Starting a thread for PS Audio Power Plant or other power regenerators out there.
This will have the same disclaimer/YMMV as cables. You may or may not hear any differences depending on your gear’s ability to extract detail and presentation.
When I started, I put all of my expensive gear on surge protectors and eventually on power conditioners. I wanted to “clean” up my sound and protect my equipment at the same time. I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
As my gear got better, I was recommended by multiple people to plug my gear, especially amp straight into the wall. It was a noticeable difference. The conditioner cleaned up my sound, but robbed it all of any sort of dynamics.
Now, for the best of both worlds, a regenerator. It takes in the dirty power, regenerates (sort of like a DAC), and redirects clean perfect sine wave power.
For impressions, I am able to get a blacker background and bigger dynamics than before. I also received a wider and deeper stage. The details are also easier to pick out and an increase in room detail. It was a presentation boost compared to everything else. No difference in sound signature, not warmer, not colder, no additional bass or treble detail. Pretty much increased technicalities.
Like cables, you should focus on this after you have settled on an amp and dac that you like. Should be on your radar if you want to squeeze that extra bit though
I don’t think I can live without my P20’s anymore lol, they just improve everything that’s plugged into them, and also gives me some peace of mind too. Pretty much an overall improvement. Also really also makes power cable changes more apparent too which is both good and bad lol
Has anyone tried a double conversion/online UPS? These are normally solutions for high end servers and networking, and are more for the protective side.
I would think ones that reproduce a sine wave would be similar. But there is an ac > dc > ac conversion, which tbh, am not sure if it is would benefit or hinder SQ.
I think if a PS is going to do its thing it’s this. If it’s changing signatures then something is or was wrong. But the blacker background is a springboard to noticing everything else. But it can be a VERY noticeable improvement.
As per the YMMV part, if you’ve got good AC, you really aren’t going to benefit much from a regenerator. I think though that before one jumps into a regenerator you should try a lot of the “free” or nearly free tips out there. Mainly removing all other items from the AC circuit your gear is plugged into. Things we don’t even think about, transformers on lamps and transformers on LED lighting are noisy AF and it’s easy to have them plugged into the same circuit without realizing. Mapping your AC panel first is a very potentially huge low hanging fruit.
Looking at houses there are so many out there that dont have proper grounding, let alone having dedicated lines for specific sections of the house. I see you packed out your electrical panel with doublers, but while you were doing that you could have sorted it all out with a bigger box and a jump to 200A.
Little Dot of all people has one, I have never seen anyone who’s tested it, or heard anything about it, it’s also not a lot cheaper than the entry level PSAudio one if you catch it on sale, though it is more powerful.
I personally wouldn’t take the chance
Not sure if this will help, but I am currently using 500W into my P5 (with 2 monoblocks, a preamp, DAC, server) and it is at 59% load.
I think you want to keep under a load percentage – I’m going to pretend it is under 60%.
I’m targeting a P5 that’s what I was hoping to hear. A lot of components give you their watt draw on standby but that’s pointless. I looked at the specs of my amp and read through the entire manual and found nothing.
Interestingly enough I did find this, nothing to do with current but interesting none the less since running high level speaker into subs has become the fashion.
Do not under any circumstances connect the amplifier to a subwoofer through its high level (speaker) inputs. There is a potential of damaging the amplifier using this type of connection due to differences in grounding schemes used by some subwoofer manufacturers. Failing to observe the following precaution will void your warranty.
That’s common, not all sub woofers have the issue.
Bad ones tie the grounds together, and some speaker amps, usually those that can be bridged have different grounds left and right, or sometimes they even have differential outputs.
Most devices have a sticker or printing near the power inlet telling you about voltage, frequency and power rating (either in VA or W).
Throw those in a spreadsheet and add 10% to the total.