A/C issues

Tech Square

Technical and speculative discussion of amps, cables and other topics.

Hi folks,
Just wanted to pose some questions, seeking answers. For those of you who design equipment, what are the most important A/C quality issues? I realize the issues are likely to be different for the different kinds of components. Feel free to limit your responses to (eg) amplifiers, or digital. I throw out some possibilities below. Please forgive me if I sound ignorant; if so, it's because I am. I've done a bit of reading, but have little experience. Please comment as specifically as you an on why these things matter:
1. Digital: Digital equipment should be pretty immune to voltage sags and noise, shouldn't it? In fact, considering the tolerance of digital circuits, and the amount of noise generated internally by digital circuits, A/C ought not to have much affect on digital circuits, unless it's REALLY bad. Am I wrong? I realize that digital circuits--especially those with fast rise times and (hence) wide noise bandwidths could adversely affect A/C power, and make (say) preamps and amps on the same A/C circuit behave badly. But does poor A/C compromise digital performance? How?
2. Analog: what are the main issues here? Noisy grounds? Noisy hot (I'm assuming unbalanced A/C power)? Noisy (neutral) return? Voltage sags? What's the mechanism?
A/C "safety" grounds, I understand, tend to be pretty bad in typical household A/C systems. Is this important for (say) amplifier design? Are safety grounds commonly used by amp designers, or are they just used to drain shields and prevent electric shocks?
Well that's plenty for a start.

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Topic - A/C issues - JCA 07:36:50 10/29/03 (1)

Re: A/C issues - Alex Yakovlev 10:06:14 03/16/04 (0)

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