P12 and P5 are PS Audio branded Power Plants. P12 is the base model. The Stellar line P3 is currently on sale for $1649…it would be considered an entry level regenerator. It’s doesn’t have enough juice to run a large system, or a high powered amp. Nothing fancy, no software upgrades, no internet access. It is not user upgradable, nor does it have the Power Play data like the P5/P12 do. If you buy used, get something under three years old, since warranties are transferable. My P5 is ten years old, and is on borrowed time. Do NOT consider the model before the P5, which was the Power Plant Premier. Lots of failures.
I agree completely that a $5K conditioner makes little sense for a $2K system.
The Furman line of products offer good solutions at their price point. Isotek has some good stuff too, and they run sales from time to time. If you don’t need conditioning per se, and just want good quality power strips, take a look over at Emotiva. I used their DC offset power strip to troubleshoot some stuff. Build quality is decent.
Check Audio Advisor for Furman stuff. They often have discounted returns, demos, etc. Good vendor. I’ve dealt with them on a few things over the years.
I went whole house ( own home 2900 sqft, concrete slab, FLA) via the power company, not only did they check my service, repair a transformer down the street that was noisy they found my ground was weak and corrected that. Along with my electrician which cost me $100. The Power company cost me zero for their service , the whole house protection to include surge warranted by them cost me $17.00 a month. That was 4 years ago. I use a Furman power station for my 2 chl and APC Battery backups for my internet items and PC.
I use a Furman power station for all my 2 ch audio. However once I plugged my amp directly into the wall I noticed a significant improvement. I have a Benchmark amp and they told me they recommend taking power from the wall not conditioners. They were right. I still have my DAC and Pre Amp plugged into the Furman. My two REL Subs are also plugged directly into the wall .
Mine is connected to a dedicated 20amp service into a separate sub panel . Nothing on it, but my 2 chl. MY computer and internet set on their own 20amp and my TV and AVR, subs set on another. Amazing what you get when you remove all the other junk off a service line, like lights, fans, kitchen interference, dimmer switches, electric garage doors etc…
What a great idea - I’ll check to see if I can do that.
I live in an old house, and the electricity quality is pretty bad. This is compounded by the fact that my home office is in the basement, sharing a line with a freezer and furnace.
Using a PS Audio Power Plant 3 helped a lot with removing the noise. The only noise I ever got was when using my Stellia on my Nautilus tube amp, there would be a faint buzz whenever the furnace/air conditioning kicked in. I didn’t have any noise on any other amp or headphone.
Replacing the Power Plant with a Core Power Technologies Deep Core 1800 and Equi Core 1000 removed the faint buzz without harming dynamics, so I’m now listening in total silence. I will be buying more Core Power Stuff in the future whenever the need arises for power conditioning.
I’m not the kind of rep that will pull your arm in one direction or another - I’ll speak from my own experience by first encouraging you to think about the following:
-What do you want to accomplish? Are you doing this for the organization, or do you want a clear boost in performance?
-Where are you going to put this? Does room limit what options you have?
-Is there any specific tech you’re looking for such as active noise cancellation?
-How many ports will you need?
The subjective: I have two Powerstations and they are great. I live a in a connected condo complex, and had unexplainable issues with noise and interference (hums and buzzes at random times of day with no consistency) coming from the power in my building.The Powerstations somehow solved these problems, and that; was all I needed to know. I was very lucky to ironically have a problem that I could test, and they did what they said they would.
@SebastienChiu I have a bunch of electronics in my streaming chain that have wall wart PSUs, and I was thinking about replacing each wall wart with an iPower 2 to reduce the electrical noise from each PSU. For about the same price, I could buy a Powerstation and plug all the wall warts into that.
I know what kind of rep you are. The kind that gets respect here. I was still looking for a bit of rah rah cheerleading with examples of use cases and more info than iFi marketing seems to provide.
I may still get a Power Station sometime in the future. For now I went for an open box or nearly new Furman Elite 15 from EBAY. Got a decent price reflecting that it’s not factory fresh. I figure it is probably better than the Monster unit I got used from Tweeter years ago and which I still have in service.
Had to make a decision quickly so I have time to put everything in order prior to my medical procedure after which I expect to be reclining and listening during recovery.
ON the dedicated 20amps, the electrician handled that. Acquired the proper permits etc.
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Whole house surge" I just called power company and told them I have some power noise issues, per my electrician. . Plus they send out letters offering whole house surge protection and when they come out they do a audit on your outside line. Nice to have your electrician that has some techy instruments to work with them on your behalf if you don’t know anything about AC power, grounding etc… A lot depends on the age of your home and if its up to the current code. Apartment or high rise condo well could be a whole nother story as the power isn’t yours to modify. A ground level condo that is yours should be no problem.
