What's new in power regeneration?

[amirm]

So today, I dusted off my old PS Audio Power Plant P300 and brought it to work. Wanted to use it with the DAC (and USB S/PDIF converter) as I had always done to extract a bit more quality out of those digital bits. By accident and without me knowing, the person helping also plugged in the Mark Levinson 532H amp into it.

I sit back, do my usual test of dialing up the frequency from 60 Hz to 75 and one more, I hear an improvement. The bass becomes tighter and the sound generally becomes warmer. And as before, increasing the frequency way past that decreases fidelity. Don't ask me why the improvement occurs because the efficiency of transformer actually goes down with increased frequency. Maybe the output caps/regulator work better until the transformer really gets inefficient.

Anyway, I bring a couple of other people and semi-sighted ask them if they hear anything and they both comment exactly as I did. Feeling good, now I turn up the volume and start to see the overload light blinking. I put meter in power consumption mode and I see it going way up as I increase the volume. So ask the guy who helped me to make sure he had not plugged in the amp and he said he had.

So we unplug the amp and run the test again. To my disappointment and surprise, almost all the improvement vanishes! We plug the amp back in and the improvement comes back (OK, this could be expectation bias but let's leave that to another thread ).

Now I don't know if this is due to having common single point power, or that power regeneration does help the big beast. So we are going to call and find out about a bigger unit to test.

Do people use these boxes still? If so, what are your favorite brands and models?

 

[Steve Williams]

I always plug my amps into separate dedicated wall lines and not any sort of power regenerator

 

[tony ky ma]

So today, I dusted off my old PS Audio Power Plant P300 and brought it to work. Wanted to use it with the DAC (and USB S/PDIF converter) as I had always done to extract a bit more quality out of those digital bits. By accident and without me knowing, the person helping also plugged in the Mark Levinson 532H amp into it.

I sit back, do my usual test of dialing up the frequency from 60 Hz to 75 and one more, I hear an improvement. The bass becomes tighter and the sound generally becomes warmer. And as before, increasing the frequency way past that decreases fidelity. Don't ask me why the improvement occurs because the efficiency of transformer actually goes down with increased frequency. Maybe the output caps/regulator work better until the transformer really gets inefficient.

Anyway, I bring a couple of other people and semi-sighted ask them if they hear anything and they both comment exactly as I did. Feeling good, now I turn up the volume and start to see the overload light blinking. I put meter in power consumption mode and I see it going way up as I increase the volume. So ask the guy who helped me to make sure he had not plugged in the amp and he said he had.

So we unplug the amp and run the test again. To my disappointment and surprise, almost all the improvement vanishes! We plug the amp back in and the improvement comes back (OK, this could be expectation bias but let's leave that to another thread ).

Now I don't know if this is due to having common single point power, or that power regeneration does help the big beast. So we are going to call and find out about a bigger unit to test.

Do people use these boxes still? If so, what are your favorite brands and models?

This is my thinking, anything set between wall plug and amp or others makes sound quality change because of it store up the AC power making supply time fast, the isolated transformer, power cleaner, or regulator, even power cord will change the sound too only different in how big, and I also believe that to use 3 phase power supply for a amp will be better than single phase supply in the same reason but we don't have 3 phase in home supply, I made power cord come with isolated transformer which work very good and don't cost too much
tony ma

 

[microstrip]

So today, I dusted off my old PS Audio Power Plant P300 and brought it to work. (...) I sit back, do my usual test of dialing up the frequency from 60 Hz to 75 and one more, I hear an improvement. The bass becomes tighter and the sound generally becomes warmer. And as before, increasing the frequency way past that decreases fidelity. Don't ask me why the improvement occurs because the efficiency of transformer actually goes down with increased frequency.

Amir,
At some time I owned not one, but two P300s. Europe has 50 Hz mains and I found that several electronic devices sounded better at 60 or 75 Hz than at 50 Hz.
Power transformers should work better at slightly higher frequencies - the maximum flux varies with the inverse of the frequency. But as you say there is no reasonable explanation for the sound improvement. One my units has some bizarre non sinusoidal waveform capabilities, but I never liked their effect.


Happy to see that Forum Administrators are exempt of expectation bias!

 

[amirm]

Thanks for the comments guys. And the funny line microstrip .

So no one has tried their new box that puts out 1,500 watts? It uses a new design, gaining 85% efficiency unlike the box I have which is basically a Class AB amp and half as efficient. Alas, the new box doesn't have variable frequency any more. Bummer .

 

[KeithR]

this is a good new subject, thanks Amir.

what about comparing a power regenerator to a balanced power device? which one is better? i have my amps direct into wall and my electronics onto a TrippLite Isobar. it has served me quite well over the years....very surprising at its low price.

 

[amirm]

Well, my testing has been limited to increasing and lowering the frequency. I am able to do quick A/B tests that way. Assuming the increased frequency has some independent value, then balanced power and such cannot replicate the same effect.

PS Audio claims that the reason for general improvement is reduced distortion on the power line. Balanced power does not do that directly at least I don't think it does.

 

[audioguy]

Check these guys out:

http://www.purepoweraps.com/

Based upon what I read, a better solution than PS Audio as it includes true battery backup/

While I thought I had all dedicated lines in my equipment room and theater, based upon some things that happen on occasion, I'm not sure I do (I currently use a BPT conditioner)

I am going to try one of these on all of my front end equipment.

 

[amirm]

Let us know how it does.

I read everything on their web site and didn't learn a ton . It references a review at a Canadian audio magazine but when I go there there was nothing (even with Google search). I can't figure out what the battery does or why it would be useful in an audio system. It also has a fan.