Audioquest Niagara Series Low-Z Power / Noise-Dissipation System - Niagara 5000

The science of AC power delivery is not a simple one; it demands focus, and the devil is in the details. In fact, the great increase in airborne and AC-line-transmitted radio signals, combined with overtaxed utility lines and the ever-increasing demands from high-definition audio/video components, has rendered our utilities’ AC power a somewhat antiquated technology.

Where Alternating Current (AC) is concerned, we’re relying on a century-old technology created for incandescent lights and electric motors—technology that was certainly never meant to power the sophisticated analog and digital circuits used in today’s premium audio/video systems. To properly accom-modate the promise of today’s ever-increasing bandwidth and dynamic range, we must achieve extraordinarily low noise across a very wide range of frequencies.

Further, today’s power amplifiers are being taxed for instantaneous peak-current demand, even when they’re driven at modest volumes. Although we have seen a substantial increase in dynamics from much of our audio software, the loudspeakers we employ to reproduce them are often no more efficient than they were two to four decades ago. This places great demands on an amplifier’s power supply, as well as the source AC power supplying it.

Our systems’ sensitive components need better alternating current—a fact that has resulted in a host of AC power conditioning, isolation transformer, regeneration amplifier, and battery back-up system topologies. Through differential sample tests and spectrum analysis, it can be proven that up to a third of a high-resolution (low-level) audio signal can be lost, masked, or highly distorted by the vast levels of noise riding along the AC power lines that feed our components. This noise couples into the signal circuitry as current noise and through AC ground, permanently distorting and/or masking the source signal.

Given that the stakes are so high, all sincere attempts to solve this problem must be applauded.

Once the audio/video signal is gone, it’s gone forever…

For AudioQuest, honoring the source is never a matter of simply using premium “audiophile-grade parts” or relying on a proprietary technology—common approaches within our community. For years, we have all been witness to the same, seemingly endless audiophile debates: valves versus transistors; analog versus digital; can cables really make a difference?; and on and on. While we, too, can brag about our many unique technologies, we realize that true audio/video optimization is never a matter of any one secret or exotic circuit. When it comes to noise filtering for AC power, many approaches can yield meaningful results. However, these approaches may also impart ringing, current compression, and non-linear distortions that can render the cure worse than the disease!

The Niagara 5000 features our patented AC Ground-Noise Dissipation, the widest bandwidth-linearized AC filter in the industry, and our unique passive/active Transient Power Correction Circuit. Boasting an instantaneous current reservoir of over 90 amps peak, the Niagara 5000 is specifically designed for today’s current-starved power amplifiers. Many AC power products featuring “high-current outlets” merely minimize current compression; the Niagara 5000 corrects it.

Though it’s easy to tout a given technology, it’s quite another thing to create a solution that is consistent, holistic, functional, and that honors verifiable science. It’s not enough to reduce AC line noise and its associated distortions at just one octave, thus leaving vulnerable the adjacent octaves and octave partials to noise, resonant peaking, or insufficient noise reduction. Consistency is key. We should never accept superior resolution in one octave, only to suffer from masking effects a half-octave away and ringing artifacts two octaves from there. This is the principal criterion for AudioQuest’s Low-Z Power Noise-Dissipation System.

The Niagara 5000 represents over 20 years of exhaustive research and proven AC power products designed for audiophiles, broadcast engineers, and professional-audio applications. Every conceivable detail has been addressed: In the Niagara 5000, you’ll find optimized radio-frequency lead directionality, capacitor run-in forming technologies developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratories and NASA, and AC inlet and outlet contacts with heavy silver plating over extreme-purity copper, assuring the tightest grip possible.

A great system is built from a solid foundation, and that foundation starts with power. With an AudioQuest Niagara 5000, you’ll experience for the first time the clarity, dimensionality, frequency extension, dynamic contrast, and grip your system has always been capable of delivering—if only the power had been right!

We welcome you to experience the Niagara 5000 and hear firsthand the remarkable results of highly optimized power management: startlingly deep silences, stunning dynamic freedom, outstanding retrieval of ambience cues, and gorgeous delineation of instruments and musicians in space. Once you’ve experienced it, it may seem so elegant, so logical, and so obvious that you find yourself wondering why it hadn’t been done before.

SPECIFICATIONS

• Transient Power Correction: 90 amps peak. Provides a current reservoir for any power amplifier (up to 25mS)
• Level-X Ultra-Linear Noise-Dissipation Technology: More than 23 octaves differential-mode filtering (3kHz–1GHz in excess of 24dB reduction) and 16 octaves common-mode filtering (20kHz–100MHz in excess of 30dB reduction) with linear response, optimized for varying line and load impedance
• Patented Ground-Noise Dissipation. (All outlets): 6 banks of direction-controlled ground-noise dissipation
• Non-Sacrificial Surge Protection: Withstands multiple AC surges and spikes up to 6000V/3000A without sustaining damage—sonically non-invasive
• Maximum RMS Input Current: 20 Amps (RMS)
• Outlets: Source (8); High-Current (4)
• Dimensions: 17.5" W x 5.24" H x 17.2" D (3-RU Rack Mount Kits Optional)
• Weight: 38 lbs.

NIAGARA 5000 COMMON-MODE NOISE DISSIPATION

Common-Mode Noise Dissipation: In excess of 30dB from 20kHz to 100MHz, linearized for dynamic (rising) line impedance with frequency (source) and 10 to 50 ohm load, system current dependent.

NIAGARA 5000 SURGE SUPPRESSION

Surge Suppression: Non-sacrificial (nothing to damage with repeated 6000V/3000A input surge tests, which is the maximum that can survive through a building’s AC electrical panel).

NIAGARA 5000 EXTREME VOLTAGE SHUTDOWN

Extreme Voltage Shutdown Voltage: 140VAC (will activate the main high-current relay to open within less than 0.25 second; automatically resets once the incoming power is within a safe range).

Internal working Of Niagara 5000

High Current - AC Outlets (Schuko-EU, UK-13, NEMA-Edison type available)

(4 outlets – 3 for UK model – power amplifiers, powered subwoofers, powered speakers)

Source Component - AC Outlets (8 outlets – analog – digital - video)

6 isolated AC power outlet banks with 16 amp RMS average (@220-240VAC 50/60Hz) current capacity. These outlets utilize high spring-strength beryllium copper base metal with heavy silver-plated contacts. This assures far lower loss and distortion, while providing a superior means of draining radio frequency noise.

Ultra-Linear Differential / Common-Mode Filter

Non-Sacrificial Surge Suppressor Over a third of low-level audio/video resolution can be masked or lost to induced radio frequency and AC noise. The Niagara filters are optimized for real-world impedance and cover an unprecedented range of over 21 octaves.

Non-sacrificial surge protection and auto over-voltage shutdown means that your components be protected, AND the Niagara will also protects itself. Set and forget level protection.

Transient Power Correction

From nimble, efficient Class-D to mammoth Class-A mono block power amplifiers, average (RMS) current draw can be modest (2 to 7 amps). However, wide dynamic range audio content can create very fast transient current demands …. as much as ten times that average. Our correction circuit bolsters and stabilizes the power supply of any power amplifier by providing a buffer and an instant current reservoir of up to 80 amps peak (20mS).

Ground-Noise Dissipation (patent #8,988,168)

6 discrete circuits isolate, drain and absorb (through loss networks), the RF induced noise that masks audio and video signals. This is critical as the AC ground is directly connected to component circuit ground. Employed in concert with our Ultra-Linear filters and direction oriented, grain-controlled AudioQuest AC cables, this ensures the highest resolution and lowest distortion performance from your system components.