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Purepower APS a reliable product?

To those who are considering buying a regenerating power supply, I want to share with you my experience. I bought one a Purepower 1050i back in mid 2010. It worked good and provided a dark and quiet background for my system. I was happy with the unit until about 11 months ago. It just failed one day when I returned home from work. It was off itself without any display. I tried to turn it on but a message came up as short circuit and some smoke came out from inside. I can smell it too.

I contacted Purepoweraps in Canada for repair and finally agreed to send the two boards back. Sending the whole equipment is too expensive. It then went quiet for nearly three months and no one ever return to my emails. I finally called them despite i am in a 10 hours different time zone. I was told they were waiting for parts and should be fixed the following week. After more than 5 months, I finally got the two boards back. I plugged them in correctly but not able to turn it on. I contacted purepower again and they ask me to check connections, all correct. Disconnect the battery and all other sorts of means. All failed to turn it on. After I chased a few more emails, no more reply and went quiet again. Despite chasing for another few months, I got no feedback and answer. I finally tried the local dealer and they told me they dropped the line and now selling PS Audio only. There were technical problems but he was not willing to provide more details.

I tried another dealer in another country but I was told they got no parts and not able to repair for me.

Early this year, Purepower launched a new line of products. I discussed with the Marketing Manager of Purepower and suggested a trade in offer to get the new one. I was promised with a proposal and it never comes up.

It is a good product. But not reliable. More important, the technical support is not available at all. No customer services.

If you consider buying one, think carefully. Good luck.

The purpose is purely to share the experience. I may be the unluckly one or I am just one of a couple of dozen or a couple of hundred unlucky one. May be you can share your experience.
aressiu
zephyr24069's avatar
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zephyr24069
1,243 posts
 
Sad but probably the sane thing to tell yourself just so you can move past it...try opening a case with the Ontario authorities.
dagordon
2 posts
 
I have started a website to collect evidence of PurePower's fraudulent activities:

http://www.purepowerscam.com/

I have also purchased purepoweraps.net and purepowerfraud.com which redirect there. I will be collecting evidence and posting it on this site.
harold_tichenor
3 posts
 

Just to help update this thread.  I recently bought a PurePower + 1500 directly from the company.  My experience dealing with them was excellent and the APS itself appears to do all it is intended to do without issue.  I have only had it a week but so far all is well.  Richard has been very clear and very helpful including upgrading the battery in my unit to lithium and finding me an excellent alternative rackmounting system for the unit.  

harold_tichenor
3 posts
 

An issue did arise last year. I noticed a power hum in my Bryston PP300 amps. This a mechanical hum in the amp itself and not in the audio line. I tried the amps just connected to the mains without using the PurePower conditioner. There was no hum in the unconditioned line. I contacted PurePower and after some back and forth this is what Richard told me:

While the audiophile’s explanation of DC in AC has some technical validity - its actually more accurately defined as DC Bias. Think of a sine wave in which the crossing point is not at 0 volts - i,e its waveform could vary from -125 to + 115 instead of -120 to +120.

 

That is a form of asymmetry - which causes the transformer windings to vibrate and thus hum. It does not happen with these monoblocs without a PurePower involved.

 

However, in the PurePower case, there will not be any DC offset in the AC output. We have analyzed cases of toroid hum with sophisticated Power Quality analyzers - and you can see a distortion in the current waveform that is only observed in one side of the wave. In case you are interested I attach a waveform capture. You can see the current distortion on one side of the wave while the voltage sinewave is perfect. This distortion is asymetrical, and is, we believe, caused by the amplifier power supply drawing current unevenly. I’m not an expert is Audio Power supply design - so I’ve never figured out the exact technical reason.

 

The PurePower reacts by supplying this non symmetrical current. Usually the utility supply does not respond - and thus the distorted current waveform does not form. If you observe the PurePower current waveform under any other load you will see a near perfect symmetrical wave.

 

It might be useful for us to send you a data logging analyzer. You can then run your system for a short time with and without the PurePower regenerator and return it for analysis."

and then this:

"In slightly oversimplified terms, the utility has a higher value of the electrical characteristic called stiffness in the electrical supply - essentially a function of the supply impedance that resists the imposed load - thus the utility simply does not respond to the current demand fast enough to create the asymmetry. The PurePower does react and supplies the change in current quickly - which is also why it is so perfect for meeting the rapidly changing current demand of the amplifier as it tries to match the audio signal power needs.

Our preference would be for the damn toroid’s in audio amplifiers to be built to not hum - which the best do not. Unfortunately some amplifier brands use unpotted inexpensive toroid’s because they don’t consider the power supply worthy of the same quality considerations as the audio circuits.

Bryston does use good quality Plitron toroids - so I was surprised to see the 300 exhibit hum.

I’ll have Damian give me instructions for the PQ meter.

We have been successful in "balancing" asymmetric power supplies in the past - but haven’t used the balancing circuit for some years because our latest circuits are much less likely to cause transformer hum."

I asked to go ahead and either try the PQ meter or the new upgraded model that might eliminate this problem. But now they are silent and I have not been able to get them to help with this problem. The technical explanation is beyond my limited understanding of electronics, but it still seems to me a power conditioner should not lead to the introduction of an artifact.

Harold

 

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