MK 1826 Filter Sockets
Posted by: Terrysmi on 10 August 2018
I am having a complete re wire of my house done including a dedicated supply for my main Naim system . Whilst initially sceptical my spark is now fully embracing the dedicated supply element of the project. He has discovered the MK sockets with RFI filtering - does anyone have any experience/views on these please
Thank you Terrysmi
Hi, there is nothing wrong with RF and surge filtering mains, but as always the key thing it depends on how it is done. Done simply and in a small space it is likely to have unintended consequences like affecting the the source and load impedance and cause that ‘robbing power’ or ‘Sapping the life out of music’ effect. To do well typically will require a fair amount of physical space and I can’t see how it could fit in a mains socket. A good intro to mains filtering, how it works, and the possible unintended side effects.
On a related matter, it concerns me a little that sockets with built in USB charging points might not be doing wonders for your mains quality. These presumably have a small SMPS or two squeezed into every fitting. Very convenient, but in a large house this could add dozens of noisy power supplies to the mains.
And "smart" metering!
...and those devices that allow one to use the mains wiring to connect a home computer network
Dreadatthecontrols posted:...and those devices that allow one to use the mains wiring to connect a home computer network
To be honest, these are the truly awful villains. By design they superimpose a wide bandwidth set of radio carriers on to the mains. The pollution using them with standard mains wiring is shocking .... and this is both conducted, and hardly surprisingly, radiated (its kind of what RF does.. ie radio). Therefore I hardly need to explain that even the best RF mains filtering in the world won’t prevent the radiated RFI from those devices.
I often question why people are happy to spend thousands on audio equipment and scoff at the idea that it can be affected by the "quality" of the mains.
As time goes on and more and more polluting devices are introduced to our homes and mains power it is becoming fundamentally important for good SQ to do whatever is reasonably practical to combat the problem.
In my view some form of dedicated mains power is essential especially for high end systems but for lesser equipment as well. Problem is that although it gives a significant improvement it only gets you part of the way. RFI is everywhere obviously not just physically on the mains but radiating the atmosphere, messing up our audio and probably damaging our health.
Dreadatthecontrols posted:And "smart" metering!
I’m not sure that these are much to worry about. They allegedly use low level wireless such as Zigbee, same as the new Naim remote controls. I still don’t want one though.