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Re: Magnan Cables AC filter tweak

Is it possible to simply open the CD player and solder a 50uF cap from the “black” prong of the input IEC to the “white” prong of the IEC on the inside of the CD player and thereby achieve the desired filtering without building a fancy plug adaptor? Is this the so-called "Auricap tweak"?

***YES, but make it 5uF and paralell a 1 watt 10K resistor. 50 mike at 120 V is way too much capacitance (this twek, if overdone, can ruin your sound) and potentially lethal.
For additional safety, use two 20K resistors in paralell, one soldered directly to the capacitor leads as they exit the cap body, the other one soldered to the hot and neutral IEC terminals. Insulate the cap leads, resistors and IEC solder tags with heatshrink tubing.
It's better to experiment with caps connected to the AC outlet, find the value that sounds best in your system/home and then, if you want, solder the caps to the CDP input. Remember that touching the exposed male IEC pins is very dangerous until the capacitor discharges through the resistor.

If not, could someone explain in detail how to build the needed adaptor? Do I simply need to wire a female IEC plug to a male IEC plug using a black, white, and green wire, and in the middle run a cap across the black and white lines?

****That's OK but too complicated. A simpler solution is to use a cap + resistor + male AC plug connected to the second outlet of the same duplex that feeds your CD player. The filter will be in paralell with the CDP AC line.

Also, Magnan mentions that to avoid shock one can use a 10kOhm ½ watt resistor. To wire this, would I just run the 50uF cap and the resistor in parallel across the black and white wires?

***YES. If use several cap filters in the same AC circuit, increase the resistor size for example to 50K (5 filters) or 100K (10 filters).

Also, to make these filters, do I need to use some special kind of cap that can handle AC line voltage? Magnan says metallized polypropylene...

***You MUST use AC-rated caps. For greater peace of mind, I suggest at least 250 VAC-rated caps in the USA ( 120 volts national grid), minimum 400 VAC in Europe (240VAC grid).
Read the cap data sheet and make sure the cap is specified for continuous duty AC operation. BTW motor run caps are by nature AC-rated, are inexpensive, very reliable and are effective noise-killers. Air conditioning motor-run caps can easily be found on Ebay. I like GE oil caps and metalized polypropilene aluminum can caps (E.G. Sprague, Sangamo, Epcos, Siemens).
If you want to use Auricaps ask the manufacturer about their AC rating.

Thanks so much for your help.
***You are welcome :)


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  • Re: Magnan Cables AC filter tweak - Carlos 03/26/0715:28:41 03/26/07 (0)


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