PurePower wrote:

The obvious corollary of this statement is that if he can hear sonic effects in his music system that are directly correlated to appliance turn on, then his PurePower unit is almost certainly not operating normally.

manisandher wrote:

Also, when I switch from AC to battery, the output voltage (as measured by a true RMS voltmeter) INCREASES by between 3-4V. Now, I am NOT suggesting that this increase in voltage is causing the difference in SQ. However, it's 100% clear to me that the output of the PP2000 is different depending on whether it's being run from AC or battery.

BTW, the default cruse voltage that UPS devises output from AC is usually easy adjustable. I have two other on-line UPS units from APC that I use for my computer servers and they can do it. I am sure that PurePower unit can do it as well but I never cared to ask about it and even if I knew how to do it then I do not think that I would care to many any voltage adjustments. So, in my mind the difference between output voltage from AC and battery indicates nothing.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The change of the voltage from battery and from AC always was there, I have seen it on all PurePower Units but I did not even report it as I find it absolutely irrelevant.

Romy the Cat wrote:

The battery output and output from AC SHALL BE IDENTICAL or near identical, it is how it was before. If not then retun the unit as it does not do what it shall be doing.

manisandher wrote:

Romy the Cat wrote: The change of the voltage from battery and from AC always was there, I have seen it on all PurePower Units but I did not even report it as I find it absolutely irrelevant. Romy, you've said in the past:  Romy the Cat wrote: The battery output and output from AC SHALL BE IDENTICAL or near identical, it is how it was before. If not then retun the unit as it does not do what it shall be doing. Now, I know you're talking about sound and not voltage or noise or whatever. And to me they are NOT identical, and yes, perhaps I should return my unit. But before I do that, I'd like to hear PurePower's thoughts on whether this 3-4V difference counts as 'identical', is normal and is to be expected.

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…

I can’t stress now much I am fallen in love with my new PP2000. I was playing it today all day and can’t not see any single thing that I would bitch. I perhaps is missing too much the sound of proper electricity but my feeling is that the new unit that I got from Pure Power sounds better then my old well-sounding PP2000. How better? I feel that this new unit does the all things that the older did but take it a bit deeper. I can’t not be objective about it as the last time I have proper sound from my playback was in mid of the march, before I took the system doe before move. Still,  even I have a different room but I have the very identical upper channels and I do feel that the new unit is a bit effective then the old was.

There is no sign of the problems I reported in mid of December – whatever fuck up Pure Power had they look like fixed it. It sounds so good that I did not have tempter to run it from buttery even for test. I will do it sometime, juts die to my anal retentiveness but I know without any “comparing” that this IS the proper sound for PP2000 as NOW I recognized in my playback what I had in it almost a year back.

When I reported to Pure Power that the new unit sounds fine they responded that as any Canadian product it sounds better when there is snow on ground. Good that they have humor about it but until I got this find sounding PP2000 I did not feel funny at all.  Now my Sound is back. The dynamics is out of this world, but smart dynamics, not the brutal OTL stupid dynamics but the intelligent dynamics supported by a full and soft harmonics. The YO108 channel does it’s signature smell of non-refined sunflower oil. The S2 driver shines with all imaginable colors like a X-mass tree. The bass is gloriously-lash and produce more tone then acoustic pressure.  The woodwinds sound woodwinds with zillion overtones and dynamic fluctuations. The playback’s entire upper region is like bleached out - there is no hi-fi pressure and no synthetic aggressiveness that the industry simpletons so mistakably consider as “quality”.  The sound is what I unseals call “compiled” sound. The compiled sound is a state what all attributes are properly set and sound is self-contained for own good. You absolutely can’t get compiled sound with properly sounding electricity. Here is where the new PP2011 comes….

