I agree with power cords from the components to the PS would make a difference and YES most everything makes some kind of a difference.
Equi=Tech 2RQ Versus PS Audio P10
- Thread starter Ron Resnick
- Start date
This is fascinating, and I suspected as much. I've heard lots of difference with power cords and power boxes in my own system over the years. Why does the cord going into the box make such a difference?
Why can you hear it? No idea.
Stock
Magnet whatever thing
My own cable
All very different. The magnet one made one of my favorite albums I consider to be very tube lush in nature unlistenable.
Stock
Magnet whatever thing
My own cable
All very different. The magnet one made one of my favorite albums I consider to be very tube lush in nature unlistenable.
If you remove noise you free up more power this makes it louder. Noise be it audible or not is using power.
To add to this if the psu transformers are getting a higher voltage it would be louder as well. Measure the voltage at the input to all devices both for power plant and iso.
I have the wall cabinet mounted Equi=Tech 10WQ. Like Mike I have the balanced outlets next to straight power. After a LOT of comparison time, I believe my amps sound better when they are plugged into straight power.
I cannot recall the brand name but the Balanced Power devises sold by Maier at The Audio Salon in Santa Monica have sounded very impressive in a couple of installations where i have heard them though I have not heard them in my own system. I believe they provided the power for the Wamm Master Chronosonic demo that Ron had good things to say about.
I found yesterday's comparison so befuddling that I think it is not prudent for me to buy an AC power device in advance of setting the system up. It is going to be difficult enough to hatch an entire complicated system in one go, without adding non-essential components as well. So other than the Herzan/Taiko Tana under the Io control unit I will start with the basic stereo components only.
Makes sense...I am not going to retrofit the house with an Equi-Tech. So I am starting at the wall (which does have dedicated lines and a Backup Battery UPS that sits between the street and the system). And we shall see what the Torus brings in comparison with the Burmester...for me, i will either leave it, go with Torus or possibly PS Audio given that I know the distributors of these.
Ron
We haven't spoken about this in a while, but I recall you were going with an industrial isolation balanced transformer outside the room that would be the source of all power inside the room. Has this changed?
Marty
We haven't spoken about this in a while, but I recall you were going with an industrial isolation balanced transformer outside the room that would be the source of all power inside the room. Has this changed?
Marty
A couple of years ago I decided I could not get comfortable with plugging the high current amplifiers into the balanced power/isolation transformer wall mount unit. In addition, because of the location of my front-end equipment versus amplifier equipment versus wall mount location there is a risk of creating ground loops due to different lengths of cables from the transformer.
I was interested in an isolation transformer primarily for the front-end equipment, which would be over 50 feet from the location of the wall-mounted transformer.
All in all, I thought it made more sense to consider a floor-mounted unit right near the front-end equipment, if I chose to go in that direction.
The Equitech 2Q was the first power conditioned I bought way back in 2003ish timeframe. Being an engineer I was extremely skeptical of anything that claimed it could improve the already way overdesigned power supplies inside my Mark Levinson gear. I don't recall exactly how I came across equitech but back then they offered a 30 day money back guarantee. So I thought "what do I have to lose except some shipping (and shipping was pretty cheap back then). I got the 2Q installed and put in the ubiquitous "Jazz at the pawnshop". My wife and I sat down for a listen and "Wow! Do you hear the decay on the xylophone?" was the first words out of her mouth. My wife is not an audiophile and would rather hear no difference as something that good always means money flowing out of the checking account.
I heard the same thing you did with the equitech -- it makes the system sound louder. I always attributed that to a lowering of the noise floor which would in turn increase the perceptible dynamic range of the system.
I still own the 2Q although it has been replaced by another power conditioner several years ago. I have compared the 2Q with a few different power conditioners although not the PS Audio regenerators. None but one passed the test. The PS audio idea sounds good until I thought about it. It is turning a lot of the power meant for my gear into heat. But, if it sounds great to your ears then that's all that matters.
There are a lot of companies doing power conditioners and to me some of them are on the edge of snake oil. Anybody can do some casework, buy some Hubble outlets and wire it all together with 8 gauge wire. Equitech is using real science in what they are doing. The implementation is trickier than it looks. That transformer has to be precisely balanced to achieve the required results. Once I bought an off brand version for my home theater system. It hummed and even buzzed on occasion and never worked nearly as well as the equitech does. If you are going to buy a "balanced" power conditioner ask where they get their transformers and how they spec them.
One other note: The equitech will last forever. There is nothing that will wear out. A lot of power products use capacitors which will degrade with time.
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Ron & Jeff,
I take at face value your commentary regarding the comparative system sounds when powered by Equitech or PS Audio. In that respect, you were comparing two devices. But you were also comparing multiple methodologies as encapsulated in the two heavyweights. The Equitech is completely passive. The PSA is completely active. The Equitech outputs balanced power. To my knowledge the PSA does not. The Equitech does not regulate output voltage. The PSA does. The Equitech passively cancels reflected power harmonics. As far as I can tell, the PSA isolates them within each discrete power bank. The load side harmonics reduction by the Equitech compared to the lack of it by the PSA could be part of the reason the P10 sounded more euphonic with the LAMM amps.
