Listening Fatigue

Stehno,

In your original post of 8-27-04 explaining the what a "proper" line conditioner should do:
(1) is the result of (2). (1) does not stand a line conditioner design objective by itself rather it is the result of successfully attaining the goal written in (2). Line conditioners, AFAIK, are made from passive elements (xformer, L & C) & I don't think that a passive element can do anything to lower the noise floor. Lowering a system's noise floor takes energy i.e. an active ckt. Needless to say, this will not be for free.
When a line conditioner successfully cleans up an AC signal & provides clean power to the electronics, it allows the system to operate at its inherent cummulative noise floor level that is, generally, much lower than that system's noise floor when fed with "dirty" AC power. This is what reveals "tremendous amounts of true, subtle, low level musical detail".

I 2nd Mejames: do answer Sean's questions, which seem very fair to me as well.

Bombay, I have one minor quibble with your post - passive elements CAN lower the noise floor by reducing the bandwidth of the power line noise. RMS noise is proportional to the square root of the bandwidth. However, the filters used in this approach usually degrade the transient response of the system. Active regeneration can lower the noise floor and still provide good transient response, constrained only by the dynamic current delivery capability of the regenerator's output.

Mejames: There's no point in Stehno answering the questions now. Bombay has already shown that ALL forms of line conditioning that achieve both audible and measurable results alter bandwidth in some way, shape or form. That's why i wanted to ask Stehno a series of questions. With his own responses, he would have realized that the goals that he mentioned could only be met with the ideas / designs that he was critical of.

Bombay: Your explanation basically sums up the situation. I just wanted Stehno to do his own homework. Not only would he have seen how contradictory his own statements were, he would have helped educate others in the process.

Nighthawk: It's quite possible to limit bandwidth without limiting transient response. The key to doing this would be to pick the proper hinge frequency and slope. Once these parameters were chosen, you would have to select individual components that could easily pass the desired amount of energy. For optimum performance, you would have to look at how much energy was needed in both a steady state draw and on a dynamic basis. By using "heavy duty" components that will easily pass the necessary power, series resistance is minimized and thermal losses are reduced. Sean
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Nighthawk,

Well, technically you are correct & thanks for pointing this out. I'm aware of this but I discarded the concept for my post because:-
My post was with reference to context where I referred to Stehno's 8-27-04 post. I referred to Stehno's "proper" line conditioner. So, I was putting forth my comments w.r.t. that. If you read his original post where he puts forth some 6-7 points re. what a "proper" line conditioner should do, #3 is: "A well designed line-conditioner attempts to induce no sonic harm of it's own"
If read Stehno's earlier 8-27-04 post he says "Whereas, a properly designed line conditioner would do no such thing as to suppress offending frequencies".

So, given that Stehno's "proper" line conditioner doesn't subdue the high freq by limiting bandwidth, I thought that I should not talk about passives lowering the noise floor - clearly these types of power conditioners are out of the discussion here.

Maybe I should have said that they can but put in parenthesis that this discussion here is not re. those types of pwr conditioners. I personally thought that this would further add to the confusion (there's plenty here!).
Anyway, hope that this clears things up.

Bombaywalla, you make some interesting points.

Sean, responding to you is like shooting at moving target. If you keep shucking and jiving with more postings and hence more accusations, name calling, labeling, etc., then I'm just chasing my tail around the mulberry bush. Not to mention that for a while there you seemed to be doing pretty good without me and besides I do have others things to do than just dance with you all weekend.

I had several responses for you over the last 30 hours or so, but you just keep moving. Strike and move, strike and move. I believe Muhammad Ali made this strategy into an art form. But you ain't so bad yourself. :)

Of course Sean, knowing you as I do, I knew exactly what you were really up to. And I've seen way too many Wild Kingdom episodes to not recognize that same opportunistic instinct in you as those agressive little critters when they smell blood.

For the other readers here, there's much more to this little saga than meet's the eye. You may see Sean's questions as innocent enough, but I have had several rather intense bouts with Sean in time past regarding potential personal agendas, destruction of companies, reviewers, magazines, products, owners of certain equipment, self-shilling, etc..

And I'm quite confident that more of his blood was spilled than my own on every occassion. So there is certainly the potential for one of us to have vengeance on their mind. Hence my perception that he was/is darned and determined to make me respond to technical questions that I admitted I felt unqualified to answer.

What I'm really trying to say is that, knowing Sean as I do, I would never let my gaurd down when he is around. My experience with him clearly indicates that he is forever waiting in the wings for yet another opportunity to strike. Therefoe, I must approach every one of his questions and statements from multiple angles and never for it's face value alone.

As for the issue(s) at hand.
For which of Sean's 15 to 20 questions/accussations (the list was certainly growing) to me does anyone believe deserves a response? And even though I made it clear to him several times above that I did not feel qualified to answer and that he is simply attempting to trap me, does anyone still think I am obligated to provide a response even though I felt unqualified to properly respond and freely admitted as much?

I was unaware that that type of response is no longer a valid response.

And regarding my first post to Sean in this thread, does anybody (other than Sean) consider my statements there a serious and/or unfriendly or clandestine challenge to Sean as he claimed? Sean made a somewhat broad-brushed statement regarding cleaning up the AC and I was simply looking for clarification in my post.

Sean's response to my followup post seemed to an attempt to entrap me by asking me questions that I admittedly felt unqualified to attempt a response.

If Sean or anybody else still thinks I have an obligation to respond to those technical questions, then I'll respond right now: Gee Sean, those are very good questions but I simply do not feel qualified to answer those questions.

But I already answered that way in my previuos posts. Sean simply was unaccepting of those answers.

Now for which of the other 14 to 17 questions/statements does Sean deserve a response?

And what of the few simple question I posed to Sean that he has not answer? Those being:

1. What has he done in his own system to resolve his AC issues?

2. Does he agree or disagree with my assessment as to what constitutes what a 'properly' designed line-conditioner should attempt to do?

-IMO