hum but would like to see if I can get the noise floor lower with an appropriate filter.
Any recommendations?

[brian2957]

I use this one Jerry http://www.custom-hifi-cables.co.uk/home/mains-filters-surge-protection/black-box-super-conditioner

[struth]

how does that work brian. do you just plug it in somewhere and it sucks all the stuff out?

[brian2957]

how does that work brian. do you just plug it in somewhere and it sucks all the stuff out?

Yup :)

[struth]

Yup :)

Ok, cheers Brian. Never seen it before.

[Stratmangler]

I have powerline adapters everywhere in the house, they are the best invention since sliced bread

They have got better over the years, but they're still not as good as a proper wired installation or even decent WiFi.
Ignore whatever claimed transmission speed is on the box, because you won't be getting anything close to the claimed speed.
And then there's the little issue of very high frequency noise injected over your mains - would the recommended filter cause problems with the operation of your mains polluting powerline adapters?
I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

[Covenant]

Chris, the adapters I use seem very reliable-much better than wifi. I used to get problems with re-buffering on my Touch and high quality films. This is despite having fibre broadband. Of course, 4k might be another matter. I will have to cross that bridge in the future but a wired installation is not going to happen as I have solid floors.
Brian, I had forgotten about Custom Hi fi Cables. I have one of their tube headphone amplifiers-a pre-production model. It is a superb product.

[Stratmangler]

Fibre broadband does not make one tiny bit of difference to your WiFi.

The most important thing is your router, and its WiFi capabilities (many of the ISP provided routers provide rubbish WiFi coverage), and its location (most installations are on the ground floor, when is practise they work better from a more elevated position).
The layout of the building, the materials used, and the amount of coverage area all have an effect.
You mentioned solid floors, so my initial thought is concrete raft with metal reinforcement bars in your case, so router coverage is going to be problematic no matter where you site it.

There's always the option to cable around the outside of the building - you'd be surprised at just how invisible cable can be when it's hidden in full view.
I do it all the time, but it takes a fair bit of time and effort to get it right.

[struth]

Ive got a set. Dont use them now but they were pretty good when i did. Never noticed much of a speed reduction over wifi from the router. Both were above 25mbs. The wifi upstairs is ok, not great but good enough most times.

[Covenant]

Fibre broadband does not make one tiny bit of difference to your WiFi.

The most important thing is your router, and its WiFi capabilities (many of the ISP provided routers provide rubbish WiFi coverage), and its location (most installations are on the ground floor, when is practise they work better from a more elevated position).
The layout of the building, the materials used, and the amount of coverage area all have an effect.
You mentioned solid floors, so my initial thought is concrete raft with metal reinforcement bars in your case, so router coverage is going to be problematic no matter where you site it.

There's always the option to cable around the outside of the building - you'd be surprised at just how invisible cable can be when it's hidden in full view.
I do it all the time, but it takes a fair bit of time and effort to get it right.

When I called out Talktalk about installing fibre they wouldn't put it in because the router was upstairs and the main socket downstairs! I had to move the router into the living room before they would agree to the installation. But I will bear in mind your comments on ISP provided routers-which make do you recommend Chris?
The floor is just concrete with a screed by the way.

[dimkasta]

how does that work brian. do you just plug it in somewhere and it sucks all the stuff out?


Yup :)

Unfortunately, filtering does not work like that. Especially with high-frequency noise.

The filtering has to be close to the load to be effective.
This means that you would need such a filter really close to every device that you want to protect. Or at least between the device and the source of the noise.

By sticking it somewhere randomly, you could get some improvement if you are lucky, but you will most likely still get lots of high-frequency stuff on your devices. The amount of the effect will of course heavily depend on the level of optimization of your device's psu for high frequency stuff.

I used powerline adapters for a while, but I got some nasty cracking noise on my speakers so I got rid of them.
I now use only ethernet or wifi

[Stratmangler]

They wouldn't fit your socket upstairs because it would have meant running additional cable, and they're not interested in doing it - end of story.
All they do with any customer is reuse existing cable running back to the nearest roadside box to provide the service, where there will be a new service provided over a different cable pair.
They move the jumper wire, and hey presto, new service.

Draytek Vigor routers are pretty good for WiFi coverage, as are some of the Netgear routers.
Most of the IT companies I do work for install the Draytek stuff.

[alainrj]

I use TP powerline adaptors for my PC for the simple reason:- over wifi the max speed is 30mbs and on ethernet using the powerline adaptors 80+mbs.

[Dynamics]

My attitude is don't use powerline adapters, because sharing power cables in the house with transmitting music with all the electrical interfearance is never a good thing.

I've used powerline myself and they don't work as well as the following idea;

If your music system is in a different room to your router, use a wi fi extender with its own lan to create a seperate network, and put any nas on the extender. Also you limit the length of cable runs and can benefit from better quality Ethernet cabling and no sharing with electrical mains etc.

The cost of a good extender is roughly the same as very good powerline adapters as well. I use a netgear nighthawk extender. By having a lan in the extender it's the same as a lan (local area network) in a router. Just get the music on any pc to share itself to the nas connected to the extender with appropriate pc software.

I found with powerline the sound not as good, but of course it always depends on how decent the system is and worked out by experimentation.

[struth]

Ive had mine connected again for a couple of weeks. Not using for music but no issue with either pc or applebox. Used to have a repeater from netgear. It was not as good as these although tbf its a bit old