What is Balanced Power?
Electric power is delivered to homes in a "single-ended" fashion with two wires. One wire, called the neutral, is always held at 0 volts. There is no voltage on it. The other wire, called the live or hot, carries all of the 230 volts AC. Balanced power converts the single-ended power to a balanced power system with both wires now carrying 115 volts AC, each out of phase with each other. The total voltage between them is then 230V. The ground wire is held at 0 volts.
How does it remove power line noise?
Transformers only respond to voltage differences between their leads. Power lines often have a type of noise called common mode noise which is present on both the neutral and hot wire. The Balanced Power Supply contains a massive toroidal transformer with an electrostatic screen that rejects much of this noise.
What is a ground loop?
A ground loop occurs when different equipment grounds are at different voltages, causing noisy ground currents to flow between them. The Balanced Power Supply creates a new ground called a derived ground which decouples equipment connected to it from these circulating ground currents in the rest of the house wiring. It also provides one common ground reference for all the equipment connected to it.
How does it reduce radiated fields?
Because the power is delivered by two out of phase power lines, the electric fields produced by each should largely cancel. This attenuates noise which may be induced in nearby equipment caused by radiated fields. This is same principal used with twisted pair balanced cable but in reverse. Instead of rejecting noise, power carrying cables don't radiate noise in the first place.
How does it reduce interference between equipment?
Most modern electronic equipment uses switching regulators in their power supplies and some uses actual switching supplies. These devices can produce RF noise that can couple through the power cord to other equipment. The balanced power supply provides a very low impedance to the connected equipment which shorts out this high frequency noise. Users have also reported improvements in large screen video performance.
How quiet is the power supply?
We consider that these Power Supplies are very quiet.
A small number of customers have reported that when switched on, a small audible click is heard followed by a hum which subsides after a few seconds becoming silent.
In a very few cases customers report that a small hum is still audible if one listens carfully. This may be caused by either a DC offset or heavy distortion of the mains waveform or both.
Where this is the case it we cannot improve it and if the unit is returned we will refund the cost of the power supply.