Now, the new fixed unit I got from Pure Power sounds spectacular but I have no idea why. It might be some kind of accidental fuckup with this unit that luckily turns out to sound good. The score for the last 2 month is 4:1 in favor of bad sound. I have sent the second new unit to Pure Power to fix. If it retinue back identical to the my current unit then it might be a reason to feel that Pure Power got a grip again for great sounding regenerator and the only thing will be left is to pay the Pure Power do not change anything. Meanwhile I can’t wait what I have all my 3 units to sound as my current one as I would like to run all my 3 PP2011 at 25% load from 3 regenerators….

At this point I am absolutely confident the there is difference in Sound between the properly sounding PP2000 that I had before and the “new” version of PP2000. Let juts for sake of illustration I will call it PP2011. The PP2011 is better sounding unit – I will explain how, why and provide further elaboration on the subject.

 As I understand Pure Power sometimes in 2010 made a new version of their PP2000 model. I have no knowledge what they changed but it was a new version of motherboard where they addressed whatever the intended to address.   As I understand that had a bug in new version or a bug in a specific production run, they reportedly fixed it. It looks like I have a taste how the new PP2000 (or PP2011) sounds and I am telling you it is very impressive. It is so impressive that I think Pure Power were foolish that they did not introduce the new revision as a separate mode. In audio we are very much accustom that a new model is introduced when a company change a location of a fuse box or change the straight head screws to Philips heard. In case of the PP2011 it is ridicules in opposite direction – the new unit sound significantly better but no one notified, the fucking revolution was not announced!

Ok, the “significantly better sounding” and “revolution”, did I really mean it? No, I did not. There is no revolutionary change in the PP2011 performance but there are some notable differences. I will describe those differences. Mind you that I have no old version of PP2000 and my observations are purely subjective and based upon the constitution that Pure Power regenerator inflict to the sound of my playback. Read my 2-3 posts above to get the context of my observations.

So, here is what I discover different in the new PP2011.

1)      The top of the Sinusoid when unit run from buttery is textbook exemplary and much more stable then it use to be before.

2)      The “fussiness” that was in PP2000 when it was operating from AC still there but it change characters. It dropped amplitude 4 times and become twice wider in bandwidth.

3)      PP2011 runs much cooler then PP2000 and much more silent

4)      PP2011 cuts off more HF then PP2000, I would estimate that I run my MF driver at 1dB hotter with PP2011

5)      PP2011 has higher dynamic range.

6)      PP2011 removes noise at lower frequency then PP2000 did.

This last characteristic I need to explain as it is something the I NEVER heard from any peace of audio before, there is a great chance that if you did not use properly sounding PP2011 then you do not know that it is possible.

Somehow, PP2011 can inject own contribution into the middle and upper bass and somehow very surgically to remove upper frequency noise from bass notes. What is interesting is that PP2011 cleans up the noise but leave the overtones absolutely untouched – that is enormously wonderfully and rare.  It is like you ask your cleaning lady to clean from dust your tonearm and cartridge an then you leaned that she did it and did not damage needle. Somehow PP2011 does it and to a much deeper level then PP2000 did.

Sonically it sounds like bass instruments have dryer decks and the sound more resonant because of it. The sound is not dryer, in fact it more moist but it coming from dryer instruments.  The feeling is remarkable and in way reminds a recording with closer microphone. Still, a closer microphone gives no full-body reverberations and in most cases it sounds immediately-impressive nit not no satisfactory. The PP2011 does all that close-mike effect  but still holds absolutely untouched reverberations, overtones and harmonics – absolutely unseen effect from my view.  This all give to sound a remarkable effect - I can with much LESS EFFORTS to zoom my attention to specific expressions of music without loosing respective to the whole sound.  The PP2000 was able to do it as well but the new PP2011 can do it to much higher degree and much more effectively.

I am looking back and my last 2 month frustrations with presentation width, with vertical midbass horns integrations,  with relatively aggressive sound bite, with somehow overly labored lateral imaging propagation prom Macondo and am realizing that it all was coming from faulty performing PP2000. With the new unit all problem just evaporated.

A year ago Macondo was able to play stunningly gentle. It was very soft sound rich with tonal and dynamic spice, there were no efforts to present the spice – the spice juts organically glow into the sound itself. The playback did not demonstrate any self-happiness for the accomplished results. It did render very complex things but did not called upon itself with demands to see how great it was.  That was in a way my signature accomplishment and I did cherish it a lot.

