Analyzing the power from the outlet

There's a series of threads on Polk Forums, where one of the members, a college professor, ran a series of measurements on power line noise and line conditioner/tweaks. AFAIK, its the most extensive type of evaluation conducted by a product owner on any forum.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?71333-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-1

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?71382-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-2

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?71545-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-3-PS-Audio-Power-Plant-Premier

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?72539-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-4-PS-Audio-Premier-SC-Power-Cord

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?75093-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-5-PS-Audio-Power-Port-Premier

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?79010-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-6-PS-Audio-Soloist-Special-Edition

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?82496-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-7-HiFi-Tuning-and-Isoclean-Fuses

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?83644-Studies-On-Residential-Power-Line-Noise-Part-8-Audio-Grade-Fuses-For-Home-Theater

Here are a few things that proper power conditioning can correct:

The most important is the 5th harmonic. Fluke instruments printed a white paper on this subject some 20 years ago. The 5th harmonic (300Hz in the US) can cause power transformers to become noisy, power rectifiers to radiate noise, and certain types of AC motors to possibly spin backwards.

DC on the line can cause saturation of toroidal transformer cores and should be blocked else the transformer can become quite noisy. A second harmonic on the line can do the same thing.

High frequency noise can cause problems in digital gear but otherwise is not likely to do much to analog gear if the power supplies are properly designed.

Any skeptical engineers out there? If so, consider the fact that the best power conditioners were made by companies that directed their product at the commercial/industrial market. Elgar is one of those companies. If clean power did not help, companies like Elgar would not exist. If there is skepticism, it exists out of ignorance, which is easily curable.

Great inputs from Ralph (Atmasphere), as usual.

Gbart, thanks also for calling attention to the papers presenting the many measurements. I haven't taken the time to read most of them yet, but FWIW I would suggest to those who do read them that whatever conclusions are reached by the author be carefully scrutinized, and not just accepted at face value. I say that because not long ago, in connection with a thread here on fuse directionality, I did thoroughly review Part 7 of those papers, relating to fuses. My comments on it were presented here.

Regards,
-- Al

Tboooe - I am probably oversimplifying things, but if your regenerator is really generation new clean power, what would the purpose of a dedicated line be? Almost seems like it would be similar to pretreating dirty water going into water purification plant that produced perfectly clean H2O.

mceljo, I dont pretend to be an expert on electrical matters but your example makes sense to me. My only thought on why getting a dedicated line + an AC regenerator would offer benefits is that by supplying cleaner power and grounding, the regenerator does not have to work as hard? Perhaps there is noise that it cannot completely filter out?