PS Audio AC Regenerators

You probably won’t get too many responses, the P20 was released in early April and the P12/P15 are shipping this week or next.  A few dealers got them earlier, but I don’t know who they are and where they are located.  You will also get more information from the PS Audio forums, especially in the coming weeks.

I saw a feature on PBS Nova show (topic: In Search of the Perfect Battery). In the show, they went to a factory in California that makes giant flywheels for energy storage (maybe six foot diameter, 4000 pounds). 
You could put one of these in your basement for virgin electricity -think of the low noise-floor! The P.S. Audio approach is similar -take electric from the grid and transform into pure, virgin juice!
I tried one of their early units (circa Y2K) but didn't hear much improvement. Think my local A/C was pretty good to begin with.

garypennstate
I have not owned the newer PS Audio regenerators, but i have and do own a P10. PS Audio makes some great stuff and they have good customer service. With that said i no longer use my P10. I found for me and my stereo system that the High Fidelity MC 6 Hemisphere worked better. They are less than half the price of the PS Audio regenerators. There is a trade off no surge or spike protection. The MC 6 Hemisphere is for front end equipment only NO amps. But my P10 would not do a big amp. Smaller amps plugged into the P10 sounded better plugged directly to the wall. There are other option out there cheeper than the regeneraters shop around first.

Thanks for the heads up on the MC 16 Hemisphere. I'll look into that one. PS Audio does make some great gear as I own both their Directwave CD transport and DAC. I'm also considering a balanced power unit by Equi=Tech. Read many good things about their products. Another good thing I like about PS Audio is that they do have a no questions asked full money back return policy.

I’m getting a new P12 in a few days. Currently have a Shunyata Hydra Talos with a Shunyata Zitron Alpha HC power cable. 

Hopefully the P12 will bring something better to my system. 

I will report back. 

I took advantage of a program to return my P10 and upgrade to a P15 and immediately, I noticed an improvement in bass, more detail and better sound stage, where the only change was the P10 to P15, no other changes in my system.

I presume that cleaner power for a DAC is important, that it supports better performance from the clocks, and since "bits are bits" but the timing of those bits is key, that's why I'm enjoying the improvement.

Still using my PS Audio Premier Power Plant going on 13 years now. It has been rock solid and works great. I know this model got poo-pooed but I have had nothing but great luck with it so far. It makes a difference for my front-end components and if it stopped working tomorrow, I would feel I got my money’s worth. I would likely get one of the newer PS models, but until then, I’m happy.

A friend brought over his P15 last weekend. We hooked up everything, ARC VT100 tube amp (~575W draw), ARC Ref1 preamp (90W), SMS-200, PSAudio DirectStream DAC and P15 had no problem. System sounded much better than the wall outlet, which is a 20A dedicated outlet. I am 10 miles from a nuke power plant, with underground electric service, but the P15 still showed the typical chopped off waveform peak and said it had 4.6%THD. I was surprised at that, as I always thought my power was good. My power is relatively is quiet of HF noise but the distorted waveform seems to be more important than the noise. The very noticeable improvements suggested something was indeed not optimal with my power. We changed amps to a 60W solid state integrated and the improvement was just as noticeable compared to wall outlet. We were surprised at this, because many previous power conditioners we've tried over 12 years had no noticeable effect on this SS integrated amp because it has a very stout PS. Even a big Equitech gave no benefit to it. I will be getting a P12.

2. garypennstate

I recently purchased the regenerator PS Audio P5.
These new models P2, P15 or P20, I don’t know.
What I can say is that it’s worth, the AC out is cleaner and the THD is low.
These models are very expensive but if you have US $ .....
Go to discussions in the section I started about AC regenerators.
There you wil find good opinions for your decision.

Good luck

Will do. Thank you.

Garypennstate - I have the P20 and love it with one exception.  I cannot plug my ARC 250SE Monoblocks into the P20 or it will shutdown.  It does a great job cleaning up power and provides a darker background and allows greater detail, transparency, dimensionality and makes my system more musical.

Update. Although I've read many rave reviews about the P20 and really wanted it, at $10,000 it was a bit out of my price range. I went ahead and bought the Equi=Tech Q2 balanced power conditioner for $4300 and also had an electrician come in and install a dedicated 20 amp line/outlet at a cost of $250. Resulted in a  big improvement to my system with the music sounding much clearer and more defined. I'm very happy with the Q2 and the dedicated 20A circuit.

garypennstate

I've bought through Audiogon an used P5 and I'm very satisfied.
Research used P10 or P5. No quality sound differences.

@jonaiken - Did you try a staggered start-up with you ARC amps? Could be a full-system surge, at turn-on, was causing too big a load for the P20.
Did you try firing them up one-at-a-time?

Dweller - I did try staggering one-at-a-time with no change in the results.  ARC amps drop my electrical outlet voltage reading by 5-6 volts when plugged directly into the outlets - so when I plug the amps into the P20 and turn them on they shut down after a few seconds. Consequently, I filter my ARC amps through Shunyata Denali 2000T’s - one for each amp and my amps are happy