In the new room, the room itself 100 times better and with the same playback I somehow felt that in order to play ambition the playback need to showee, it need to enter into a “shocker mode”, frequently playing sentimentally cheap and in a way corny. This quality is something that I do not like. For instance the larger Wilson speakers  are full of it, they are like a heavily incredibly beautiful, heavily make- up call girl – it look nice and it demonstrate  a good performance but you do not feel that sense of special feeling on the morning. So, for some reason my playback in the new room sounded in the same way. It showed off some very imprecise results but with very non-personal and with very labor efforts. The labor was so hard that the labor itself attracted more attention then the core of event. I was asking myself what it come from as in the new room I have essentially the very same system.

Interesting that with the new repaired PP2000 I got my Sound back. Everything came back right the way, including the auditable realization that I am in much larger room now.  At this point I need to capitalize on what I have. I need to recalibrate Macondo to work from new electricity.  I would like to set it as it use to be set at my old place – at the threshold of being “interpretably dangers” ™ but never going overboard – that will be the final nails into my moving to a new place project.

I might wait for another two PP2000 units arrive, hopefully fixed and sounding as my recent one is. I do not know how 3 PP2000 will impact sound. When I have 3 units before I reported that I did not see a lot of difference between one and 3 regenerators. I wonder if it will be the case now, after the PP2000 are properly operating. I think it might be a difference...

miab wrote:

In my unit there is definately a change in sound running from wall from early in the day to late evening. In the late evening being the better. Before the Purepower this was much more noticeable but to quantify it, the worse day with the Purepower is still better than the best day I had without it. But my unit does sound more rich harmonically and lush on battery, without being wet and still expanding on the size of the sound. On the best electricity days it is very close on mains or battery. This sensitivity to mains reflects in the battery experiment. If you were to run from battery for a test you might be able to predict how yours might run from a bad mains day. Was there an answer to what was found to be the solution on your December units to your 2011 unit? Did they indeed take advantage of the opportunity you gave them to find the secret to proper power? I would understand if they would now like to keep this proprietary but perhaps they could explain the just of it. As a side note, does yours or anyone's else show a different load reading on different days? I go from 22% load to sometimes 5% and everwhere in between. Nothing changes in my system.

Miab,

I do not think that they took advantage of the opportunity to look for the “secret to proper power”. That would be great if they did. We had a few conversions about it but in my view it led to nowhere. I did not detect in them the “original natural curiosity” to the subject. What I witnessed in them was more kind of utilitarian interest – they want their units to work properly and they do not want customers to complain.

I do not know what the true solution of my December unit was. They did give me an explanation that I am not at liberty to discuss but frankly I am not absolutely comfortable with this explanation as it does not cover all basis. I’ am fine to keep it as internal PurePower affair.

The load, battery charge percentage, voltage and the rest meters on PP2000 front panels are ridicules, I do not pay attention to them.  Ironically my current unit shows proper load number but a few units before showed God knows what.

Now about Sound. The electricity got worse now. The new PP2011 still sounds fine. The difference in Sound between AC and butteries does exist but pretty much what I seen in my old unit – very minor, near negligible.  Now, will the difference be the same if the electricity were 10 time worse? This is an interesting question and I am willing to look into it.

I would like to continue observe if sound will be change with time. If it did then I would like to shunt the PP2000 buttery with a very large external capacitor. Also, I would like to try running two PP2000 in daisy chain to see if it will make PP2000 absolutely immune from anything. I can run perhaps some other regenerators before PP2000…

Meanwhile I do not have any problems with my new PP2000 – functionally and sonically it is perfect and if PurePower mange to make two other units to sound the same then it will address my needs.

miab wrote:

In my unit there is definately a change in sound running from wall from early in the day to late evening. In the late evening being the better. Before the Purepower this was much more noticeable but to quantify it, the worse day with the Purepower is still better than the best day I had without it.

joaco wrote:

Romy ; does this phenomena stop occuring with your new unit ?

