preamp-how important is separate enclosure for pwr supply?


High end preamps tend to house power supply in a separate enclosure.  McIntosh proclaims they do it well by insulating pwr supply within same cab as everything else.  
How meaningful is this to do?  Like idea as maybe this allows better pwr supply mgmt with all the extra space to work with.  Sooo much attention on power supply.
emergingsoul

Showing 1 response by atmasphere

The power supply is always critical!


We have five power transformers in the power supply of our MP-1. As a preamp in a single box, the box would have been heavy and enormous. Even with the use of toroids we've seen radiated magnetic fields which could be picked up by the phono section, so it seemed prudent to put all that in a separate chassis. We don't use steel since steel is ferro-magnetic; we found that it sounds better when we use something that's non-magnetic. Of course that means there's no shielding at audio frequencies, but since we use fully differential balanced circuitry that's really not been a problem.