With Power Comes Responsibility, With Cleaner Power Comes Better Sound? FRANK PE-35 GROUND LOOP EMI FILTER

Frank PE-35 Ground Loop EMI Filter

Every once in a while the topic of power supply to my hifi & HT system comes to mind. Questions always arise, if I am doing enough to keep EMI/RFI at bay, from manifesting as some kind of a sonic sludge in my music or movie enjoyment?

Then come Frank, or Frankie as we would call him. Gotta love Frankie as he always has some solution up his sleeves regarding the juice that feeds our audio systems, POWER to tha man!  During the recent Gelombang AV Fest, and we were blowing water so to speak, and he brought out the Frank PE-35 Ground Loop EMI Filter, which is designed to be fitted in to the MCB box of my home.

The Frank PE-35 is devised to sit between your wall electrical grounding outlets (or your main DB Fuse box) feeding your electronic playback equipment with an EMI interference free flow of AC power for the operation of the equipment. The Frank PE-35 is not all theory without substance as it has been thoroughly field tested in its beta phase of development in actual environments where the Frank PE-35 is most likely used in. The results, let’s just say we’ll leave it to your ears and your heart be the judge to that it can do to the overall performance of your cherished AV/Hifi system in your home 

The above paragraph taken from Frank's blog page, see link below if you wanna know more about Frank's other power supply related products: http://frankacoustics.blogspot.com/2013/03/frank-pe-35-ground-loop-emi-filter.html

The wiring schematic with the Frank PE-35 used in your MCB

And sometime after the Gelombang AV Fest, a date was fixed for Frank & his team to come install the Frank PE-35. They first identify the dedicated power line from the MCB that feed my man cave, do some testing to check if the earth in the house and particularly on that line is still effective, if yes then installation can begin. The whole process took a little over an hour and just before Frankie left, he said to me, :"you're gonna be amazed by how the sound of your system will open up!" I thought to my self, "we shall find out!"

I fired up my hifi system, let it idle while I get a shower. Then I went in for a listen and bang!, from the very first track I was amazed with how the sound of the system opened up, just like Frankie said! First thing I noticed was the bass integration. I have a small, sneaky Bose Acoustimas sub woofer modded to sit just behind my throne to provide some bass re-enforcement effect to complement the main speakers, and all these while I believed I had the bass nicely integrated, but with the Frank PE-35 in the works, now I feel it's truly integrated. Only now I realized there were actually still some gaps in the sub woofer to speaker integration prior to this. The Frank PE-35 certainly showed me a thing or two already!

Typical installation of Frank PE-35 inside the MCB box, top left corner in this case

However, that is just the start of the whole she bang of sonic pleasures that came with the Frank PE-35. Next the top to bottom frequency coherence is much improved, highs nicely airy and smooth as baby's butt, that mid range texture is now so nicely evident, lastly, do I still need to mention the bass quality? Yes, I should! While I have described the bass integration, I should also note that the bass now fall back in to the overall sound stage, where everything has it's place within the sphere of space that extends beyond the left, right walls of the room, and far, far behind the speakers but still clearly defined and believable.

In short, while the sonic changes brought by the Frank PE-35 are quantifiable by ear, the wholistic value of music with audiophile values goes up a few notches too! That's the great thing about the Frank PE-35 Ground Loop EMI Filter. I do not know enough electrically to explain to you what it does, but my ears certainly enjoys better musical reproduction now, every time I play my hifi!

Frank PE-35 cost MYR $2300.00/unit with cost of installation included, and for me at least, the sonic value it brings far exceeds the asking price. However as in the nature of products like this calls for a caveat, your experience may differ from mine to varying degrees due to a variety of reasons.