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October 2, 2007 - 2:10am
#1
OK, GOT ZENERING?
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That's a very interesting article. I'm not sure why you seem to be calling the phenomenon's validity into question, though; It appears to be a genuine effect, grounded in electrical engineering. I think I'll be leaving my amplifier on most of the time now, which I feel secure in doing, given that I just bought a Furman PST-8D. Not only is my gear protected, but those sine waves are squeaky clean.
I wasn't sure if I'd hear the difference; I was in attendance at my dealer when a Furman engineer demoed the Reference 20i (of course) with a Linn Klimax Kontrol/Linto/LP12, and can't honestly say that I heard a difference between raw wall current and conditioned current. On my system - and with the admittedly very unstable power in my apartment - the improvement was immediately apparent. I guess, sometimes, you don't know you have a problem until you fix it.
But then sometimes it's not a problem but a feature if you don't know that it's really a problem. And yes, I use a bunch of Furmans. good stuff, born out of teh pro world. Now joined with PanaMax, who knows what road tehy will take? Latest Furmans look very more interested in cosmetics, to sell to the Home Theatre crowd. I have Furman rack mounts PF units and surge/spike. And they certainly have taken out noise from switch spikes, do I hear anything better, who knows, but i know i don't get clicks and snaps no mo'. And it reduced very small amounts of current maybe according to it's front panel current meters on the Furman PH8-Series II and PHPRO series II. But what happens if the Frumans are getting Zenering? What if the entire world is ZENERING, we are DOOMED? Will Furutech come out now with an anti Zenering cleaning/filter system? But then the article was dealing with mic pre amps, which dal with very low level signals from mics, is it audible? What if something is chaning in the mics themselves, since they have mechanical, electrical components, maybe they are vibrating themselves into problems, but then mics work on vibration, maybe all mics are doomed?
"Zenering only affects transistor preamps. Use tubes and you will be totally immune."
DUP!
Sincere kudos for such an interesting post.
For me, the take home message about the example of the 20 year old preamp is to make sure it gets enough rest before I start flogging it!
I wonder how long this "rest period" would be in order to "heal" my transistors.
But then, as my transistors heal, my capacitors start to degrade through lack of use...it's really some balancing act, I guess.
As Erik B mentioned, I just leave everything on all the time and try to sneak past both problems that way.
Time to go learn more. Thanks for the thought provoking article!
Maybe we need easy to replace transistors. Kind of like changing tubes every now and again. There is a goldmine to be dredged in offering audiophile grade resistors with various characteristics that are plug and play.
I'm just the sort of fool who would swap transistors in and out like rolling tubes.
Thank God that I'm using a "straight wire with gain" system.
See sometimes I ain't just making stuff up