Both devices are very low output impedance devices, but I don't know which is lower. The PS Audio has a spec. The Equitech does not. The results relative to no isolation of any type are going to be specifically determined by a complex interplay of circumstances, making any outcome quite subjective. You quite likely will prefer both forms of isolation over no isolation. Relative preference between them is a judgment call. For example, there are no standards for mains output impedance. So my mains output impedance may be quite different from yours, better or worse. The quality of your wiring job, how tightly torqued are your myriad connections between your neighborhood downstep transformer and your specific wall socket affect it. The mix of what is running of your mains feed affects it. So on that alone, these devices will have highly variable effects. Then, as I have found in isolation transformers that allow operation in iso or bal mode, some gear seems to sound optimum isolated, while others sound better fed balanced power. Some gear will be more affected by mains voltage variations. Others will reward tightly regulated AC input voltage. And then, the sonic performance / signature of the studio recording and mastering gear will have been affected by the method of power isolation used. You have no reference to determine accuracy.
I view power cords as fixed parametric tone controls, along with variable dynamic restrictors. Some can sound quite bad, without any relationship to price. At best you can hope for neutral as possible, which is why my aftermarket power cords are Zu. But I would be surprised if the power cord conveying mains power to a PSA Power Plant made a difference. After all, the Power Plants all convert incoming AC to DC and then regenerate AC tied to a reference frequency ( the latest ones use a DSD DAC!). I suppose I can find a reason an isolation transformer's output could be affected by the PC feeding it, in a way that connected audio gear sounds different, but it's not coming to me right now.
Also, Ron, did you listen to the P10 with Multi-wave on or off? And if on, what setting? Multi-wave allows you to explore other frequencies than 60Hz, and allows you to tune the time duration of the sine wave peak, which can affect how completely your audio power supplies' filter capacitors charge. Certainly isolation transformers don't enable exploring these additional variables.
As I mentioned in another post, I opted for ISO xformers after trying PSA PPs various times going way back to the original in the late 1990s. I found they made my systems sound a little less vivid, though they improved other things in the way that ISO xformers do as well. But I would not ever be surprised someone else with different circumstances comes to the opposite conclusion. Far too many variables to create a rule. For me, ISO xformers fed by continuously regulated 120v AC is the combination that works best so far. When I have had a chance to hear PSA vs. ISO xformer in my systems over the years, I have agreed with Ron that ISO xformers help the gear powered deliver discernibly better transparency. I haven't agreed in the past that decay was extended with Power Plants when I listened on power delivered by them. But look, you listen to your power supply, and yours is different from mine.
Phil
I take at face value your commentary regarding the comparative system sounds when powered by Equitech or PS Audio. In that respect, you were comparing two devices. But you were also comparing multiple methodologies as encapsulated in the two heavyweights. The Equitech is completely passive. The PSA is completely active. The Equitech outputs balanced power. To my knowledge the PSA does not. The Equitech does not regulate output voltage. The PSA does. The Equitech passively cancels reflected power harmonics. As far as I can tell, the PSA isolates them within each discrete power bank. The load side harmonics reduction by the Equitech compared to the lack of it by the PSA could be part of the reason the P10 sounded more euphonic with the LAMM amps.
Both devices are very low output impedance devices, but I don't know which is lower. The PS Audio has a spec. The Equitech does not. The results relative to no isolation of any type are going to be specifically determined by a complex interplay of circumstances, making any outcome quite subjective. You quite likely will prefer both forms of isolation over no isolation. Relative preference between them is a judgment call. For example, there are no standards for mains output impedance. So my mains output impedance may be quite different from yours, better or worse. The quality of your wiring job, how tightly torqued are your myriad connections between your neighborhood downstep transformer and your specific wall socket affect it. The mix of what is running of your mains feed affects it. So on that alone, these devices will have highly variable effects. Then, as I have found in isolation transformers that allow operation in iso or bal mode, some gear seems to sound optimum isolated, while others sound better fed balanced power. Some gear will be more affected by mains voltage variations. Others will reward tightly regulated AC input voltage. And then, the sonic performance / signature of the studio recording and mastering gear will have been affected by the method of power isolation used. You have no reference to determine accuracy.
I view power cords as fixed parametric tone controls, along with variable dynamic restrictors. Some can sound quite bad, without any relationship to price. At best you can hope for neutral as possible, which is why my aftermarket power cords are Zu. But I would be surprised if the power cord conveying mains power to a PSA Power Plant made a difference. After all, the Power Plants all convert incoming AC to DC and then regenerate AC tied to a reference frequency ( the latest ones use a DSD DAC!). I suppose I can find a reason an isolation transformer's output could be affected by the PC feeding it, in a way that connected audio gear sounds different, but it's not coming to me right now.
Also, Ron, did you listen to the P10 with Multi-wave on or off? And if on, what setting? Multi-wave allows you to explore other frequencies than 60Hz, and allows you to tune the time duration of the sine wave peak, which can affect how completely your audio power supplies' filter capacitors charge. Certainly isolation transformers don't enable exploring these additional variables.
