I think it will also help to understand what you wish to achieve. Do you just want to be able to test/review continental equipment without having to replace the plug in which case a Schuko socket strip with a 13A plug fitted would be sufficient? If you are trying to compare the effects of UK and continental mains supplies there are a lot of differences to consider including the use of lower rated three phase supplies to the continental buildings.

"I think it will also help to understand what you wish to achieve.."

I'm looking to compare a regular UK 13 amp socket fed from the normal house consumer unit with normal cabling, to another "HiFi" consumer unit wired in parallel with no fuses in the circuit, hence the Schuko. 

Everything from the HiFi consumer unit to the Schuko socket will use "Audiophile-grade materials.

In the nicest possible, most respectful way, I'm trying to avoid any discussions here on "snake oil". I just need to know from this peer group but I'm not doing anything wrong concerning safety.

Thanks

There will always be fuses or circuit breakers in the wiring, starting with a, probably 800A fuse, in the substation then a 60 - 100A fuse in your incoming supply. Next will be a 16A fuse or circuit breaker for your Schuko or a 32A RFC fuse/circuit breaker followed by a 13A fuse in the plug. There may well be a further fuse in the equipment. What are you trying to eliminate?

True. Also the internal fuses of the HiFi component.

In the spirit of marginal gains, I’m trying to eliminate and “improve” what I can in a safe and legal way, hence the original question about using Schuko connectors in the UK.

Once I’m comfortable I can do that, and it looks like I can, I can make a comparison and see if music sounds better.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Paul Soor said:

In the spirit of marginal gains, I’m trying to eliminate and “improve” what I can in a safe and legal way, hence the original question about using Schuko connectors in the UK.

Once I’m comfortable I can do that, and it looks like I can, I can make a comparison and see if music sounds better.

Are your ears capable of appreciating such marginal gains? Are we talking about low frequencies or high frequencies? How does the circuit eliminate any form of interference which must, presumably, be coming from elsewhere in the property or the street?

Not unlawful, but beware of smoke and mirrors!

Paul Soor said:

In the spirit of marginal gains, I’m trying to eliminate and “improve” what I can in a safe and legal way, hence the original question about using Schuko connectors in the UK.

Once I’m comfortable I can do that, and it looks like I can, I can make a comparison and see if music sounds better.

Are your ears capable of appreciating such marginal gains? Are we talking about low frequencies or high frequencies? How does the circuit eliminate any form of interference which must, presumably, be coming from elsewhere in the property or the street?

Not unlawful, but beware of smoke and mirrors!

Music is art and art is emotion. So, yes, I can and do hear/ feel the difference in things like power cables.

If you consider HiFi equipment as extremely high precision data retrieval instruments utilising electricity, one could brainstorm many opportunities to corrupt data retrieval, conversion (digital and analog), amplification and transmission to the speakers. And never have we had so many EMI, EFI and EMC challenges as we do these days.

I've been reading this book…

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442453/this-is-what-it-sounds-like-by-ogas-dr-susan-rogers-and-ogi/9781529114010

An interesting fact is the human hearing stops developing at about the age of 14, unless children are exposed to music from a young age and develop a love for music. This leads to the inner hair cells developing dendrites, meaning they hear things other don’t. I need music like the air that I breathe!

Sorry, I’ve gone off topic!

Paul Soor said:

If you consider HiFi equipment as extremely high precision data retrieval instruments utilising electricity, one could brainstorm many opportunities to corrupt data retrieval, conversion (digital and analog), amplification and transmission to the speakers. And never have we had so many EMI, EFI and EMC challenges as we do these days.

And the ears and the auditory pathways turn the sound waves back into electricity.

However, you haven't answered my questions.

Let's start again with the frequencies which might be affected. Low or high please?

I’m going to digress a little..

In terms of hearing, music is much more than frequencies and frequency response. We know that because people who are lacking in frequency extremes (lots of us) still make and experience amazing music. For example the sense of rhythm has nothing to do with frequencies. It’s a feeling you either get or don’t. There is not right or wrong.

I guess you are saying, are the improvement measurable? There is a forum called Audio Science Review…

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?reviews/

… who generally believe, if it can’t be measured, it’s not real. I find their forum interesting but I don’t subscribe to “measurement or nothing”.

So, having said that, where frequencies are being addressed, they tend to be very high frequencies.

Did I kind of answer your question?

One has to be careful - it has been shown that (some) humans are responsive to effects that are quite a long way outside the traditional audio range ( perhaps 10Hz to 20KHz and more like 300 -3000Hz for mobile phone "dalek quality" speech - think mobile 'phone..) 

Correctly instrumented measurements on audio kit need to include looking for effects up to perhaps 50KHz plus that might be attended by apparently imperceptible  roll-off and small phase errors in band that would generally not be noticed.

Also some people 'feel' ultrasound effects, even when they do not report hearing them.

a reference

I'm firmly in the 'if it can be heard it can be measured' camp by the way, but I would say that for a satisfactory measurement one needs a degree of rigour and precision often lacking,

Mike.

OK, so if your ears cannot perceive very high frequencies, how can you perceive them at all?

