Lowers Noise, Not Current Delivery
The Vera-Fi Audio Main Stream is designed to improve the performance of your high-end audio or video system by reducing the amount of AC Mains-based interference travelling on the wires within your home. This interference is created not only by other components in the system, but also appliances and other electrical equipment elsewhere in the house, and of course outside the home as well.
Sources of Mains Noise
This noise is mostly in the RF range, but things like refrigerators, air conditioners and heaters, washers and dryers; anything with a big motor can create a pulse of energy along your home AC line and that will affect other equipment within the home. The energy imposed on the line is absorbed or filtered in different ways, depending on the frequency band involved. Part of Mainstream's effectiveness is due to the multiple frequency bands it effects while utilizing a simple topology comprising a minimum number of parts.
Effects of Mains Noise
Line interference can cause many undesirable effects; hum, hiss, hash, or buzzing sounds from your speakers, a slight vibration that can be felt through the chassis of your components or on the motor of your turntable, and on video displays as random lines, moving bars or fuzzy images.
These effects can be experienced individually or in combinations. It is interesting to note that oftentimes the effect (hum, for instance) is apparently reduced, but our bands of interest do not include these very low frequencies. We are reducing energy in a band that infers these types of noise reductions.
Parallel Conditioning
Main Stream is called a “parallel” line conditioner because you do not plug your component into it, but rather plug the Main Stream into the AC Mains socket closest to the component. In this way the MainStream is never restricting the flow of current to your components, simply removing the interference it encounters on the line as the current flows by. And there is no limit to how many MainStreams you can use; a large system may best be served by several.
Series Conditioning
As you probably know, the other type of line conditioning is called "series". There are many (maybe most?) products out there which plug into the wall and then your component(s) plug into it. With these, the current must pass through the various filter parts on their way to your audio component, necessitating the internal parts being of both high enough voltage and current to support the power demands of the attached product(s). This makes these conditioners both larger and more expensive than a parallel type, and they are often designed to serve somewhat different needs, or sometimes one of just distribution and surge protection.
No Resonant Transformers
Mainstream uses a combination of reactive elements to create tuned filters designed to specifically reduce the levels of noise specifically known to interfere with your audio enjoyment. Our topology excludes the use of any type of resonant transformer as a wave shaping device, and rather only removes unwanted frequencies.
