PS Audio Power Plant Premier

[Ammonite Audio]

I have been thinking of getting a mains regenerator for some time, since my mains here hovers around 250v and is not too good in terms of distortion nasties either. Martin T is an advocate of the PPP and his system certainly sounds pretty good fed from one. So a few of weeks ago I was about to buy one off eBay when I noticed a one year old example on http://hifi-adverts.co.uk/ , so I struck a satisfactory deal and it's been with me for the last 2 weeks, feeding my system (listed below).

I thought that the PPP is a regenerator, like the ExactPower that I tried before and did not particularly rate; however it's a clever device that applies on-the-fly correction to the incoming mains. At least that's how I understand it, but anyone curious can go to PS Audio's website for technoblurb. Whatever, this compact box can supply up to 1500w of power, which is enough, without getting red hot or inflating the electricity bills. It can be set so that when turned off, the outputs are still live, which is novel, but nevertheless points to the PPP being a bit like a piece of wire with clever electronics applying correction signals as required. Maybe that's why the quality of the incoming mains lead is so important, as I found out. The display is quite informative, showing the incoming mains voltage, incoming mains distortion, output voltage and output distortion. There's a small set screw underneath for adjusting the output voltage.

Since my mains is very high, I wanted to set the output voltage to be no more than 230v, but I soon found out that the PPP has a limited range of adjustment. I could get it to a tad over 230v, but the distortion rose to very nearly the same as on the incoming mains. Adjusting to 235v resulted in output distortion of 0.4% against around 2.2% on the input, and all my gear seems happy with that.

One option is something called 'Multiwave' which is supposed to improve efficiency of power supplies; however I'm not sure that I can detect what it does. If I can sense anything, it's slightly in the negative, so this option remains switched off. Of much more interest is the 'Cleanwave' option, which applies a degaussing signal to demagnetise transformer cores connected to the PPP. It works - the system sound is much more graceful after a 60 second burst of Cleanwave. All options are available via the remote control, which is handy.

What about the sound, then? In short, I now get the same sort of 'late night' listening bliss at any time of day. I superficial terms, the bass is cleaner and deeper, but it is the lack of hardness and stress that makes listening a constant pleasure. I've been enjoying Solveig Slettahjell's CD 'Silver' and this has been simply breathtaking since the PPP has been set up properly - astonishingly atmospheric, detailed, intimate. Simply lovely, and my neighbour is probably sick to the back teeth of this Norwegian singer now, but I am not!

I mentioned mains leads and this definitely warrants a few more words. I did not have enough quality leads (Vertex Roraima with Furutech uber-bling connectors) to hook up all the gear as well as the PPP, so I made do with the supplied kettle lead. The resulting sound was OK, but not exactly inspiring - certainly not good enough to buy the PPP had I been demming it from a dealer. Moving one of the Vertex Roraimas onto the incoming mains indicated what the PPP could do, but it was a PITA swapping leads over from CD to vinyl etc. I could hear the potential, though. Luckily, I had the option to try some more Vertex leads that are being flogged off, so in went a Roraima+ lead, which I believe contains some mains filtering as well as acoustic filtering (the ordinary Roraimas have acoustic filtering only). Dear God, what a difference! The system has literally come alive with such power, grace, dynamics, tonal colour, etc, etc. It's completely wonderful! But the PPP would not be doing so well without such a good mains lead. Reading Martin Colloms' review in HiFi Critic, he came to much the same conclusion.

So, I am happy to have bought such a transforming piece of kit for not far off half the price of a new item. It's an audiophile bargain.

[John]

Yes clean mains makes a big difference I am really glad it worked well for you

[Ammonite Audio]

Having played around a bit more with mains leads, the Vertex Roraima+ came out, and in went the ordinary 'cooking' Roraima lead. Much to my surprise, I prefer the cheaper cable, without a filtering network - details of notes are better portrayed and there is a more natural feel to the music, in comparison with the more expensive lead. That's a bonus!

A reality check followed, whereby I reinstated my DIY-wired Olsson distribution block. I'm pleased to report that the PPP does significantly improve all aspects of musical reproduction in my system - without it, there is little sense of musical occasion. It all sounds a bit drab and mechanical compared with the PPP-fed system.

Now for a bit of Foo. The PPP has to sit on the floor in front of my rack, as there is presently nowhere else for it to go. Supporting it on Stillpoints (OEM version) brings about a rather remarkable transformation: playing Solveig Slettahjell again, a real sense of musical anticipation is apparent that is pretty much absent sans Stillpoints.

So, this remarkable device needs just as much care with regard to mains leads and supports as any other piece of audio equipment.

