Tír Na HiFi

I've shed all my loose screws long ago. My conscience is now clear.

I have two of them. Not really sure if I need two but I like them too much to even consider parting with any of them.

In my system they make just huge difference. Especially the first one. The other is just there :) and I like to believe that it is there for a reason ;), however I never tested it properly.

I do not think you can go wrong with them. In Tony's place we also heard a nice improvement when CDP otherwise left plugged into the wall was plugged into the Regenerator.

On Wam they can be had for slightly over half of RRP price and show up quite frequently.

I have 500 and 1500 units.

Cheers,
seb

Close to deciding to pull the trigger on one of these this afternoon. All reports on forums point to a positive affect and I haven't come across a single negative.

DaveF wrote:Wouldnt touch balanced transformers with a barg pole. Potential safety risk in the way they operate in the event of fault. It has been covered elsewhere on other forums.

AFAIK some big Hifi companies only use balanced transformers in their R&D-departments, because of their superior quality of power supply, and they don't produce balanced gear.

Suppose it seperates the hi Fi from the nasties in the wall sockets
Does wonders for the noise floor
Wonder if you'd be better with two small units or one big one

Renegerators can suck life and dynamics out of the hifi, if the gear is up to it in he first place.

Several Naim using people took transformer hum for granted (a common effect in dirty mains areas), given the loss of dynamics caused by regenerators/AC-filters.

Only the balanced transformers of sufficient capacity seem to have come through trials unscathed as far as I've found on the Naim forum.

Aleg wrote:Renegerators can suck life and dynamics out of the hifi, if the gear is up to it in he first place.

Several Naim using people took transformer hum for granted (a common effect in dirty mains areas), given the loss of dynamics caused by regenerators/AC-filters.

Only the balanced transformers of sufficient capacity seem to have come through trials unscathed as far as I've found on the Naim forum.

esr a problem?
funny i thought about that earlier if the regenerator couldnt keep up to speed with the variable current draw it would sound flat

so everything would sound dull and flat hmmm
could be a bad trade

is there not something similar to a regenerator used in industry for something like welders
where esr shouldn't be an issue

Some people report a "flattening" when they plug amps into lower capacity regenerators, hence the advice to leave plenty of headroom (so buying the 1500 rather than 500 even if you're not going to come close to the requirement). In my case since my amps run in Class A the current draw is the same whether playing or idle so it makes no real difference. Well, it wouldn't if I used my amps on the regenerator, but you know what I mean. I'm assuming Dave's Jadis runs in class A as well.

Certainly 1500w is overkill for my CD players power requirements!!

I'd be going for the 1500 watt version for the headroom. The Jadis is fully Class A and consumes something around the 350-400 Watt figure. Who knows what I might add to the system later.

Balanced transformers may indeed be technically great and suited to industrial scenarios but in a normal Irish and UK domestic home setup they can be lethal as the voltage is split between the live and neutral wires, +120v, -120v. But only the live wire is protected by a fuse. So if a fault occurs and blows the live fuse as it should, there is no such protection on the neutral wire. Either a fire happens or you touch the unit and its all over for you.
Hifi is designed for unbalanced power from a normal domestic setup.

nige2000 wrote:

Aleg wrote:Renegerators can suck life and dynamics out of the hifi, if the gear is up to it in he first place.

Several Naim using people took transformer hum for granted (a common effect in dirty mains areas), given the loss of dynamics caused by regenerators/AC-filters.

Only the balanced transformers of sufficient capacity seem to have come through trials unscathed as far as I've found on the Naim forum.

esr a problem?
funny i thought about that earlier if the regenerator couldnt keep up to speed with the variable current draw it would sound flat

so everything would sound dull and flat hmmm
could be a bad trade

is there not something similar to a regenerator used in industry for something like welders
where esr shouldn't be an issue

In situations where the isolating, symmetrizing transformer worked the humming was caused by DC offset on the AC.
It may not need to be symmetric, just a 1:1 isolating transformer coud/should do it as well.