
Japanese Audiophiles Install $10k Personal Electricity Utility Poles - Osiris30
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gift-for-music-lovers-who-have-it-all-a-personal-utility-pole-1471189463
======
superuser2
You're laughing, but an arts building I worked in had a separate electrical
system (color-coded outlets) for A/V equipment in its performance spaces. I'm
hazy on the details, but professional systems integrators apparently do
believe that some components are sensitive to noise in the electrical supply,
and it is useful to separate them from the rest of the electrical devices in a
large building.

Google led me to a whitepaper [0] which indicates that the A/V power system's
interesting characteristic was probably that its ground is bonded to building
ground at exactly one point. Apparently in this design it's undesirable for an
A/V system device to accidentally connect to the main building ground or
actual "earth," which jives with my experience that a component accidentally
plugged into a regular outlet created an unbearable hum in the audio signal
(i.e. the grounds were substantially different).

[0]
[http://www.surgex.com/pdf/PowerGround.pdf](http://www.surgex.com/pdf/PowerGround.pdf)

~~~
DINKDINK
Why not just use a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply)?

~~~
metaphor
Audiophile Mistake #1: Proposing a sensible solution to a problem which
doesn't exist.

~~~
LeoPanthera
It's not completely outlandish to imagine that noisy power could cause noise
in the audio output of an amplifier.

I would hope that any good quality amp would filter the incoming power,
though.

~~~
Johnythree
Yes, if it does, it's because of crappy (eg cheap) design. Any amplifier
designer should assume that the mains power is very, very noisy.

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S_A_P
I have been to a house in Dallas that has a separate 110v utility pole to feed
a system that costs 4x the house it resides in. The center piece is a set of
focal grand Utopias em (160k retail) each fed by custom made 750w mono tube
amps. He has a studer 8 track reel to reel and multiple technics sp-10 and
sp-15 turntables with 2 arms each and multiple 5 figure hand made cartridges.

This is a friend of my uncle. He has a record collection that DJ premier would
envy. I spent 3 hours just listening to music on what was probably the best
stereo I've ever heard and will ever hear. I don't know what was the halo
effect and what was real but it sounded incredible. That said, the music is
still the music. I am an amateur recording artist for about 20 years. I've had
brushes with major releases and recorded in big studios. _here is my point_ I
think it's slightly ironic to see people spend so much money to listen to
records that are sometimes recorded on awful gear or made to sound distorted
on purpose.

~~~
beachstartup
i hope he has an awesome non-destructive fire suppression system, especially
being in texas (i would say the same thing about california). jeez.

~~~
rdtsc
Halon fire suppression system for audiophiles. Now, there is a startup idea.

There'd be nice big warnings around the perimeter about how "If lights are
flashing, not a dance party, get out, halon is discharging"

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errantspark
The dude is 82... I wonder what the frequency response curve of his ears is.
-__-

~~~
Cyph0n
MP3 compression is probably overkill in his case, but he wouldn't believe you.

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Pyxl101
Could any electrical engineers comment on this story? How would you measure
whether current is "dirty"? What quantifiable factors would you want to
examine to figure out if this improvement is real or B/S?

Is a personal transformer and electrical utility pole is likely to perform
better than whatever typical solution one might employ for power conditioning,
like a power supply? How would a personal transformer help with "dirty"
electricity? (Does it prevent noise somehow from other devices on the same
transformer?)

It seems like there could be noise issues with currents that a transformer
wouldn't help with though. For example, I had understood that some power
plants vary their operating frequency slightly over the course of the day,
perhaps dependent on the speed that flywheel or generator is turning. So the
frequency of the AC current might very slightly change. A personal transformer
wouldn't help with this, would it?

If something as precise as our TVs and computer processors can run connected
to a power supply to regular AC power, then it seems like stereo equipment
should be able to too. Why doesn't a regular power supply compensate for this?

~~~
viraptor
> How would you measure whether current is "dirty"?

[http://superuser.com/a/182004/11814](http://superuser.com/a/182004/11814)

You can graph the voltage. If it's close to sine wave, it's "clean". If it's a
mess, it's "dirty". In more precise terms, you can check how much power is in
frequencies further away from the main one (50 / 60 Hz depending where you
live).

As for the difference in the audio output, it will be very different between
different quality audio equipment. On the good side they may go as far as
smoothing out the input power internally. On the opposite side, you've got
cheap old vinyl players which output a constant 50Hz + harmonics buzz in the
output, even with perfectly clean power supply.

~~~
nitrogen
Better than plotting the voltage is plotting the frequency spectrum (e.g. via
FFT) of the voltage. If there are multiple spikes, the power is dirty.

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gwbas1c
Wouldn't it make more sense to just modify his equipment to run off of a
battery?

~~~
honkhonkpants
It probably draws a large current. Power consumption is a hallmark of high-end
audio equipment.

~~~
walrus01
Big ass -48vdc battery banks, float charge controllers and precision sine wave
inverters are a solved problem. If it's good enough for a $235,000 Infinera
DWDM platform...

