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When the power conditioner fails without a bang
#1
A drawback of recent living in South Africa is the prevalance of AC power failures, caused by load shedding necessitated by the national electricity supplier being unable to supply the current required by the whole country. 

Mainly due to inadequate or no maintenance of the infrastructure and corruption in the electricity management company

Anyway, when the power comes back on it is sometimes not a clean switch-on, but on-off-on-off-on.   Many people have installed delay-on timers to circumvent this

I thought this was not necessary, since the power conditioner I was using has a switch-on delay.  Apparently not good enough I found.  One day when I came back home and the power had come back when I was out, I detected an acrid smell coming from my listening room.   The Ashley-Edison VR5000F power conditioner had overheated and was emitting smoke

That was the end of this unit.  Fortunately no damage to peripherals attached

So at the moment I am using a Furman unit.  And to my amazement the sound is fuller, better dynamics and (since we have a lockdown in place and its very quiet with no traffic) the noise floor is reduced.

In addition, I replaced the suppressor plug attached to the dedicated wall plug

The insurance is paying 80% of the cost of the power conditioner, which I bought in England for £390 a year or two ago

[Image: OfjsyiI.png]

[Image: LE90EQK.png]
                                                           Cape Town - South Africa, the home of good wine
Listening stuff:  Mercury Pi2 / Gentooplayer,  Expert 440PRO CI.  4Tb SSD.  Mogami speaker cable to ET LF8bs, B&W DB1 sub, Power from 7.5kW inverter.  2 x Dachshunds
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#2
(02-Apr-2020, 11:25)chrisc Wrote: A drawback of recent living in South Africa is the prevalance of AC power failures, caused by load shedding necessitated by the national electricity supplier being unable to supply the current required by the whole country. 

Mainly due to inadequate or no maintenance of the infrastructure and corruption in the electricity management company

Anyway, when the power comes back on it is sometimes not a clean switch-on, but on-off-on-off-on.   Many people have installed delay-on timers to circumvent this

I thought this was not necessary, since the power conditioner I was using has a switch-on delay.  Apparently not good enough I found.  One day when I came back home and the power had come back when I was out, I detected an acrid smell coming from my listening room.   The Ashley-Edison VR5000F power conditioner had overheated and was emitting smoke

That was the end of this unit.  Fortunately no damage to peripherals attached

So at the moment I am using a Furman unit.  And to my amazement the sound is fuller, better dynamics and (since we have a lockdown in place and its very quiet with no traffic) the noise floor is reduced.

In addition, I replaced the suppressor plug attached to the dedicated wall plug

The insurance is paying 80% of the cost of the power conditioner, which I bought in England for £390 a year or two ago

[Image: OfjsyiI.png]

[Image: LE90EQK.png]
Got this locally Chris?
Music Room:
Devialet ODA, Vivid Audio G2 Series 2, Linn LP 12, Hercules, Ekos Ortofon Cadenza Blue, Achromat, Dewaudio Starmap and Startrail, Magnum Dynalab Tuner, Theta Transport, Kimber KS 2120 Digital, VD Hul Suernova. 
Roon'd for life, Tidal.

Bedroom: Ming Da 300B pre, Pass Labs XA 30.5, Sonus Faber Olympica III, Aqua La Scala dac, Ifi Zen Stream


Johannesburg,
South Africa.
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#3
Hello, info with photos!

https://www.thomann.de/gb/furman_ac210_p...ImVuIn0%3D

But there are additional devices that monitor the voltage and frequency! If the limit values ​​are exceeded, the device switches off and remains switched off. Only by manually switching on, the current is switched through again, and thus the off-on-off with high pulse peaks is avoided! Rolleyes
Aavik U-280 / Audio Physic Cardeas / Melco N1ZS + D100 / Melco Switch S100 / KECES P8 Dual / Transparent Audio PowerWave X / Cable: Audioquest, Shunyata, Transparent, Ansuz Digitalz A2 Ethernet, USB
Remote: iPad-Pro
Roon Nucleus+(B), Lifetime / Qobuz Studio Sublime                                                                                                          
Germany / Bavaria
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#4
£166 is quite cheap!