[twelvebears]

Glad to hear such positive comments about mains regeneration. I've managed to obtain a PurePower 2000 at a great price and am looking forward to hooking it up.

[MartinT]

Hey, Hugo, I'm really pleased it worked out for you. I went down the path of mains lead (a high current Kimber Powerkord for me) and siting (on my isolated Solid Tech system rack). I slightly prefer Multiwave to standard, but there's not much in it. And Cleanwave is incredible in its 'cleaning' powers at the start of a listening session.

My PPP is a relatively small percentage of the cost of the whole system but I consider it essential, so much so that I would prefer to downgrade other components than take it out.

[John]

I agree good mains treatment benefit from good isolation really helps to tighten things up for me it had similar results to putting in the unit

[John]

My PPP is a relatively small percentage of the cost of the whole system but I consider it essential, so much so that I would prefer to downgrade other components than take it out.


Totally get where you come from for me my balanced mains is one of the last equipment I would get rid off

[MartinT]

But the PPP would not be doing so well without such a good mains lead. Reading Martin Colloms' review in HiFi Critic, he came to much the same conclusion.

When you think about it, that single lead becomes the one through which your entire system is fed. It stands to reason that it becomes a critical choice.

[John]

I also find the lead going into the my balanced transformer critical to optium performance the leads feeding the equipment from the unit are not as critical.

[MartinT]

I also find the lead going into the my balanced transformer critical to optium performance the leads feeding the equipment from the unit are not as critical.

My findings exactly, John.

[jandl100]

Interesting review Shuggie.

I used to have an early PS Audio P300 mains regenerator. Good sonic improvement but as well as limited power capability, it had somewhat noisy fans and got bloody hot!

The PPP solves all of these issues and I must admit that it has been on my Want List for a while now. Your review has pushed it further up the list!

But of most immediate interest and wholly acceptable to my bank balance .....


I've been enjoying Solveig Slettahjell's CD 'Silver' and this has been simply breathtaking since the PPP has been set up properly - astonishingly atmospheric, detailed, intimate. Simply lovely,

.... so I've just bought a copy on eBay for £8! :) (Ridiculous pricing on Amazon.uk ... getting on for £30)
I don't usually go for the Jazz thing, but given your enthusiasm I'll give it a try!

[Ali Tait]

John,what are you using to get your balanced mains?

[John]

A gigantic 3kva transformer Blo__y heavy but a lot more costly than your standard transformer, very happy with the performance but sometimes wonder if I would of got a better deal with a more industrial unit..
Ali do you think the quality of the transformer matters

[Reid Malenfant]

<snip>A gigantic 3kva transformer, very happy with the performance but sometimes wonder if I would of got a better deal with a more industrial unit..
do you think the quality of the transformer matters
It depends on how much power your system will actually be drawing through it in all honesty. It also depends on what type of core the transformer has & if it's an E/I transformer, how the laminations have been stacked. A transformer of the E/I type can be built so that it has very little magnetising current, or it can be built a bit more sloppily by say using 3 or 4 E sections together & the same with the I sections. Best to have it so it's one E & I & then the next E section covering the I & vice versa all the way though.

Lets just save that with a 3KVA transformer you'll have no problem with 2KW of power draw ;) Magnetic losses won't be too bad & thermal losses in the windings shouldn't be an issue either.

[John]

With my unit I use it to power the two 300w sub plate amps and the DAC adding the power amp degrades the sound

[MartinT]

That's a good feature of the PPP - it has five outlets each its own zone, so equipment don't interact with each other.

[Reid Malenfant]

Interesting thing this PPP, i happen to own a P600 one of the older models which i'll hopefully soon incorporate into my system, powering the front end.

Having thought about the way the PPP works it wouldn't be impossible to DIY one ;) From what i gather they aren't fully regenerating the mains, what they are doing is in a way similar to some rather expensive old Technics power amplifiers. Effectively they have an amplifier of lowish voltage & high current capability that uses the live mains as its ground (this may sound odd but bear with me). As the amplifier still has an input this can be used to correct any distortion on the mains.

What they must be doing is creating a clean sign wave that is in phase (from mains zero crossing) & then stepping this up to say 230V & feeding this to the amplifier input. Remember that the amp is floating on the mains so any difference between the dirty mains & the clean (in phase) signal is fed to the amp & the output of the amp drives your mains equipment. If the dirty mains is at 200V say on a portion of the mains cycle but a pure sign wave dictates that it should be say 206V AC, this 6V is the difference & is fed to the amps input resulting in the amp swinging an extra 6V to give clean mains :) The amp would need to be unity gain so it worked as it should.

