Since my playback is officially down I decided to give up my PP2000 for a local audio guy. He guy live in rural aria but has notoriously bad electricity and for many years was trying virtually anything but still what I visited him he always had very well observable electricity problems. I told him that I will not be needed my PP2000 for a couple month, so he can get it for the time being. Yesterday I drove to him, dropped the PP2000, helped him to set it up and did some listening.

The guy has a large multi-way installation with 3 DSETs per side and one powerful SS amp for lower bass. That is all together 8 amps with a bunch or front end equipment (all caps active). We plugged everything into PP2000. I had no idea what was topology of his SETs and how much current they draw. All of them DHT and I presume that it was 200W -350W per amp, so 6 amp for two channels would make it somewhere 1500W-1800W. A few preamps, tube crossover and the rest peripherals would probably do another 200W-400W. So, the PP2000 was loaded very hard. When I plug it the SET transformers went buzzing, so the DC offset in his playback is not the same as in mine. My init has he “experimental” DC offset attenuators. I did not have any equipment on hand and juts by ear we killed the buzz via the DC offset regulator.

I was kind of thinking what to do with big ass SS power amplifier. That amp was sucking reportedly 15A-18A in picks and it was obvious that PP2000 will not swallow it. From another perspective the improvement in bass is the shiniest element of PP2000 performance. So, I was thinking what the hell we can do. I decided to risk and to plug everything into the damn thing. I think if Sigmund Fraud would look deep into the nuclear core of my soul then he will see my subconscious des to kill this damn regenerator. Subconsciously I felt that the PurePower’s assholes do not fix my “fuzziness” for a year and a half (despite zillion promises), so if I burn the unit then it will make them to move. Of cause I would not do anything contrived but I figured that overpowering of the unit is a part of normal operation. So, that what we did… we plugged everything into the PP2000

After a few bars of music the PP2000 blew up.  We restarted the system and the PP2000 worked (!!!!!) but blew up again after a few seconds. This time I did smell some burn smoke on the back of the unit. My attempts to restart PP2000 were not unsuccessful, it shot sis down. “Great”, - I figured, - “I have burned this piece of shit!”. How big was my surprise when is a few minutes the PP2000 had recovered and was functional.  I guess Purepower has short trim output stage bypass and then a long term thermo-defense with automatic magnetic relay. The relay cooled down and the unit was back. This time PP2000 did the overload test flawlessly.

So, we plugged the whole system into PP2000 with exception of bass amps. The sonic result was very exactly what I predicted. The fun part was with bass. Before, when the system was plugged into the wall the bass was reasonable. However, driving the rest of the system from the PP2000 and bass from the wall it was absolutely clear that bass was not up to the demands of the rest of the playback. That result I did not anticipate.

The guy, the system owner, asked me if I would let him to buy my PP2000. I replayed that I would but I have no assurance another PP2000, perhaps more powerful one, would work sonically identical to my current PP2000. I think that this is the problem with those units. Nevertheless, the overload real live test my PP2000 had handled flawlessly and sonically it truly did wonder in absolutely different playback and at near-full power.

If my monster fully synchronous motor-generator assembly will not yield the sound I want then I will make the PurePower to make for me two PP2000-PP3000 and it will be the Finito la Commedia with power interests and the configuration for my new home.

Romy the Cat wrote:

So, we plugged the whole system into PP2000 with exception of bass amps. The sonic result was very exactly what I predicted. The fun part was with bass. Before, when the system was plugged into the wall the bass was reasonable. However, driving the rest of the system from the PP2000 and bass from the wall it was absolutely clear that bass was not up to the demands of the rest of the playback. That result I did not anticipate. The Cat

Will do if I can get a review sample.

Bill

Yes, each piece of gear would seem to require its own unit. But they probably deliver enough juice for a tubed preamp or the like.

clark

clarkjohnsen wrote:

A person who has good sounding power lines? Never met one such! I can't help but think, however, that turntables should employ batteries.

There is a company out there “Environmental Potentials” that go power-line filtration. They claim that they use other then capacitive filtration, some kind proprietary active dissipative absorption. I think that it all BS but I do not know what exactly it is. There is also no reports how their filtration (whatever it is) affect sound generally.

http://ep2000.com/index.php?page=products

If somebody knows how they make low-pass filter without capacitance and why their filters have max effectiveness at 150 - 500 kHz then let me know.

Romy the Cat wrote:

I do not like the idea of batteries for anything. It is kind of ridicules to use batteries. Yes, in some cases there is some improvement on low voltage electronics but it is ONLY because the power lines are badly sounding to begin with. You would never see a person who has god sounding power lines to go with batteries – never. Batteries are a white flag of the fight for good sounding electricity.  Batteries are an oxygen mask – it good for a short experiment or to prove a concept but you won’t run Boston Marathon on it… The Cat

The first goal is the best sound possible, taking every advantage to get it.  Since the [crappy] [wall] power source is such a big factor in the sound we get from hi-fi, I could see designing line-level stages for use with batteries as a possible alternative.  In fact, I power my own (LV) DAC with a 17 Ah battery.  The success of such units should, of course, be measured against the best conventionally powered units.

I also vaguely thought about powering my K&K (phono stage) with batteries; but with something like 350V on the rails, it seems like a fool's errand.  You'd have to at least design the thing to get the unit's power requirements down to realistic levels before batteries would be practical, let alone sonically viable.

Yes, my own DAC sounds better on its battery than it does with good wall power.  But then, this unit was not optimized for good AC power to begin with.

Best regards,
Paul S