Power Supply AFFECTS Video/Sound Quality?

[Madcowz]

It has caught my attention that those in the HTPC (Home theater Personal Computer) community have been making claims that your Power Supply may have great effects on visual and audio quality. Considering that after-market power cords and PSU's for home electronic equipment (such as CD-transports, DVD players, receivers, etc) can make a vast improvement performance-wise, this does not come to big surprise to me...

Now how much truth do YOU guys think this statement holds?

Will say a nice 350 watt Enermax show some improvement over this standard 300 watt Antec of mine?

 

[CTho9305]

well, a digital logic circuit usually either works or doesn't work. if the power fluctuates beyond the limits, you either get wrong answers or lockups. Now, unless the PSU is causing interference, I can't see how it would affect visual/audio quality.

 

[Antoneo]

The quality of the power running through your system (ie noise) will mostly affect the overall stability of the system but I do not believe the audio/video quality will be affected. "Clean power" in home theater systems imho hold as much truth as really expensive cabling. True, el cheapo thin wires for your $5000 (which is decent for the average person) audio setup will make it sound like garbage but good cables will serve its purpose only up to a certain price point. Much of the power that goes through a good power supply such as enermax will be filtered a bit.

 

[jteef]

I dont know much about the video quality, but going from a 300-350 watt ps isn't going to make much of a difference in your audio. I doubt it would even be measureable, much less audible.

The PSU is one of the most important contributors to good sound quality in analog electronics. Computer power supplies are usually tightly regulated which is good for line level analog stuff. They also introduce a lot of noise, along with a lot of noise from all the other stuff in your computer. This can sort of be filtered on the card, but its a lot better to not have to deal with it alltogether. When was the last time you saw big inductors and big capacitors on a sound card?

I would get a better sound card with a real outboard box before I started buying bigger psu's for my computer. Or use a soundcard that will faithfully transfer a digital signal to a better outboard d-a converter. I dont think power cords make any difference at all, especially in low power stuff. suggests a really poor psu design if they do, in my mind.

jt