~~~
cellularmitosis
The funny thing is, all audio circuits run on DC power, thus necessitating the
inclusion of an AC/DC converter in every piece of hifi equipment on the
planet.

So if you go to the trouble of setting up a battery bank, it would make sense
(both financial and sound quality) to ditch the sine wave inverter and hack
your equipment to accept DC directly.

Take a look at this amplifier:
[http://www.allegrosound.com/Accuphase_P-400.jpg](http://www.allegrosound.com/Accuphase_P-400.jpg)

Those giant round things and square things along the sides? Totally
unnecessary if you already have a (DC) battery bank...

~~~
PatentTroll
You know what's interesting to me? Almost everything runs on DC these days.
Lights are solid state, just about all electronics have a power supply that
converts to DC, even a lot of (admittedly high end) home gadgets use brushless
DC motors. The only AC devices I can count in a normal home are the big
appliances like electric stoves, HVAC fans, etc. I wonder why there has not
been more progress in a DC home distribution standard. Especially because
efficiency generally increases with load, all of those little wall warts are
less efficient than one big AC to DC converter.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
DC propagates _very poorly_. Not sure that matters in the few meters of a
house though. But its the reason the house service is AC to begin with.

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anexprogrammer
There was me thinking running a dedicated spur from consumer unit to hifi,
when we rewired, was overkill. Did a _very_ good job of isolating from random
clicks/pops compared to being on the house ring though. Fails at being
audiophile though, it cost about £20 at most, if you include the new sockets.

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Relys
Fools and their money are easily parted... I'm no audio expert but isn't this
what an digital-to-analog converter is used for in the audio industry? This
just seems like overkill with extremely diminishing returns (if any).

~~~
aftbit
No. A digital to analog converter (DAC) is used to convert digital audio
signals (e.g. on a CD or computer) to analog ones for driving amplifiers and
speakers. You're perhaps thinking of a double-conversion UPS or power
conditioner, which converts electricity to DC, filters it, charges a battery
(in the case of a UPS), then converts it back to AC to power your devices.

~~~
Relys
Ok thanks for clarifying. I was thinking of a feature on a motherboard I
recently purchased:

"USB DAC-UP provides clean, noise-free power delivery to your Digital-to-
Analog Converter. DACs can be sensitive to fluctuations in power from the
other USB ports, which is why USB DAC-UP takes advantage of an isolated power
source that minimizes potential fluctuations and ensures the best audio
experience possible."

I've also had to use a 5v step up converter to provide a filtered power source
for the camera on my FPV drone I built. I can see why an Audiophile would want
filtered voltage supply if they had money to burn I guess.

~~~
nitrogen
Yeah, the isolation in this Japanese case is similar in intent to the
isolation your motherboard advertises, but on a much larger scale. It's the
isolation that matters. Every mobo has a DAC if it has audio, but not every
mobo has an isolated power supply for the DAC.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Rather than employing isolation, you could also use filtering.

In the case of the article, $10k would buy you an unbelievably effective 60hz
band-pass filter...

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jasoncchild
Loving the commentary from folks obviously lacking experience or knowledge of
electrical engineering and power systems!

~~~
Cyph0n
Welcome to HN! Everyone knows everything here :)

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thatfridayguy
unrelated, but does anyone know how does a websearch of the article works
around and displays the aticle on the wsj site while clicking on the link
takes the user to the "subscribed aricle" page?

~~~
strommen
Most likely is that WSJ checks the HTTP referer header to see if it's
google.com.

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userbinator
But what about all the wire coming from the power plant to his pole? Isn't the
electricity there "dirty" too?

I wonder if any of these audiophiles have ever considered their own private
power plant.

~~~
cellularmitosis
That's all 60Hz AC coming from the power company, and the only thing connected
to it are the step-down transformers en-route to your house. Not much there to
generate noise.

Try the following experiment: Go through your house and count how many "wall
warts" you have plugged in.

Two decades ago, 100% of those were simple, inefficient, low-noise,
transformer+rectifier+caps AC/DC converters.

Now? 100% of them are high-efficiency DC/DC switching power supplies. These
power supplies create switching spikes -- a kind of noise which is extremely
high frequency and has a nasty habit of propagating places you don't want them
to go. The thinking which leads to having your own power pole installed is
that some remnant of these spikes are propagating into your house from all of
your neighbors.

Having your own power pole installed is one way to address that, but I'd think
that $10k would buy you one hell of a 60hz band-pass filter...

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dozzie
Oh yes, and cork straighteners of electrons in fiber optics so that photons
can travel smoothly.

~~~
ommunist
"Proton lubricator" for fiber optic wires, apply before encasing wire in
redwood.

------
ommunist
Hmm. I suppose Russian portable nuclear power stations just got market among
Japanese audio purists. What a brilliant opportunity.