OK, so if your ears cannot perceive very high frequencies, how can you perceive them at all?

I guess you can perceive the effect of something even if you can't directly perceive the thing itself. If there were two or more high but different frequencies, I might be able to hear the lower frequency interactions (beat?) as peaks and troughs interfere sometimes constructively sometimes destructively. Sort of Fourier analysis in reverse.

   - Andy.

OK, so if your ears cannot perceive very high frequencies, how can you perceive them at all?

The non-linear mixing of modulated ultrasound is a fairly standard way of casting sound directionally - the 'sound' is only re-created at the point of detection.

This chap has done it at the party trick level to 'throw' music with 40KHz transducers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQOabMOMGoE

the ultrasound  power levels are higher than I would want to be bathed in but hey-ho.

(google the 'voice of god' weapon for a possible use in warfare, to either instruct some poeple but not others, or to make folk think they are hearing instructions when there is no obvious source,  but there is no public domain evidence to suggest that the idea has left the lab, but in principle it should work.)

Then there is also quite a bit of evidence for sensing ultrasound without inter-modulation though bone vibrations stimulating other nerves not normally associated with hearing.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378595505000481

This leads to sensations, rather than actually 'hearing' but may be part of the 'feel' of music.

Mike.

Fujimoto may be doing clever things electronically, but the fact is that the tones which were presented to the ear(s) were from 125 Hz to 8 kHz - see fig. 2.

The bone vibrators stimulate the cochlear nerve in the usual way. Ever tried listening to a tuning fork by biting the foot?

Paul Soor said:

… who generally believe, if it can’t be measured, it’s not real. I find their forum interesting but I don’t subscribe to “measurement or nothing”.

Interesting. I used to design rather high end sound equipment (we're talking hundreds of thousands of pound rather than thousands of pounds), and the principle held by the founder of the company was rather the other way around "if it can be heard, it can be measured". We found that a very important principle in equipment design - if somebody could reliably hear a difference (and we got really good at blind testing) we'd go to huge efforts to find what that difference actually meant in signal terms (and we're talking months or years of research here). So that we could then consider that in all future designs. Now we were lucky that we had the funds to do that, most audio companies are run on a shoestring and can't, but also that culture was vital to ensure that conclusions weren't jumped to. 

So usual engineering principle - don't assume an engineering change can't have any impact, determine if it does have an impact and then find out why! Right down to root cause. Sadly too few audio companies seem to do the last step...but as said, both steps (can it be heard, and why) can be really really difficult.

What I've found interesting on audio forums in the past (I try to stay out of these discussions these days, bad for my blood pressure) is that these things work both ways, there are people who take it as a matter of deep belief and faith that certain things can't be heard. The ear-brain interface is pretty amazing at detecting differences, although the brain can be pretty rubbish at interpreting those differences. The biggest examples we found were that most people can tell the difference between two pieces of music with a 0.1dB level difference (although in our tests they didn't perceive it as a level difference), and that most people can hear absolute phase (at least on percussion type sounds). Both of which we found by accident, and at the times were, for different reasons, a pain in the bottom, we'd rather not have found them! I've had people rant and rave at me on forums when I've mentioned these, and try to find all sorts of bizarre explanations - much more complicated than the simple fact that they could be heard - which is interesting. I've always responded with "don't rant at me, go and try it". Of course there's also the question of whether either actually matter (which again is why I stay off such forums now), since you don't know which was "right" in the first place...ok, maybe there's a case for absolute phase in some cases. (They mattered to us because we were doing A-B comparisons and it was important that nothing unintended got in the way of these.)

I'll admit that one of the several reasons I left the audio industry was due to frustration with some of the uninformed discussions with clients - yes some of the capacitors in our systems are purple, no we don't consider that purple capacitors sound worse than blue capacitors, yes there is a make and model of capacitor that sounds worse than another make and model of capacitor but it's for these other technical reasons, not because it's purple...

These days I find musical instrument construction (as a hobby interest) much more interesting...but has many of the same issues, for example it's fascinating getting involved in the discussion of different varnishes on stringed instruments. (And again, some extremely well informed and researched, and some not...)

Sorry I was trying to avoid going off on my hobby horse but failed to stop myself! I'll shut up now.

Thanks,

Andy

And, although I am not from a hi fi background, (I'm the sort for whom you could make a simpler piano by eliminating every other key as they sound the same ...  musicians usually wince at this, but its true)  I am very much on your side - don't assume there will be  no perceived effect until you have measured everything well outside the 'normal' range.

Your comments about phase are interesting - do you mean phase of harmonics relative to fundamental (i.e, zero-crossing and peak moving), or just suck instead of blow by reversing the polarity of the coil of the speaker - which I'd expect to be discernible if the waveform is assymetric - which an N-wave event like an explosion usually is (- not too surprising - you can generate over pressure to many atmospheres at the origin of the explosion, but you cannot go below vacuum on the ensuing rarefaction. By the time you get far away, the pressures are less damaging, but the asymmetry is preserved. I can well imagine an upside down bang that starts with a suck instead of a blow sounding wrong.)

M.