Upgraded wall sockets

Yeah I can vouch for de-oxiting everything, big difference there, especially with the gold stuff afterwards.

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Originally Posted by realysm42

Have you any experience of them?

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Some - and associated plugs (my scepticism stretches to those too).

Personally, just I use Crabtree (though I have also used MK which are just as good) unswitched sockets wired with heavy gauge cable to the fuse box (when I moved into my current house there was, (somewhat bizarrely) an electric shower fitted in the room in which my hi-fi now resides - so, rather conveniently, the cable was already in place :)).

In my previous house I had a similar mains layout and also had an earth arrangement like that described by Marco. I must admit, I am tempted to duplicate the earth in my current house (not instead of the house earth - as well as). The only issue is that my old listening room was on the ground floor and my current one is on the third floor.

A bizarre room on the third floor of your house with a shower in it.......... It wasn't the.. um.. bathroom was it? :)
Notice anything else in there? A sink? A loo? Tiles an' stuff?

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Originally Posted by MartinT

Gentlemen - all your music is effectively modulated power supply, which comes from the mains. Everything to do with power is critical and the more attention you pay to it the more the rewards. People with enormous understanding of power supplies, like Paul Hynes, make a living from selling you better quality power.

The argument that 'any properly designed power supply shouldn't let anything through' is bogus. It's all about pushing the noise floor down and removing distortion elements from the power rails. One of my most sensitive components to mains quality, and the one which responds the most to my regenerator, is my Chord power amp. It has a switched-mode power supply! One which reconstitutes smoothed DC from high frequencies.

So give your mains and power arrangements some attention. You will be surprised at how much goodness comes from small tweaks. Start with a can of Deoxit and spray the pins on all your mains plugs and IEC connectors. You'll be surprised.

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Hear, hear! :clap:

An interesting thing is that every time Barry visits me (as he's just done recently), he comments that my system sounds the best that he's ever heard it, and given that the bulk of my system components have remained the same since I first met him (some years ago), what he's largely hearing, completely without prompting or bias, is the results of my mains and cable tweakery and/or tube-rolling, in the interim between his various visits!

Now if that isn't proof that I'm making genuine progress, in terms of increasing my system's performance, with these things that supposedly don't work, or the effects of which are 'imagined', then I don't know what is ;)

Marco.

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Originally Posted by Darren

It wasn't the.. um.. bathroom was it? :)

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No......obviously

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Originally Posted by Marco

Now if that isn't proof that I'm making genuine progress, in terms of increasing my system's performance, with these things that supposedly don't work, or the effects of which are 'imagined', then I don't know what is ;)

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Erm, but I'm sure you don't need me to point out that that isn't any form of 'proof'; of anything. On second thoughts, it may be proof that Barry is a nice chap and a good guest.

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Originally Posted by YNWaN

In my previous house I had a similar mains layout and also had an earth arrangement like that described by Marco. I must admit, I am tempted to duplicate the earth in my current house (not instead of the house earth - as well as).

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You should do it, Mark, as it works! I know of a top-notch sparky, who would come and do the job very cheaply for you, as he's a friend of mine :)

Marco.

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Originally Posted by YNWaN

Erm, but I'm sure you don't need me to point out that that isn't any form of 'proof'; of anything. On second thoughts, it may be proof that Barry is a nice chap and a good guest.

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Haha, lol. He is indeed, but you obviously don't know Barry :eyebrows:

Like me, he doesn't flatter or bullshit, simply to court favour. He's a 'tell is as he hears it', good or bad, sort of chap, not a sycophant. If he didn't genuinely think that there was any improvement since he last heard my system, trust me, he wouldn't have said anything!

Anyway, he'll no doubt speak for himself when he reads this.

Marco.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating I think, be careful about installing another earth. Under certain conditions if the earth is of lower impedance than that at your local supply point, it could pass huge amounts of current if there was a fault on the cable supplying your street, possibly many thousands of amps.

Aural memory is rubbish . your brain can talk to itself in words but it can not reproduce remembered sounds .

there is no way a person listening to a hi-fi, at lets say once a month ,for a couple of hours could make any meaningful comment upon such small changes from month to month and its a nonsense to say they could . they may think it sounds better such comments would be essentially bollocks .;)