While there is a very obvious change in sound signature, it’s not one that I personally feel is a net benefit. Slightly wider sound stage, slightly better placement within the stage, and slightly better focus/transients (and I do mean very slightly), but also a noticeable uptick in noise floor, which I feel is a bigger net loss than the benefits. I no longer hear as much three dimensionality / holography, and am losing some of the magical micro echoes in spaces I was able to pick out before.
I found this signature to be consistent both when powering my Roon server and M-Scaler, but the effects were more noticeable on the Roon server.
For those of you who are used to reading my musings, I am generally all about power and isolation products, and have usually found them to be a net benefit - reluctantly. I researched linear power supplies for quite a long time before springing for the Hypsos (which is technically a “hybrid” power supply), and I was truly expecting this to be a noticeable improvement - but it wasn’t, for me.
Not noticing a difference would have been a bummer. Feeling it’s a net negative is a double bummer. That said, I do think it’s a personal taste type of thing, and for folks whose setups aren’t quite as noise-floor focused, it may be great.
Hypsos can only power one device at a time, can’t it? Are you saying you tried the Hypsos on the Roon server and then on the M-Scaler and each time the noise floor was raised?
Correct. One at a time. I tried it on my Roon server first, and went back and forth between the Hypsos and the stock supply a few times. Then I did the same with the M-Scaler (leaving the stock supply in the Roon server). I was genuinely expecting to be super into it given my research and prior experience with improving power products, and had even resigned myself to probably “needing” to buy another one so I could power both my M-Scaler and Roon server at the same time, but turns out that won’t happen.
Currently debating whether I should try a “traditional” linear power supply, like something from Farad or MCRU.
Curious if you were running the Hypsos out of a power conditioner/regenerator? If I remember correctly you had/have a PS Audio unit?
I haven’t had any of these products but I have seen it mentioned that “doubling up” on power treatments, filters, conditioning cables, etc can cause issues or have poor results.
Could this be a possible issue? Maybe going from the wall may have better results if you haven’t already tried that?
Yes, I was running it out of my PS Audio PowerPlant P3.
So, I can reason my way to this being a potential problem with “traditional” power conditioners that filter the AC power itself, so to speak, but given that the PowerPlant actually just regenerates clean(er) AC, I don’t think it should matter. However, I’m far from fully understanding all of this, so I thought this was a super interesting suggestion to try - and I just did.
Unfortunately, no dice. I think it’s actually a bit worse (just a tiny bit) on the noise floor. Everything is just a bit more muffled. It’s a bummer, because I do think there are indeed some sonic benefits as well - I just personally don’t think they’re worth the noise floor tradeoff.
This is all just very unexpected, as you’d typically maybe expect the opposite out of an upgraded power supply - lower noise floor, perhaps at the expense of crispness - but it’s simply not the case, here.
The Hypsos is very highly regarded, and I’ve read reviews that mentioned the noise floor being lowered, so it makes me wonder if yours is damaged in some way. Before you move on to something else, is it easy to get a replacement?
It the server connected directly to the audio device?
If it is, you’re probably better off moving to a separate streamer and isolating the output device from it that way.
You can get away with just a Raspberry Pi connected via USB, though there are much better options.
So, my guess is that it lowers the noise floor vs a stock SMPS out of a normal wall, but that may not be the case out of the powerplant. I guess it’s something I could try, but at the end of the day, the relevant comparison for me is out of the PowerPlant. I even tried different power cords, and that wasn’t the problem.
The unit is used, so I don’t think it would be easy to get a replacement, but I am fairly confident it’s not broken. It’s not like it has a hum or something. It’s just not as deadly quiet as the alternative - the type of thing you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t have the comparison.
I’ve done pretty extensive comparisons of server and bridge configurations. I’ve tried the server completely removed from my rack, having various bridges grab the wifi signal (ifi Zen Stream, Chord 2go/2yu, Bluesound Node), and of those, I preferred the ifi Zen Stream using BNC ever so slightly over the Chord 2go/2yu over BNC. However, I then decided to try the Singxer SU-6 DDC as well (directly connected to the Roon server), and that bested the above configurations. The noise floor was on par with the Zen Stream, and the transient performance was on par with the Chord 2go/2yu, which were the relative strengths of those.
All of the above aside, regardless of the Roon server’s location, a better power supply should improve audible performance anyway. Again, some aspects are improved, but not noise floor in this particular configuration. I’m guessing noise floor does improve in some situations, but not in my specific setup, which is already heavily tuned for noise floor.
Interestingly, I’ve had similar experiences in digital cables. For example, I have a Nordost Heimdall 2 BNC - BNC cable that has a similar change vs an AQ Carbon. Mildly better time domain performance, but less mildly poorer noise floor performance.
rah rah cheerleading isn’t my style and it would come off as not genuine.