I would like to offers some thoughts about possible avenues for Pure Power 2000 improvements.  Those thoughts are no specific to the recent November-December events and have broader generic implication. I initially intended to write it to Pure Power owners but I do not see why it might not be brought to public domain, perhaps somebody can contribute something useful or know something about the subject already.

It was observed me during the second year of my PP2000 owning that my unit became more sensitive to incoming electricity. PP2000 still did own duty and the sound was uncontestable better with PP2000 then without it but in the end of my owning of my former PP2000 I did note that sound was changing sometimes, something that I did not see during my first year. I was talking about it before in this thread and I was attributed it to allegation that my buttery was dying, with consequential increase of buttery internal impedance and loosing HF filtration capacity. At this thread I have seen some other people comment about PP2000 residual sensitivity to incoming AC. I do not know if the have properly operating units and being me I can’t accept the testimony of other as evidence and I prefer to base my judgment on my own experience. So, I proposed that as buttery goes week the PP2000 become more sensitive to incoming AC.

I need to make a remark that to evaluate this claim is bit complicated as it the power line might have zillion different factors and we DO NOT KNOW which of them and in which way affect sound. It takes time, listening and interpretation of the heard results to make any judgments. I did do it and I do not know anybody who did it. PurePower make perhaps good sounding regenerator and but they do not use listening tests as evaluation methods, and if they do then I do not much faith in their listening evaluations. There is however a very interesting moment in all of it. The unique topology of Pure Power regenerator might prompt an answer what PP2000 need to be absolutely immune from incoming power on the long run and what can make the PP2000 even better regenerator then it is now. Be advised that that are all speculations but I hope it will encourage Pure Power to look into this as it sounds to me too logical to discard it.

We know that generation and amplification part of PP2000 are very fine but we would like to see if anything might be done better on supply and filtration part. The “fuzziness” noise that PP2000 pick up in AC mode is clearly shall not be there and it is a pure subject of bad PP2000 design, where all PP2000 radioactive elements are piled up on the same VERY tight board in a very dangers proximity. The PurePower worked on the problem and the new PP2011 revision has much less “fuzziness”. I think to get rid of it completely would require a complete change of layout, grounding and insulation – it is a big and costly project and I do not think that PurePower would go there. We are under presumption that the “fuzziness” has no impact to sound. Well, to my ears the PP2011 version with less “fuzziness” sounds significantly betters then PP2008 version with more “fuzziness”. Still, the “fuzziness” is not something that I would like to think too much. What I would like to talk is the PP2000 AC insulation. I told before that PP2000 is unique among all other regenerators and the uniqueness is in PP2000 filtration capacity.

If you do to PS Audio site and pay attention how Paul McGowan sell his newest generation of Power Plants:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL1Wjeq7eHY

 …then you will see that he constantly stress the fact that his new version has more capacitors. Now they have even newer version then the Premier, they call it P5 and P10 and they have even more caps in DC filtration.  That is right, the more caps they stuff in the regenerators on DC side the better power line decoupling would be. I do not compare Power Plants and PP2000 as there is no even question about the competition, I juts would like point out that in case of  Power Plants Paul McGowan is correct – more caps means better filtration.

If you open up PP2000 then you see practically no large capacitors, in fact there is only 2 very small caps before both DC-DC converters. So, how PP2000 filter the incoming AC noise? This is where the uniqueness of PP2000 takes over. The PP2000 is switching regenerator that works at relatively low frequency 20kHz -30kHz. According to Nyquist–Shannon–Kotelnikov sampling theorem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_theorem