George in Jhb, a friend got it for me from B&H Photo in New York. You can get the 230V model there if you ask, I think it was about $110 at the time
                                                           Cape Town - South Africa, the home of good wine
Listening stuff:  Mercury Pi2 / Gentooplayer,  Expert 440PRO CI.  4Tb SSD.  Mogami speaker cable to ET LF8bs, B&W DB1 sub, Power from 7.5kW inverter.  2 x Dachshunds
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#5
Chris - You mention "And to my amazement the sound is fuller, better dynamics". This reminds me of a time I listened to a dealer Devialet set up that had a power conditioner (older PS Audio device, I cannot recall which model). The point is, this particular unit seamed to reduced the dynamics of the system, so in this instance the system sounded better without the conditioner. So what I am thinking here is that maybe your Ashley-Edison VR5000F was causing a similar effect, and when you switched to the Furman the dynamics were therefore released. A happy result though, and I note that the Furman unit is a less money than your typical audiophile approved mains cable.
1000 Pro - KEF Blade - iFi Zen Stream - Mutec REF10 - MC3+USB - Pro-Ject Signature 12
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#6
I imagined that on connecting the A-E device at the time that there was an improvement. Right now I cannot remember, since it was 2018. I had a few music-lover friends around and we came to the conclusion that while the improvement was slight, there was certainly no degradation

The main aspect of the A-E device is protection.

The Lessloss mains cable I got from a friend who bought a 2.5m length and found it too short for his purpose.

I looked at the response graph using an UMIK-1 microphone and mini-DSP. The noise floor is some 2db quieter
                                                           Cape Town - South Africa, the home of good wine
Listening stuff:  Mercury Pi2 / Gentooplayer,  Expert 440PRO CI.  4Tb SSD.  Mogami speaker cable to ET LF8bs, B&W DB1 sub, Power from 7.5kW inverter.  2 x Dachshunds
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#7
Have been trying various of power related products. Most have a positive and at the same time negative, restricting effect. What I‘d really very much can recommend is the new Audioquest Niagara 1200 or higher. Just try to get one for demo / listening purpose and you will immediately hear the difference.
Still amazing to see how much the Devialet‘s performance can be tuned by a good power supply. (Also take care of the power cord which should be an Audioquest Monsoon or better for the Niagara when trying.
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#8
(04-Apr-2020, 11:39)markush Wrote: Have been trying various of power related products. Most have a positive and at the same time negative, restricting effect. What I‘d really very much can recommend is the new Audioquest Niagara 1200 or higher. Just try to get one for demo / listening purpose and you will immediately hear the difference.
Still amazing to see how much the Devialet‘s performance can be tuned by a good power supply. (Also take care of the power cord which should be an Audioquest Monsoon or better for the Niagara when trying.

Hi markush, here is a little test! Wink

https://alpha-audio.net/review/review-au...gara-1200/
Aavik U-280 / Audio Physic Cardeas / Melco N1ZS + D100 / Melco Switch S100 / KECES P8 Dual / Transparent Audio PowerWave X / Cable: Audioquest, Shunyata, Transparent, Ansuz Digitalz A2 Ethernet, USB
Remote: iPad-Pro
Roon Nucleus+(B), Lifetime / Qobuz Studio Sublime                                                                                                          
Germany / Bavaria
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#9
An advantage of 230 volt mains is that the (any) power conditioner is called on to handle less current than if it were a 110 volt system.

With my system (Devialet and B&W sub) playing loud, the current draw is 4.8 amps. This is far below the maximum 5000 watts (21 amps) catered for by the power conditioner. All these power conditioners, even a Denali I tried for a couple of weeks, are not as forgiving when pressed to pass through large currents
                                                           Cape Town - South Africa, the home of good wine
Listening stuff:  Mercury Pi2 / Gentooplayer,  Expert 440PRO CI.  4Tb SSD.  Mogami speaker cable to ET LF8bs, B&W DB1 sub, Power from 7.5kW inverter.  2 x Dachshunds
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#10
That’s why Audioquest has own high current slots on their devices.
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