11/30/2023 0 Comments Rca stereo audio splitterMany high-end DACs and audio interfaces have corresponding outputs. The red box in this photo identifies the balanced audio inputs on the back of a Yamaha HS-7 speaker. I’m talking portable phones, cell phones, Wi-Fi equipment, and even computers. Since it wouldn’t be practical to turn your home theater into Faraday cage, you should instead look to lessen the strength of the radio signals your A/V gear needs protection from. Indeed, the shielding on cables works as a Faraday cage. Any conductive material tends to block RF signals and shunt their charge to its surface. Common noise problem 4: RF interferenceĮver wonder why the walls of your stereo receiver and other electronic devices are metal, when it seems like everything else in the world is made of plastic? It’s not for tensile strength, it’s to block incoming and outgoing RFI (radio frequency interference). That is, it’s inaudible to anyone who didn’t pay a lot for a fat wire and needs to hear a difference. While larger gauge wire can actually help an amp work a little easier and cooler when driving speakers by lowering cable impedance (resistivity), the impact on signal cables is negligible. But if you’re noticing odd noises that seem to be in time with the bass or vibrations, give the signal cables a hard tap with a finger (with the equipment powered on) to see if this is a problem. I’ve experienced this only once in my life with component-connecting cables and that was for a turntable. Poor or loose shielding and other factors can actually turn physical shocks into audio signal. One thing you could check for, though it’s mostly an issue in high-impedance (higher gain/voltage, aka Hi-Z) applications, such as with guitar cables, is that they aren’t microphonic. There are plenty of cables in the $10 to $20 range-or even lower-that will serve just as well.Ī line interactive uninterruptible power supply, like this CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD, continuously converts AC (alternating current) electrical power to DC (direct current) and then back to AC, removing all electrical noise in the process. Forget platinum-it sounds sexy, but is about 20 th down the conductivity list.Ĭopper wire with gold connectors are the best combination but again, don’t listen to the boutique audio sales propaganda. It’s quite good, better than nickel or chrome, but actually a bit worse than silver and copper. Gold is used on connectors because it doesn’t oxidize, not because it’s the best conductor of electricity. A common misconception is that the more expensive the metal, the better the cable. Electromagnetic induction it’s a blessing, it’s a curse (if you don’t know about it).Īs to the quality of cables: A poorly made cable can cause noise issues, but there’s no real advantage to spending a fortune on them. The other rule for wires is not looping antenna signal cables (twin-lead), which tends to induce the same noise by making them antennas themselves. Kill HDMI noise with a $10 Monoprice cable with a ferrite bead But just to be safe, try to keep your AC cords isolated. Speaker cables have far stronger signals traveling along them, so they shouldn’t be as affected by RFI. Note that I’ve seen much cheaper on Amazon, but not from a known vendor, so I can’t vouch for them. It’s about $500, but you can easily get away with a lower wattage (500 or 250) model for less than $250. Tripplite sent me one of these as well: the excellent 1000-watt IS1000HG (Hospital Grade) with four outlets. Slightly cheaper than an online UPS, but absolutely effective against all kinds of line noise is an isolation transformer. If you’re not worried about defeating ground-loop noise, you can get away for not much more than $100 with a UPS that advertises pure sine wave output. It’s also much less-expensive than one of those high-end power conditioners you see marketed to gullible audiophiles. It costs several hundred dollars less, but doesn’t provide battery backup power.Ĭondition your power with the Tripp Lite IS1000HG isolation transformer The Tripp Lite IS1000HG isolation transformer I mentioned earlier will also clean up AC line noise. But darn if it isn’t 100 percent effective at providing protection against power surges and outages. It’s also heavy, about the size of a small dehumidifier, and it has some features (such as USB monitoring, so that it can gracefully shut down an attached computer in the event of a power failure) that have nothing to do with noise elimination. That device was selling for nearly $900 when I updated this article. Tripp Lite sent me its model SU1000XLCD UPS to clean up the super-dirty AC in my apartment. Line interactive UPSes are more expensive than the standby alternative, which keep switch to battery power on demand. This type of ground loop isolator, for coaxial cables used with over-the-air antennas and cable- and satellite-TV equipment, can eliminate both visual and audible noise.
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