the maximum frequency that might be correctly sampled will not exceed a half of sampling rate.  So, let presume that PP2000 runs at 30kHz sampling rate – that means that PP2000 even theoretically enables to pass anything height then 15kHz. This is the Nyquist Frequency cut off and it is impossible to bypass it. So, wherever Paul McGowan load more and more caps in his linear Power Plant the PP2000 juts do not need it as it does not even know about existence of anything higher then 15kHz. BTW, in view this one of the explanations why PP2000 sounds so much superior then Power Plant. The AC line has a lot of UHF noise. I am taking about 300-1000kHz and about the mHz level. Sure they are way attenuated by Power Plant filters but the problem is that with frequency rises those minute ultra HF pulses pass across all filters like a hot knife passes through butter. The megaHz and gigaHz level is where SS devises are switching and no capacitive filtration will stop them. The PP2000 does not need to stop that noise as PP2000’s input DC-DC converter does not acknowledge the the existence of those frequencies. There is no continues line of wire in the PP2000 and anything above Nyquist Frequency just fundamentally not transparent for a switching unit.

So, in PP2000 we have no UHF noise but we have some crap under 15kHz. The small caps after DC-DC converter can deal with it but they are obviously not enough. The main filtration is take plays with the low inner-impedance of the battery itself. The battery acts as huge capacitor that shunts the sub 15kHz to ground. There is a kink in this wonderful scenario as I wrote before. With battery dies the battery inner impedance rises and it become to me less effective filter. Battery’s impedance is also frequency dependant. At low frequency or at DC the battery resistance is very low but it grows higher with frequency rises. Here is the quote:

http://www.powerstream.com/battery-frequency.htm

“Ultra low frequencies. These are frequencies measured in inverse hours or days. In this regime the battery acts like you would expect it to. At low frequency a battery will act like a current source plus resistance. All of the energy transfer will be due to ion movement through the electrolyte and none will be due to surface charge or capacitive storage.

Medium frequencies, 1kHz to 1 Hz you are dealing in the regime of ion movement. If you are trying to pull a 10 mSec pulse out of a battery you will be accessing surface charge and capacitive storage, but also charge due to charges moving across the electrolyte. By the induced charge theorem a charged particle doesn’t need to move all the way across from one electrode to another to realize this energy, an ion with a charge of one unit will induce a charge on the anode of 1/10 of a unit as it moves 1/10th of the distance from the cathode to the anode. But these ions move slowly compared to the electrons in a wire, and this shows up as an increased resistance. The shorter the pulse and the higher current drawn the more the internal resistance of the cell will show itself.

High frequencies for batteries are above 1kHz. In this regime impedance is a better term than resistance because capacitance and inductance come to play. Many types of batteries are spiral wound, which introduces more inductance than flat plates would, and of course all batteries are capacitors, having parallel plates separated by a distance. If the current is drawn from the battery in a series of short pulses at high frequency strange things can happen. For example you can get crazy oscillations in a feedback situation such as a switching power supply. In these kind of applications a capacitor across the battery lets the battery move into a lower frequency regime .”

Take a look at the very last paragraph. They are taking about feedback situations – that is exactly what we have in PP2000. Take a look what they propose: to shunt the battery with capacitor. A capacitor has opposite impedance curve to battery. Battery has ultra low impedance at low friar and high and high frequency. A capacitor is opposite – it has ultra low impedance ay HF. So, the presumption is that a cap will stabilize the filtration by battery, making PP2000 less sensitive to AC noise as battery gets feebler.

It will be very simple to test the validity of this idea. I was told that PP2000 can work with no battery at all, via some internal switch. So, what is needed to be done is to disengage the battery and to listen Sound, paying attention if the PP2000 performance fluctuates with AC power. If PP2000 will be affected more AC line more without the internal battery then juts adding a capacitance to the battery will cure all possible problems. There is even a space on the PP2000 to put in there a few caps….

Again, and I would like truly stress it, whoever I said above has to do ONLY with a properly operating and properly sounding PP2000. Unless your unit is 2-3 year old and your buttery is dead or dying then it shall not be any notable difference between sound during a day or from a day to day. At least I did not have it for a while. It look s like my new unit does not have it as well but I use it for too short time to be able to accumulate any further observations. What I got my rest PP2000 I bet I will make the shunting capacitor test…. If my plan is correct then the worst thing the I will have will be just a deeper level of PurePowering….