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In Reply to: RE: dedicated line and new breaker panel installed posted by author@escapeclause.net on March 11, 2010 at 21:40:32
Is every single component plugged into the dedicated line?Are all the power cords polarized?
Do all three prong cords have there ground pins intact?
If you installed any after market power cords are you sure you polarized them correctly? (yes, it matters)
Do you have a TV and or cablebox in there someplace?
Speaking of cable are you using the cable for FM radio or do you have an outdoor antenna?
Sorry if these are redundant questions I have not gone back and read every post in the old thread.
What bugs me is your technician could not measure any voltage differentials but claims there must be DC current flowing. There has to be a voltage potential for any current to flow.
Edits: 03/12/10Follow Ups:
make good use of that CSI hat. lol.
...I could've bought the entire CSI lab.
The way I read the reply is that the technician could not measure anything when the equipment was disconnected from each other, but did measure DC when they were connected.
...and the DC-voltage seems to build up between the components the longer the interconnects are carrying signal.
I say, "seems to" because this part hasn't been confirmed by the electrician, who didn't want to bill me for staying that long and instead told me to call him back over when the problem was at its worst.
In answer to the previous questions, yes: everything in the entire system has been replaced at least once, starting at the circuit breaker panel and running all the way to the speakers. Some IEC sockets are two-pin-polarized, but the problem has exhibited itself when everything in the rig was three-pin.
Perhaps most interestingly, other associated problems have failed to reproduce themselves on anyone's test bench. Here are but four examples:
1) A Parasound A23/P3 combo that would develop a staticky whooshing sound in one channel and eventually drop that channel to zero -- never happened for the local tech, or at Parasound HQ, either one.
2) A Naim Nait 5i whose input selector would periodically freeze and not accept input either through the front panel or the remote until the AC power was disconnected and reestablished. Sent to NAIM USA, they had it for two weeks -- including taking it home to play with, at one point, and never could make it happen.
3) An Arcam FMJ CD-23 that, when playing with IC's connected, gets so hot to the touch, both at the top chassis cover just above the transformer *and* at the interconnect sockets, that you jerk-back your hand. Doesn't happen when powered-up but not connected, and doesn't happen nearly as bad when powered-up and connected and not sending a signal down the IC's. Sent to two out-of-town service specialists, neither of whom could ever make it happen.
4) A series of three separate Sony DVD-players, all of which would periodically issue a loud, scratchy "bang" down the signal path, and none of which have ever done so in any of the houses of the three friends to which I gave them.
A next-door neighbor is an EE grad student and he proposes an unorthodox approach:
Instead of trying to figure out what the problem is, or how it could be scientifically explicable, he proposes skipping all of that and instead building a contraption that would drain voltage differences without tying anything to earth that shouldn't be tied to earth. The way he would do this is by connecting drain wires to the chassis of each component, and thence to a capacitor with gates on either side, one of which is always open. When the capacitors are charging the gate on the earth side is open, so that the whole rig isn't connected to earth, and when the capacitors are fully charged the gate on the system side opens, so the capacitors can drain to earth without tying any chassis.
It's a tempting solution for the potential partnership, too: The EE kid would design the thing, I can plump for the parts, and my local tech can build the thing quite competently. The only problems are (a) whether it will work, (b) whether the EE kid can possibly know enough, without the schematics of all the components, not to blow something up, and (c) whether I'll void a warranty or leave open some other ghastly possibility through my own ignorance.
Please explain the area you live in.
Single family house surrounded by other single family homes?
I am trying to establish the surrounding users of power around your home.
The neighborhood....
I don't think anyone around me is doing anything crazy like a gi-normous ham radio set or anything like that, but it is a municipal electric company and I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out that they were putting a sh*tty product down their lines.
Still, with a dedicated branch, re-grounding, an isolation transformer and a common-mode choke, how much recourse is left to try?
I don't think anyone around me is doing anything crazy like a gi-normous ham radio set or anything like that, but it is a municipal electric company and I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out that they were putting a sh*tty product down their lines.
I would not blame the Utility company..... Probably as must as 80% of EMI/RFI/bad harmonics noise on the AC mains of a facility is created by electrical equipment and devices within the facility.
My questions were aimed as to the type of dwelling unit you lived in.
Example Hi-rise Condo? In the middle of a downtown city with commercial building all around. Or maybe you live on the fringe of a small industrial area. Bad harmonics can play havoc on electronic equipment.... Are you sharing a utility transformer with someone who is putting large amounts of EMI/RFI/bad harmonics back out on the mains?
Still, with a dedicated branch, re-grounding, an isolation transformer and a common-mode choke, how much recourse is left to try?
Explain the isolation transformer part in detail......
In addition to the dedicated line, new breaker box, re-grounding of the whole system, and whole-house surge suppression, here's what I've tried for power filtration and/or conditioning, to no effect:
An APC H15 line conditioner
A "felix" common-mode choke / dc-block (from audio circle)
...And a Dale Tech MI1500-4 isolation transformer:
http://www.uscomputerexchange.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=10815
My local electronics tech stuck a line tester in one of the outlets of the isolation transformer and declared that it wasn't earthed -- which I'm not sure I believe it is possible to verify by plugging a line-tester into one of the outlets like that (since, after all, the whole point of the thing is to isolate).
The house is single-family detached in an old-growth neighborhood with no industry or high-rises, but the houses were all built in the 1940s and, if mine is any indication, many of them are utilizing the old-fashioned two-pin electrical system, instead of being "earthed." To my knowledge, no one in the neighborhood is doing anything wacky like big-ass ham radio sets or something like that.
Someone in another forum suggested that the problem could be something called a "shared neutral," but my electrician says that the dedicated line would preempt any explanation that involved problems on other branches. Besides which, several tests involving opening all the other breakers have yielded no positive effect on the thing.
I feel it may simply be Poltergeist.
Seriously, you really should find out what is causing the problem and not just do a work around. In the subdivision area where I reside we have underground wiring and four homes share a transformer. After residing in my home for almost a decade, I noticed a problem with hum noise on a random intermittent basis. There were no audio equipment changes in the prior two years. No appliance changes, nor cable TV hookup changes.
I took out my Las Vegas CSI hat (I actually own one) and started a post mortem and after weeks of intensive discovery I uncovered the problem. Actually, it was a total fortuitous event. LOL
My neighbor is a sports writer who travels constantly and whenever he travelled he called asking me to keep an eye on his house. After several dozen of these exchanges, I began noticing the hum would manifest at the same time he went away. The ah-ha moment…I connected the dots and finally put one and one together to realize he was connected to this anomaly. So, when he returned from a trip, I asked him what he did with anything on the power grid after returning. He said he would turn off this elaborate dimmer switch (he had installed a couple of months earlier) on the foyer chandelier. We did a few simple on-off experiments and it turned out to be the root cause of a DC generator. He was also experiencing electronic issues. He replaced it and we have not had an issue since.
...Is there anything else that can be done in this arena?
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