"John Phillips" wrote in message
...
On 2006-07-09, Jay Kaner wrote:
I am very happy with my hi-fi. The thing is, it sounds a whole lot
better
in the early hours of the morning (2-6am) than it does the rest of the
time.

Am i right in thinking this has something to do with the mains supply?
It
seems logical that it sounds at its best when the electricity supply is
at
it's lowest demand.

If there is some real difference - and human beings are quite good at
hearing things differently depending on mood, stress levels etc. so you
should be careful - then it's something of a leap to conclude that it's
the mains supply.

You will find a few sceptics in here and I'm afraid I am one of them.

If it has, would buying mains conditioners/cables help make it sound as
good
as it does at those times, the other times of the day?

If it's really a mains problem then the issue is what is the specific
problem?

- RF interference?
- Mains spikes?
- Under/over voltage?
- Harmonic distortion of the mains waveform?

A good designer of audio kit will have dealt with the effects of all of
those issues in the PSU of his kit and in the PSU rejection ratio of the
electronics. Amp designers such as Bryston and Plinius issue specific
advice that either you don't need mains conditioning for their products
or that you should not use series mains conditioners at all [1] [2].

Even if you have to protect poorly designed kit then different power
conditioners do different things. Simple series filter conditioners
(e.g. http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/nuukspot/...nditioner.html)
remove spikes and RF interference.

If you need to deal with voltage variations (and the audio designer should
have dealt with +/- 15% tolerance for UK mains) or waveform distorions
then you need an entirely different and more expensive beast.

I would appreciate any advice.

My advice is to be skeptical of mains conditioners and special mains
leads. Almost all installations will not need any mains conditioning.
I suspect that most of those that do just need inexpensive spike
suppression (but you didn't mention clicks).

If you really do need mains conditioning then you need to investigate
precisely what you are protecting the kit from to determine what you
need.


[1] http://www.pliniusaudio.com/questions/index.asp: "We have found that
any mains conditioner, or filter, that acts in series with the mains
(and most work this way) will starve the amplifier and negatively
affect the sound. Try plugging the amplifier directly into the
wall socket."

[2] Bryson 4BSST manual: "Power line conditioners will not improve the
SST amplifier performance, in fact most of the time they restrict
the flow of current to the amplifier, reducing performance at higher
output levels"



You *are* Jim Lesurf and I claim my 5 pounds.....

;-)