Do wall wart wires have the potential to introduce noise into my other hi quality cables?

afterburnt

Just wondering because some of them have "ferites?" if that's what they are called? You guys told me what them thingies are supposed to do but I forgot.

Thanks
Dagmar

mantis

This is something I have not seen happen. Usually as long as you keep them away about 6 inches you should be fine. If you have to cross a cable with a DC all wart cable just do it at 90 degrees.

pitdogg2

Bruce most wall-warts are inherently noisey in their own right. The ferrite cores in the wire help to remove radio frequency noise either from the wall-wart itself or from external sources so not to feed into whatever they are plugged into.

mhardy6647

Power supplies matter a lot in all aspects of analog and digital hifi.
There are (ahem) at least three different flavors of wall warts.

1) AC supplies -- which are (usually) just a step-down transformer. The wire (typically zipcord) will be carrying low voltage 60 Hz (in the US) AC which certainly can induce hum into other circuits.

2) DC linear supplies -- in the best case, the wire will be carrying fairly pure DC at a nearly fixed voltage (assuming a "stiff", well-regulated supply). Essentially a fixed, local magnetic field.

3) DC switch-mode supplies -- these bad boys is trouble; there will be (there may be) relatively large amounts of RF hash riding on the DC. Digital stuff doesn't (shouldn't) much care -- but it can induce all kinds of nastiness into any analog circuits, especially anything using tuned circuitry, oscillators, mixers, etc. Radios (of the good old fashioned analog kind, AM or FM) are probably the most at risk, but most analog circuitry can act as a receiver of some sort and stands to suffer in the presence of that crud.

IMO and IME, of course.
YMMV.
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

tonyp063

#3.
This is your concern.
*Most* wall warts are SWPS (emphasis on the PS) and will/can/might introduce cruft into the audio chain.

*some* SMPS are not PoS'es.
Some.