2. misc-audio
  3. 184463-71961

"But it sounds better at night...."

A well-traveled topic that I raise yet again.  On the "are power regenerators snake oil" question, the response that has made most sense to me is: No, if you have some material issue with the power supply coming into your home.  If you live in an area with what I will call normal modern power infrastructure, and have quality components, you will probably not notice a difference.

But I live in a city, do not suspect any power problems, and feel with a pretty high degree of certainty that my system sounds better at night.  This is a common sentiment, attributed to more activity on the electrical grid during the day.  Can these two positions be reconciled?  Why DOES the system sound better at night to me and many others?


Is our perception straight-up wrong, and the result of some bias or non-auditory reason why listening at night is a better experience?

Maybe when listening at night, one average for most people, the system will have been on longer, and therefore be more warmed up?

Is our perception real, and supports the proposition that baseline electrical system usage does materially affect many systems, and you don't need a clear power "problem" to benefit from a regenerator? 

Let's rehash it all again gentlemen!
 

mathiasmingus
siesp's avatar
siesp
4 posts
 

@kdogsy The continuous UPS deals with voltage surges , spikes, sags, frequency variations and provides a steady Voltage to the system. 220 is fed to the UPS then we have the isolation transformer to feed the system.

stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,468 posts
 

...and better on Sunday

asvjerry's avatar
asvjerry
4,674 posts
 

*L*  I AM the Noisy Neighbor.

Am effn proud of it.  I'm in a Noisy Area, cars, rail, air, people, I could rant on.

Anon on anon....

I/we build things: Saws, compressors, 2 diesel devices, chainsaws....

But at night...

Low 20's db here, where I'm sitting, loudest thing is this keyboard, followed by a room filter fan.... 

Delicious, and be as soft or LOUD as I care to be.

Voltage here is me between the local source and the major med center .4 mi. 'downstream', I'd call it plentiful and reasonable 'clean' in some way...🤷‍♂️

fleschler
2,012 posts
 

I can affirm that it is not necessarily time of day but the weather and general neighborhood power use conditions that determine if the power will be less or more clean. Today’s power versus pre-internet and especially pre-HVAC was substantially cleaner.

Although my audio systems sound excellent most of the time, an example where spurious buzzing and diminished sound quality occurs every summer in Los Angeles when the temperature is above 110 degrees and A/C is being blasted/universally being operated. Luckily, this lasted about 8 days throughout the summer months and primarily after 4pm until 12am. The entire winter, I enjoyed fabulous sound.

Please note from my profile that I have excellent insulated cabling, a very dense and secure room against RFI/EM, dedicated audio equipment only power subpanel and wiring and a Bryston BIT-20 isolation transformer.  

veerossi
169 posts
 

I was reading up on electronics and was reminded that capacitance and resistance values can change quite a bit depending on the ambient air temperature. Sometimes, it can be enough to knock them out of their rated values/ what the circuit was designed for. Many places are cooler in the evening- from the place that generates the juice all the way to our speakers. Hmm

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