Power regeneration - good idea? PS audio?

Do you think P20 will improve the sound of your bigger amps like MA2 or 3 on P20 regenerator? I ask because you specified that P20 works well with your "smaller" amps.

It may well. Our OTLs are definitely affected by line voltage, although the MA-3 has built-in line regulation.

would you recommend plugging your amps, which i own, into a ps audio regen?

It depends on the amps and the model of regenerator. If one of our smaller amps and one of the bigger regenerators, yes- certainly worth a try. The regenerator should be one of the newer ones made in the last few years- the older ones don't seem to like the constant heavy load that our OTLs put on the line.

It would seem the existence of large capacitors inside an amplifier would mitigate the impact of a voltage decline temporarily.

@jumia This is correct only if its for a second or two. If longer, a few minutes or hours then no. If the voltage is sagging it means there is more draw on the AC power- and voltage drops are occurring in substation power transformers and the transformer on the telephone pole outside your house. When this happens its guaranteed that the AC waveform will also be more distorted. Its this distortion that a good power conditioner is intended to correct.

Fluke Instruments is a well known test equipment manufacturer in the electronics industry. Here’s a short primer from them regarding this topic:

https://www.fluke.com/en-us/learn/blog/power-quality/harmonics-electrical-systems

You can see that addition filter caps in an amplifier will have no bearing on this issue whatsoever.

An amplifier would have to be deficient, defective, or broken for this claim and  assertion to be accurate.

A lot depends on the amplifier! In this case it was a tube amplifier. Tube amps have a filament circuit and when the voltage on the filaments decreases the transconductance of the power tubes falls off- combine that with reduced plate voltage and you can see substantial losses of power. But you will see a power loss with any amplifier!

Is there that much of a difference between 117 V and 121 V coming through your system?

I've seen a 3 volt change like that rob an amp of 40 watts of power. But a conditioner does more than that- a good one will provide a clean AC waveform, thus allowing the power supplies in audio equipment to operated as designed.

@chungjh I think you'll find that the P20 does a better job. The Tourus lacks active circuitry and if you look at their website you'll see that they don't have a spec for distortion on the output waveform.

FWIW, if you want to know if a given power conditioner will do you any good, just look at the distortion spec of the conditioned power. If you don't see one, that tells you that if there is distortion on the incoming power it will be there on the output as well.

A proper power conditioner will always have a distortion spec.

PSAudio specifies 0.5% for their P20.

@chungjh We have a P20 and customers running the P15. The P20 easily supports our smaller amps and the rest of the system. We've also worked with the Elgar power conditioners and have customers running those. Some of them are so large you can literally run the entire audio room circuit off of one conditioner.

Most conditioners IMO are glorified power strips. For them we generally recommend running our amps plugged directly into the wall.

I am referring to the regenerator from PS audio not a power conditioner. Your reference to me being false is not accurate. If you have a stable voltage from your outlet you don’t need a source of addl power offered by the PS audio 15.

@jumia 

My prior statement was correct.

The PSAudio is a type of power conditioner. Its called a 'regenerator' since it uses a sine wave oscillator driving an amplifier which in turn drives a power transformer whose output is that of the unit. Literally it builds the AC output from scratch.

So it can run off dirty power and produce clean power of the correct voltage.

It sounds to me as if you've mis-characterized their claims, at least insofar as their website is concerned:

https://www.psaudio.com/products/directstream-power-plant-15/

I don't see anything there that says its an additional power source as you say and nothing misleading- I am certain they can demonstrate their claims. Its intention is to provide clean power, which can be in short supply anywhere in the country. IOW this isn't just about AC line voltage stability.

That big gray cylinder on the power poles, possibly in your back alley is a power transformer, and if loaded past 50% of its rated capacity will make enough 5th harmonic that it can easily mess with audio equipment (and other equipment- motors and the like) in your house. The power company has no concerns if the load goes past 50% as long as it does not exceed 100%. But many audiophiles have noticed their equipment seems to sound better at night- this often corresponds to lower load on those transformers and so the power can be cleaner. Something like the PSAudio allows you to have that better sound all the time.

A power cord can have a beneficial effect (Ohm's Law is why- they can develop voltage drops across them) but they in no way can filter harmonics of the AC line!

Relating to power storage within an amp if you’re voltage coming out of the outlet remain stable, even on very hot days, then I think the only concern is spikes in Power needs to handle Sonic changes therefore it would seem the capacitors within a well designed lamp can more than handle Power needs.

Therefore it would seem the needed power storage reserves of a power regenerator are unnecessary given a stable voltage supply.

@jumia 

This statement is false. A power conditioner is not an additional source of power reserve nor is that what they are for. Spikes are a minor thing that are easily dealt with- you con't need a conditioner for that. Things like sagging voltage and the 5th harmonic are not! You need active circuitry to perform this task properly. Elgar made a power conditioner decades ago that was capable of this (and also regulated line voltage without limiting current) but it was marketed to industrial and commercial applications, not high end audio. The PSAudio conditioner is capable of eliminating a 5th harmonic and to my knowledge is the only high end audio conditioner with this ability.

So you have two choices if you want to do conditioning properly: find an old Elgar and have it refurbished (FWIW if something like that were made today by a high end audio company it would easily be the same pricing as the PSAudio stuff) or get a PSAudio.