Good mains - bad mains

Posted by: NigelP on 25 May 2001

Frustrated by the varying performance of my system with stunning at one end of the spectrum and "switch off" after a few minutes at the other, I decided to try a few things out. Firstly, my system is on for 24 hours a day - seven days a week (in fact it doesn't really get going until about a week after power up). Secondly I do have a 6mm dedicated spur with a 32Amp fuse. This made a leap foward in improvement but didn't stop the transformer hum. Lastly I recently added a 10mm earth to the outside flower bed. This made a huge improvement that for a mere £20 was difficult to believe! Also the transformer hum disappeared.
So why am I posting this topic?
Despite all my best efforts - dedicated spur, cable dressing, changing the placement of the components and even switching off my Lingo I still found a huge amount of erratic behaviour from my beloved system. So I decided to play a waiting game and listen at different times of the day.
Let me start with describing the hardware and software. I have an LP12/Cirkus/Lingo/Ekos/Klyde/Prefix, CDS-II/XPS, 52/Supercap, 2 x 250 powering the Nautilus 804. The music I listened to was:

Dire Straits - In the Gallery from their excellent debut album
In the Air Tonight and My Roof is Leaking from Phil Collins' Face Value
Handbags and Gladrags from Mary Coughlin
K.D.Lang's Ingenuine
Joni Mitchell Hits Album on HDCD

I listened to the system at various times of the day to see what difference the UK waking up and switching on all those wretched devices poluting the mains does for my music-making machines. Here's what I found:

Weekend - generally very good both on Saturdays and Sundays
Weekend evenings - Stunning performance
8.00am on weekdays - good
12pm on weekdays - Ugh, time to do some more work!
8pm on weekdays - Mmmm, getting better?
11pm on weekdays - stunning again

So I've now come to the conclusion that I need to be living in the UK but working to a different timezone to get the most from my system. One night I came in after a few beers (like another chat forum member) and put the system on at 3am in the morning. The trouble is I'm not sure I was in a fit state to make a judgement - it sounded great at the time!

Posted on: 25 May 2001 by Steve B

Hi Nigel,

Sorry to hear of your frustration regarding mains.

I’ve always been puzzled by this variability in performance due to mains (assuming it is the mains). After all isn’t the mains supply simply a 240 volt sine wave which is then dropped by the transformer, rectified, then smoothed by those generous (at least in your system) capacitors? And then there’s all those voltage regulators….

The rectifiers themselves must surely distort the supply signal far more than next doors washing machine?

In a way I’m lucky in that, with my humble Nait 1 system, I don’t notice any difference whatever time I play music, although I used to when I had a 32-5/Hicap/250 system some years ago. Makes me wonder whether it’s worthwhile upgrading again much beyond what I’ve got at present.

Hmmmm…..maybe I could build my own power supplies using car batteries. Four of them wired in series should provide enough juice for at least a couple of hours of listening. Where’s my soldering iron?

Disappears in a puff of smoke.