Agreed. Also said not to use a conditioner and those are supposed to be on all the time, so I’d think the thing is designed to be up, always.
As an aside my power draw LED has different colors than described in the manual, mine goes Blue → Green → Red, rather than Green → Yellow → Red.
Sometime this year I’d like to pick up a P3 or P12. I was pretty much set on the P3 but then I realized that it doesn’t have high current and regenerated outlets, you choose one or the other. It seems that the P12 has two high current and regenerated outlets and the rest are just regenerated. Plus the P12 has some nice features via the screen.
I wonder on a headphone system if the regenerated outlets are sufficient on a P3 for a headphone amp like a Flux Volot. For those with the P3 do you use high current or regenerated for your amps?
The p3 has 2 switchable hc or regen plugs, and then 4 dedicated regen regardless of the switch I’m pretty sure
So it looks like the volot pulls 110w from the wall, and the mc1 pulls about 20 watts it looks like, even with a p3 you should be just fine being entirely on regen, but you can switch things around and see what sounds better to your ears. I don’t know the power draw of the formula s + powerman but it likely isn’t that high, and you likely won’t have them on at the same time (if you still have it). Typically the high current is what you want to use if overall power draw puts too much load on the regen, but if it fits within the regen capabilities then I’d rather just use it on regen
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Yep that’s right. I wonder what sort of filtering goes on with the high current outlets.
Sounds like I have plenty of headroom for other equipment so P3 might in fact be fine. I’ll keep an eye out for a used P12 if it comes up for sale. But the P3 cost is a lot easier to justify then a new P12
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I just set them to regenerated, unless you have a high current piece of equipment.
I run a WA33 and a Lampizator pacific off mine at the same time, the light turns “green” which is yellow in the manual, during power up of the devices.
I can’t imagine a single headphone setup that would draw more.
I used to have the WA33 and LAU plugged in to it, couldn’t run both at the same time.
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That’s reassuring that you run the WA33 off of the regenerated outlets. I’m hoping to get a tube amp this year but doubt that would draw more power than a Volot or WA33 and I wouldn’t have more than one amp on at a time. Sounds like P3 is perfect for me. Thanks for the feedback.
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Was just looking at used listings of P3 and P12 and stumbled upon a P15 discount direct from PSAudio. They are selling them for 4999 USD direct which is 2500 USD off of the msrp. Seems like a good deal but I don’t know how that compares to the used price of the P15 or what a dealer would charge for one. Anyways thought some of you might be interested.
Here’s the link with discounted price https://www.psaudio.com/products/directstream-power-plant-15/
Yep! I posted about the discount in New Deals, but maybe I should’ve cross-posted the deal over here too!
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Ah cool, I don’t follow that thread and just popped on the forum briefly to post the link. Any idea what the reason for the promotion is? Maybe a new product announcement?
Oh I see I’m 15 days late from when you first posted that lol. Still time to pick one up though
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No idea! I heard about it because I get PS Audio’s marketing emails, and all they said in the email was this:
I’m happy to announce that now through the end of March we are offering special pricing on the PowerPlant 15 AC Regenerator. Details can be found here and supplies are limited.
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@M0N How warm do your P20s run? I’m kind of interested in the P15 discount but only have room in a rack that would fit it with half an inch to spare on top although there would be plenty of ventilation on the side.
Obviously I don’t need the power output that the P15 has at the moment but seems like a product that would last awhile and give me lots of headroom for whatever system I end up with especially if I get speakers at some point.
While I haven’t really checked for sure, I’m pretty certain mine run fairly cool as long as I’m not running them near max capacity. I actually do remember the smaller power plants running warmer, but that just might be due to the smaller case size with less dissipation. But either way definitely not as hot as some of my amps get
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A bit off topic but has anyone tried a conditioner from Puritan Audio? Specifically I’m interested in a PSM156 which I’ve been quoted 2300 USD for.
I’ll either order a regenerator from PS Audio or one of the Puritan Audio conditioners but am torn between the two. Plenty of positive impressions of both but no comparisons as far as I can tell plus the approach to cleaning power is different. Regenerating AC vs balanced power conditioning.
I can’t directly compare.
The win of a regenerator which the PSM156 does not appear to be, is it can fix fundamental issues with the incoming signal because it’s generating AC from DC.
Other devices can just filter, and there is a limit to the effect that can have, having said that it’s usually much cheaper to filter if you need to a lot of power.
For point of reference this is what my incoming AC looks like, and no ammount of filtering is going to make it look very much better
Though I guess a lot of this comes down to how much of the audible difference is noise on the power lines which is all rectified to DC by the devices PSU and how much of it is just noise carried through the ground?
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I like all the metrics the PS Audio Power Plants give you (I’m guessing that’s where you got that waveform from). I also like the idea that my system should sound the same regardless of where I’m using it if I’m connecting to a PS Audio regenerator. And PS Audio has a 30 day money back period so I could refund it (thinking of the P15) in this case if I wasn’t happy.
That being said, the lower cost of the Puritan is tempting plus the simpler aesthetic and more plug and play nature is a plus. My understanding is that it sums the positive and negative parts of the AC waveform to remove noise and any DC component that’s there. Based on that I was thinking that it could fix the peaks of the waveform that in your image are not symmetrical. But based on graphs from ASR (I hate this website lol but it’s the only place with measurements of the two) it looks like the Puritan doesn’t fix the waveform:
But regeneration does:
Or I could just go back to my original plan of getting a P3 and not spend 5k on a P15 when I have no need for all that headroom currently. So many choices but I have a couple of weeks until the Power Plant sale is over. Ultimately I just want a nice all in one solution that cleans AC and handles DC if any is present so I don’t have to use the conditioner to Audiolab DC Block boxes that I have now.
I would say if 2ch is ever in the cards for you, my vote would be for the P15. I currently have a P5 and can’t plug all of my electronics to it.
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No I captured it with a scope straight out of the wall socket. You need to know what you are doing to do this safely, so don’t attempt at home unless you know what you’re doing.
There’s actually no (sub mV) DC offset, I was a bit surprised that neither the isolation transformer or the filter I had on hand made any observable difference, didn’t even remove the obvious high frequency noise. Puritan could very well be better at that, but it won’t fix the actual waveform.
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Yes P3 is great for headphones, unless you end up on the high power draw end of both DAC and AMP, but for 2Ch you’ll certainly need something bigger.
I have a P3 and it’s fine even for a WA33+ Pacific, both of which are at or over 100W each.
But it’s borderline, I couldn’t run the Pacific and WA33 on the P3 with the Pacific running T100 tubes because of the much higher power draw from those tubes.
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Yeah that was my thought. Total power consumption of my gear now with 2 amps running and a dac is just over 200W. But if I get into speakers or add a WA33 or something similar to my setup I worry I would hit the limitations of the P3 (I would have more than one amp running cause I like comparing them).
I’d rather pay extra for the headroom now than having to upgrade later