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Easy free tweak -- dealing with RFI/EMI -- try it and see?

With some Ciamara credit available I thought I'd try the Stillpoints ERS paper on the insides of my fuse box and Torus wall transformer to see if it helped improve things in my system. Treating fuse cabinets is a fairly well known application of this product which is designed to absorb stray RF and other electronic nasties

Well here I was tweaking away and I thought, golly the system sounds really clean and open and I haven't put the paper in yet -- I assume it will be even better with it!

Imagine my surprise to discover I'd been listening to the system with the fuse box/panelboard cover open! Turns out one of the best things to do with EMI and RFI may not be to enclose it in a metal box in the first place 🤓

And actually with it closed, with or without the ERS paper it sounded much more closed in, with a loss of low level detail

Same went for the door on my Torus transformer -- from now on I'll leave it open for serious listening -- there is a bit more audible transformer hum but as it's in another room this is no big deal

Anyway this is a dead easy free tweak so give it a try -- you may like the results
128x128folkfreak
don_c55
1,025 posts
 
EMI and RFI is almost all, "through the air" interference, and not significant in power lines.

Unless you live near a hospital, industrial park, or have motors turning off and on, on your power line. Motors that "freewheel" will generate noise back into the power line.

Opening and closing the door on the breaker box and hearing a difference is in your imagination!
theaudiotweak
2,797 posts
 
I removed the cover from my breaker box some 10 years ago as the this reduces the surface area of shear to populate and then travel on the solid core path to the high fi. transformers. Tom
theaudiotweak
2,797 posts
 
I had a group of friends over to witness the benefit of removing the cover..on and off and then staying off.... Easy call for them to make as to the sonic benefit when gone.The cover is not a shield of emi/rfi but rather a collector and converter of other detrimental wave types. Tom
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,827 posts
 
I know that the field surrounding the power lines is strong enough to carry and transmit 5TB of data at an incredible rate because an AT&T tech told me they've been doing it for some time now to explore other ways of transmitting data without resorting to new construction.

Now, if the field surrounding the power lines are that strong, one can easily imagine the effects it can have when it gets down to your breaker box. There's so much going on that's yet to be fully appreciated.

Now, as for EMI/RFI I use a Schumann device near my listening spot. I can reach out and unplug it at will and it's easy for me to hear the difference. In my apartment there's easily 30 hot spots of Bluetooth and WiFi competing for attention and two side of it rum parallel with power lines, polluting the whole place with electronic smog. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't  there.

All the best,
Nonoise
randy-11
1,913 posts
 
Yes, in a digital chain airborne EFI can be a problem - even routers hunting periodically can cause kvetchng problems.

OP needs to do some blind testing as noted above
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