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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: It’s mad, mad, mad... electricity.

Post Subject: The need of a transparent power solutionPosted by Jorge on: 12/11/2010

I am sorry I do not want to pollute the PP2000 thread with battery options.

Right now I am in the process of testing a lot of different comercial amps to see what I will stay with, or which route I will be taking with my system in the near future for amplification, but I have been having trouble "repeating" the same sound in order to make sensible comparisons. There are clear winners and losers, but I also want to listen to each amps strenghts and weakeneses, in order to decide, when multiamping, on what frequency and what driver they will sound best! So I am listening to amps in a sort of full range mode. Right now the winner for Upper bass horn is an expensive Solid state amp that does a lot of things well if feeded the right power, but when the power gets polluted it is unbearable: mainly in highs. I still do not know how "affected" the upper bass range can get when the power goes to hell. Of course a nice SET amp with 300B tubes is best, from the ones I am comparing with, for midrange compression driver, but the highs are really lacking in extension and dynamics, even in SPL, but that can also change a little with power changes.

I have been influenced a little by Stefano´s SS findings, and some of my own.

This has been a lenghty process filled with desperation, at the moment I can only make decent comprarisons late at night, but with a day job and a 4 year old waking up everyday at 6 am it gets disturbing.

So I need a power solution, that will not "change" the frequency response of my gear, I found SS amps are more sensible to Caps on the power lines than tube amps, but I also found out Coils tend to change response too. So I cannot make decisions about the tones of amps with a "colored" line conditioner. I have seen a lot of comercial line conditioners that are based on the same cap coils systems.

Changes with the power lines have also local aflictions so what could work in London or NYC might not work here. So the only final soluton I see is a system like the PP2000 that, as I understand, is based on a battery even if it is "recharging" it every second...This is my limited understanding of how it works.

Power lines in my country are not only unreliable as we have power breaks quite often, but also dangerous for delicate gear since come backs can push higher voltages. So battery no-breaks are very useful.

Another option for me would be to get rid of power lines and use a small solar system to have the signal processing gear ON all the time and a huge battery bank to power up amps. Now the systems I have tried with small batteries sounded horrible, with dead dynamics so I am a little lost with few solutions for power lines and looking fearfully for huge battery packs...

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