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How To Do You Measure the Quality of Your AC Power?

What is the best way to measure the quality of the AC power feeding your listening room? Is there a device you can plug into an outlet that will give you the voltage, frequency, the total amount of distortion relative to a perfect sine wave, etc.? Furthermore, how would you measure the ability of your AC main to deliver transient currents?
It seems like there may be a scenario where you could measure your power quality to be excellent but somewhere in the line you could have a loose or poorly made wiring connection which under heavy load (such as powerful bass notes) you could run into trouble with power delivery. In this scenario, an AC regenerator would not help you, or would help very little.

Just curious what methods people have come up with to systematically analyze their power and how they use those measurements to drive buying decisions or repair work, if needed.

Edit: My apologies for the title typo.
128x128mkgus
invalid
1,246 posts
 
I've never encountered a ground loop from running more than one dedicated outlet, it would be rare. I think some mistake noise in the system to a ground loop.
itsjustme
682 posts
 
I'm simply saying that i have used this in many systems to remove a ground loop hum.  Sometimes you have the same reference on two outlets, sometimes you don't.  But the simple fact that they are not the same places violates the principle of star grounding out of the gate.
itsjustme
682 posts
 
I think some mistake noise in the system to a ground loop.
Let me preface with "not trying to be argumentative" - you both seem to know what you're doing and have things under control. But let's nto tell others that up is down or up isn't really high enough to matter.

I’ll answer to both of you guys (immediately above) that a star ground is the gold standard. And while you may claim things are "good enough" or "not a big deal" any divergence is in fact wrong -- less than ideal. period.

Any resistance between reference points can result in noise of various kinds - in AC power typically 60Hz or 50 Hz (outside ’murica). Why bait fate? You are simply arguing that you can sometimes get away with it. we can get away with many things, until we’re caught.


Now, when you move all the plugs/grounds to one circuit,and the hum decreases, you know its source. Its a reference differential. So there ought to be no mistake if you follow the golden rule: don’t change anything else, one variable per equation please.
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