Added a ferrite core to an Asus Essence power input.

Soldato
Joined
19 Jun 2009
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I was reading a thread on Audiophile Style about ferrite cores, thread below.


Of course I've had them standard on some data and VGA cables for years, however I've never really tried adding them, I did once wrap a Cat 5 ethernet cable in a toroid core but otherwise nothing else.

So I purchased a pack of 20 from Amazon (works out each ferrite core was 50p) and was trying in various places, added them to USB cables, added them also to DC power adapters, but then I tried one on the molex cable that powers my Asus Essence STX II.

Now my computer is a workstation machine (I'm a software dev) and expect in terms of EMI/RFI it's not the cleanest, there is 6 fans (3 of them are 180mm). There is also 3 Western Digital gold HDD's in there. I do already have external mains conditioning products in use and it already sounded what I thought was pretty good.

Well I'm very surprised the difference, it's removed some harshness from the sound, however there does not appear to be any lack of detail.

There are 2 photos below, one before with a red arrow, this shows where it's been fitted. The second photo is the ferrite core added. So try yourself and post what you think, to date this is the cheapest mod that's made the most difference to sound improvement.

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I've actually removed this ferrite core now. What happened is it was strangling the sound, taking dynamics away.

I have another plan where I'm going to put ferrite cores around the SATA & motherboard cables next to the PSU connections. The theory here is preventing noise entering the PSU from computer side, as you say these are pretty cheap things to try. I have added ferrite cores around USB cables immediately before they connect to my motherboard.

Over the HAM thing about passing cables through cores, this has been done also with ethernet cables and reduction in noise measured.
 
Placebo.

The radio wave thing could probably be backed up with measurements - so that might be correct.

But there is no way you can say it has changed the sound, pure placebo.

This explains what's happening.
 
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