As I mentioned in another post, I opted for ISO xformers after trying PSA PPs various times going way back to the original in the late 1990s. I found they made my systems sound a little less vivid, though they improved other things in the way that ISO xformers do as well. But I would not ever be surprised someone else with different circumstances comes to the opposite conclusion. Far too many variables to create a rule. For me, ISO xformers fed by continuously regulated 120v AC is the combination that works best so far. When I have had a chance to hear PSA vs. ISO xformer in my systems over the years, I have agreed with Ron that ISO xformers help the gear powered deliver discernibly better transparency. I haven't agreed in the past that decay was extended with Power Plants when I listened on power delivered by them. But look, you listen to your power supply, and yours is different from mine.
Phil
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Why? Have you compared the P20 and an isolation transformer/balanced power device in your own system?
The P20 , yes, but not with an isolation transformer. The P20 is superior to the P10 in every area, including dynamics, so I am just extrapolating from your comments/ observations vis a vis The P10 and the Equitech.
Hello Ron,
You may not recall, but I did this comparison back in 2015 & 2016. Not with an Equitech but a pair of industrial balanced (symmetrical output) 2 Kva transformers, vs my PSA P10 and Isotek Titan x2. I tried many connection permutations, and in short, the outcome was as per below:
BR,
Paul
You may not recall, but I did this comparison back in 2015 & 2016. Not with an Equitech but a pair of industrial balanced (symmetrical output) 2 Kva transformers, vs my PSA P10 and Isotek Titan x2. I tried many connection permutations, and in short, the outcome was as per below:
- Isotek Titan did not fare so well against P10, and only marginal over wall mains which was constantly used as a control btw.
- Isotek Titan could not handle my power amplifiers (ZL200 solid state by Concert Fidelity) inciting lack of drama etc.
- P10 could not also handle my amplifiers, preferring wall supply, again, lack of dynamics and scale, with an overall mudiness to the sound.
- P10 and wall combination seemed the way to go and this i used for 4 years.
- Intro of my 2 existing 2kva balanced transformer which I had retired due to mechanical humming prior to P10 selection showed more air, space and detail, ie it did a better job at removing line noise than the P10. But still DC offset was an issue with certain appliances in the proximity affecting them.
- 2 x trafo's, with oversize DC filter, (after several test versions) overcame the DC issue, and sonically now the P10 was no longer comparable. Connection to the performance was simply not there in comparison to balanced. All sound characteristics as per before were still relevant, but noise floor was considerably lower via balanced.
- When I first bought a P10, I took it to 2 good friends system's, both long term classical fans, and ex recording engineers, and reaction was indifferent.
- Then it was clear to me the way to go; sold off P10 and spent the money designing and building what developed into the Symetrica, and have not looked back. I took my first unit again to my 2 friends, both requested I build one for each of their systems within an afternoon listening. All components connect to the Symetrica, including power amps including huge valve mono's. (CAT JL3)
- One thing to bear in mind when testing is that design of the transformer is critical! In addition, one transformer for the whole system is not optimal, and misses out on a considerable elevation of sonics compared to multiple dedicated transformers. For digital, this is paramount, and I'd say that listening to digital any other way is far less enjoyable. Vinyl and CD are comparable this way. Full scale complex orchestral does not collapse into a confused mess this way, which may be what you dislike about digital, in fact, you may like digital, but not it's power delivery and implementation after all..
- Wall connection is flat flat flat in comparison now.
- Have not tried the P20, but reports are more positive for sure and this should be your test, not P10.
BR,
Paul
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This was indeed an interesting comparison. Although I own the P10, I was somewhat biased toward the Equ=tech as I think it is a less complicated power solution. Whenever I've gone for the more simple route with my system (cables, platforms, etc), I've been much happier.
In my opinion, there was no comparison, the P10 was far superior. The Equ=tech was indeed louder, but it also added more distortion to several of the tracks that we listened to. When I turned the volume down on the Lamm LL2.1 to compensate for the 3 dB, the sound lost dynamics. The P10 had less distortion but nothing was lost in the recordings, the music really draws you in and keeps you engaged.
Over the years, I've found a very simple metric of system enjoyment: how long I/we sits and listens to records. We started with the P10 spinning Ron's reference recordings, moved to the Equ=tech and then moved back to the P10. Once we moved back to the P10, we just started spinning jazz records and drinking wine.
In my opinion, there was no comparison, the P10 was far superior. The Equ=tech was indeed louder, but it also added more distortion to several of the tracks that we listened to. When I turned the volume down on the Lamm LL2.1 to compensate for the 3 dB, the sound lost dynamics. The P10 had less distortion but nothing was lost in the recordings, the music really draws you in and keeps you engaged.
Over the years, I've found a very simple metric of system enjoyment: how long I/we sits and listens to records. We started with the P10 spinning Ron's reference recordings, moved to the Equ=tech and then moved back to the P10. Once we moved back to the P10, we just started spinning jazz records and drinking wine.
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