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Romy the Cat wrote:

To my surprise, pleasure and horror they all turned out to be absolutely differently sounding. PP2000 #1. This one that has been using all week - the updated my old PP2000 (new version of motherboard). This one the absolutely worst – large amount of unpleasant noise, hugely homogenized tone, no bass, no anything – just disaster. It runs fine on batteries with fine sound. This unit I did some very basic measurement and they were fine. PP2000 #2. I do not get this unit. It does much less, practically no noise and no homogenization. It has some bass and in a way a clear bass. But something is very wrong in this sound, I can’t figure out what. It runs not identical but similar from buttery. I have no idea what is wrong with it, I did not measure it and I prefer do not use it. PP2000 #3. This is a lucky bustard.  It has practically no noise, no homogenization and it highlights the tones almost as good as my old PP2000 did. It has that precision, discrimination and authority in tonal and dynamic accents for which I so love the PP2000. It has a bit too shallow very lower bass and a bit general brightness that I did not remember the old unit had. It is not a lot but it there. It runs from buttery a very slightly better – picking the lower bass in partially getting rid of the business at HF.  The way how this unit sound from butteries is how the properly functioning PP2000 shall sound.

I got today my PP2000 after PurePower in-house reincarnation. In the end of the last year I sent back my unit #1, the updated units. PurePower fixed it and although I did recognized that some of the moments got where they have to be (bass, dynamics, clipping at negative side) but the unit still did not produced the sound I expected, primary due to very sever discoloration of tone and eating micro-dynamics. How PurePower managed to do it I have no idea. I do not worry about it too much as PurePower still has my old board from this units – I will ask them to put my old back and it will be it – I am getting tiers from those experiments.

Today, as I said I got another PP2000 after repair – it was the unit #2. As soon I plug the battery into the stone-cold sitting outside box unit and connected the playback, then after the first 203 bars I instantly got the feeling that Sound is fixed. The sound of properly operating PP2000 is like a stream of warm oil, warm but just above the room temperature - you extend your arms under the stream of the oil and you do not feel that oil is pouring. I just plugged the new PP2000 and put on CD player Shubert 5 Symphony with Wand/NDR (thanks, Yoshi). I pushed “play” and walked to my chair, big room… While I was walking I sensed that the music started but I did not hear sound pressure in a normal sense. It was the sound of tone, without sound of noise – only properly operating PP2000 is able in my room to do this trick – I instantaneously felt that whatever problem PP2000 had, it is fixed now.

Further listening confirmed my happy sentiment - it look like PP2000 is back to actions.  The unit #2 is one of the two brand new PP2000 that I bought, so this is not updated one. The entire turning of this unit is -2dB at MF and minus 4dB at HF compare to what I was driving my playback for the last month. In fact I can drive now my tweeter + 6dB with no damage to sound at all. Bass, dynamic, articulation, everything is back – juts wonderful. There is no tone or micro-dynamics eating as my upgraded PP2000 does. I marked this my new PP2000 - you will take it from my hands only over my dead body.

I did not listen carefully the Sound from Buttery and did not compare it from AC. I would like this PP2000 to run from AC for a while, to bun in, to charge the battery (I send it to Kanda with no buttery) – I will listening it from buttery later on. For now it looks like the new PP2000 sound as it has to sound, so I would expect comparable sound from AC and buttery in this new unit.  Now, I need to make somehow PurePower to make two rest of my PP2000 to sound like this new one…

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