This wouldn't be impossible to build, in fact now that i have just bought a pair of 3.3KVA transformers to make balanced mains, i'm seriously considering going this one step further & adding a pair of correction amps to the balanced outputs :lolsign:

[John]

Please report back how it goes it sounds a fascinating project

[Reid Malenfant]

Please report back how it goes it sounds a fascinating project
Sure thing, though i need a bit of information ;)

Shuggie, can i ask you what is the most distortion you have seen on the incoming mains? Thanks in advance for your reply :)

[Ali Tait]

A gigantic 3kva transformer Blo__y heavy but a lot more costly than your standard transformer, very happy with the performance but sometimes wonder if I would of got a better deal with a
more industrial unit..
Ali do you think the qu
ality of the transformer matters

Think Reid has already answered that! Where did you get the trannie from?

[MartinT]

Hi Mark

You have described the PPP perfectly, I had the opportunity to hear Paul McGowan of PS Audio explain it to me in person at one of the shows. This I believe accounts for the fact that the output distortion is optimally low when you set the output voltage to be very close to the input voltage.

My local voltage is high at 250V and the output is set to 241V. Input distortion is 2.8% and output distortion 0.4%.

P.S. isn't your moniker a character from Stephen Baxter novels? Great stories!

[Ammonite Audio]

Shuggie, can i ask you what is the most distortion you have seen on the incoming mains? Thanks in advance for your reply

The incoming mains distortion is around 2.2% and output distortion 0.4%, so similar to Martin's.

[John]

Shuggie off topic ques but what the heck how do u get on with the ps audio phono stage when in my system it was really hard not to get it to spike and lacked dynamics but read other people get good results;

[Ammonite Audio]

Shuggie off topic ques but what the heck how do u get on with the ps audio phono stage when in my system it was really hard not to get it to spike and lacked dynamics but read other people get good results;

I have had really good results with the GCPH using a MM cartridge (Ortofon 2M Black) but with many MC cartridges, I'd go along with what you say above. MartinT recommended the Bob's Devices Cinemag SUT for use with the AT33PTG and I have to say the SUT really works a treat feeding the GCPH. Technically, I know that a SUT is not necessary, but it works for me. The gain control on the GCPH is a bit of a mystery to me, I have to say - I have fiddled around with it according to PS Audio's instructions but I generally find it sounds best set to higher gain than recommended. Overall, I am happy with it as it's nice sounding and very quiet (much more so than my old Trichord Dino/Dino+). Paul Hynes is building me a new valve phono amp which I expect to be much better than the GCPH.

[John]

Yes imagine the Paul Hynes phonostage will take things up a good few notches

[Reid Malenfant]

Hi Mark

You have described the PPP perfectly, I had the opportunity to hear Paul McGowan of PS Audio explain it to me in person at one of the shows. This I believe accounts for the fact that the output distortion is optimally low when you set the output voltage to be very close to the input voltage.

My local voltage is high at 250V and the output is set to 241V. Input distortion is 2.8% and output distortion 0.4%.

P.S. isn't your moniker a character from Stephen Baxter novels? Great stories!
Actually i'm not 100% sure that i have ;) With the method i described it'd be more than possible to get the distortion down to the kind of level you'd get from a standard power amplifier. 0.01% or lower wouldn't be out of the question, having thought about it there is another way of going about it. I notice that someone mentioned that it can be switched off with no mains interuption, doing it the way i mentioned previously might well be slightly problematic if this was the case. What i'm now thinking they have done is to place a small transformer on the mains output & feed the mains through something like the equivalent of a high current 12V AC winding. They could then measure the distortion on the mains & feed a second winding on that transformer to add or subtract whatever was needed to get a lower distortion output. This could be done with a reasonably small amplifier driving the second winding, it might also explain how come the distortion is still just under say 0.5%. I have seen similar things done with audio amps so it's definately a possibility. The technique is known as feedforward error correction :) Your description of keeping the voltages close for the least distortion (now that i looked at what you wrote once more) would back this theory up even more.

You see if you switched off the thing all that would happen is the mains would keep flowing through the low voltage high current winding & out to your equipment. In effect it'd act like a bit of an inductor & still do the most miniscule bit of filtering but as far as the mains would be concerned it'd be like it wasn't there. This fits the theory very well indeed.

Cheers for the mains readings by the way. Yes you are 100% spot on about the name :lol: Reid Malenfant out of Stephen Baxters' manifold trilogy ;)

The incoming mains distortion is around 2.2% and output distortion 0.4%, so similar to Martin's.
Cheers Shuggie, it's definately beginning to sound like they are using feedforward to my way of thinking.