Power factor
The Power Plant has a feature that, as far as I know, is unique among equipment offered for audiophile use: variable AC frequency. This so-called Power Factor allows AC frequency to be…
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Another major benefit of the Power Plant was in the area of rhythm and pace. I generally find differences of this sort harder to pin down than, say, tonal balance, resolution, or imaging, but with the Power Plant in the system, I was more aware of music's rhythmic components, whether the lilt of The Beauty of the North (Dorian DOR-90190) or the exuberance of Boogeyin! (Wildchild! 02452).
Like the Muse processor, the CAT SL-1 preamplifier has a highly sophisticated power supply, the latest, Ultimate version having higher-value capacitors, more RC filters for better power-line-filter performance, and decoupled cascaded regulation across the entire audioband. CAT designer Ken Stevens is one of those who strongly discourage the use of outboard PLCs, and, indeed, I have previously found the CAT preamp to perform best without such devices. But, as good as the CAT's power supply is, the preamp sounds better when plugged into the Power Plant. The differences are similar to those I…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: AC synthesizer. Input: 120V/60Hz. Output: 115V/50-120Hz. Distortion: 0.1% (0.05% typical).
Dimensions: 8.85" W by 5.5" H by 19" D. Weight: 30 lbs.
Serial number of sample reviewed: 0302 (second sample).
Price: $995. Approximate number of dealers: 10. Factory-direct: 30-day return privilege, buyer pays shipping both ways. Warranty: 3 years parts & labor, transferable.
Manufacturer: PS Audio International, P.O. Box 2037, Avon, CO 81620. Tel: (877) 772-8340. Fax: (970) 845-0914. Web: www.psaudio.com.
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Digital source: PS Audio Lambda Two transport, PS Audio Ultralink Two and Muse Two Ninety Six digital processors, Rotel RCD-971 CD player.
Analog source: Linn LP12 turntable (fully updated), Ittok tonearm, AudioQuest AQ-7000nsx cartridge.
Preamplifier: Convergent Audio Technology SL-1 Ultimate.
Power amplifiers: Rotel RB-1090, Parasound HCA-3500.
Loudspeakers: Dunlavy SC-IV/A.
Cables: TARA Labs The Two interconnects and speaker cables, Illuminati Orchid digital link, TARA Labs Decade power cables.
Accessories: Argent RoomLenses, Bright…
FollowUp from Stereophile May 2000, Vol.23 No.5
PS Audio P300 Power Plant: A major highlight of my life as an audiophile was to have the Mark Levinson No.32 Reference preamplifier spend a few weeks in my system last fall. Reviewed in the January 2000 Stereophile by Jonathan Scull, the magnificent No.32 enabled my music to communicate more directly than I had ever experienced from my system.
Paradoxically, it was better in this regard than not having a preamp at all. A while back I bought an all-digital Z-Systems rdp-1 to control volume and digital source switching, so I could feed…
Stereophile December 2000 Follow-Up: PS Audio P-300 Power Plant with MultiWave
By Robert Deutsch
As far as I've been able to determine, the first Stereophile review of a power-line conditioner (PLC) appeared in the April 1988 issue: Lewis Lipnick's review of the Adcom ACE-115 power-line filter/spike suppressor. Since then, devices designed to improve AC power have become a major audiophile product category, and by 1994 they'd grown popular enough to be allotted a separate section in Stereophile's "Recommended Components."
In 1999, the PLC world was stood on its ear by the…
P-300 with MultiWave part 2 Goldberg then suggested another variant: adding a single odd harmonic to each sinewave fundamental to produce "partial" squarewaves, with flat tops that would allow capacitors in the power supply to be charged for a longer time (footnote 1). In the production version of the MultiWave board, the user can select either a pure sinewave (variable from 50Hz to 120Hz, as before), or one of nine MultiWaves that are sequences of sinewaves or partial squarewaves. For example, the SS1 setting has a 50Hz partial squarewave followed by two 120Hz partial squarewaves; SS4 is a…
P-300 with MultiWave part 3 My final test of the differences made by MultiWaves came about accidentally. I was playing with various settings, and turned off the system at the end of the day. A friend came by the next day to listen to the system and I fired it up. He was duly impressed, and the sound of the system was certainly very good in general terms, but I was a bit disappointed—the sound just didn't seem as open, as unrestrained dynamically as it had been in the past. I then thought of checking the P-300's display. (In my system, I have the display facing away from the listening area.)…
Sidebar: The PS Audio Lab Cable
The way Paul McGowan tells the story on PS Audio's website, the Lab Cable was developed because of a need to have a sonically neutral power cable in the reference system used for the final voicing of the Power Plant. They tried a number of power cables, from off-the-shelf shielded Belden to $2000/meter audiophile cables, but found each had distinctive sonic characteristics.
So they decided to build their own, based on two principles: minimum resistance/impedance and maximum shielding. They used 6-gauge, 1057-strand copper wire for each conductor,…
Robert Deutsch wrote about the P500 Power Plant in February 2006 (Vol.29 No.2):
The product responsible for the return of PS Audio to the audiophile market was the P300 Power Plant. Introduced in 1999, the Power Plant is essentially a power amplifier designed to serve as the AC power source for audio and video equipment, producing clean, low-distortion 115V/60Hz AC (or whatever voltage/frequency is standard in a particular country). While some people thought that this power-regeneration approach represented overkill and an inefficient way of dealing with noise and voltage variations in…