Smart power supplies for turntable

$1200?!

Be careful with the advice so far, I would just about bet the only other one that speaks from experience is kingharold, and he "wouldn’t stake his life" on there being any difference at all. $1200 in my book should be "Yes indeed obviously better now let me list the ways." Everyone else, would love to see them chime in again only this time letting us know what experience it is based on. (Would LOVE to see the guy admit his platter is 1mm off center!🤣🤣🤣)

I’ve run the same motor off AC, battery, and battery connected to and disconnected from charger. Heard distinctly the difference in each case- AC good, battery better, disconnected best of all. This was with a lead acid motorcycle battery on a Teres motor. Roughly equivalent, if not superior, to your CA. Solid experience in other words.

Battery power on my Teres brought a more relaxed nuanced and detailed sound to the music. Dynamics weren’t so much greater but were rendered with a lot more subtle shadings making them more lifelike. No one thing stands out as being different, yet the whole effect is to draw you more into the music. None of this speed stability BS. If people actually tried and heard it they would know. The errors people are talking about - 1mm - are just absurd. By the time you can hear it clearly enough to identify as a speed problem you are already beyond lost. Vintage 35 year old $350 Technics are better than this.

Since your CA is already designed to run on their optional 12VDC supply this means all you have to do is get a 12V lithium battery and charger and wire it up with a switch. Flip the switch to disconnect the charger when playing, flip it back again go charge when done. I was looking into these for my Soundsmith Strain gauge before deciding to go with Rens Heijnis and there are really good lithium battery rigs made for electric bicycles that are compact and already set up with wires and charging circuit. Couple hundred bucks and should be a piece of cake to adapt. Run your rig for days on a charge.

That's the spirit. I've done what you're contemplating, convert motor to battery supply. Many years ago, didn't know near what I do now. Also my AC was dedicated line, well above average. Battery was several feet away, long wires. Even so the battery was a worthwhile improvement. Later on I modified the motor pod to enclose the battery. Nowadays, better batteries, should be even better. 

Rens Heijnis in The Netherlands is modding my strain gauge to lithium battery, along with some other things. It is a sound approach and in your case a good candidate for DIY as well.

To clarify, I have a Clearaudio turntable with a 12v DC motor. Clearaudio indicates  that their DC power supply is voltage stabilized, yet they sell a separate 12v battery power supply. This suggests the stock power supply has some limitations. 

Every design has limitations, they just don't tell you about them. "Voltage stabilized" can mean all sorts of things. But there are guys with $50k UPS regenerators who still hear differences with time of day, running off AC vs regenerator, etc. None of this stuff is perfect. Not to the degree we can hear.

A battery is a chemical process. It has been a while you may not be old enough to remember but the old lead acid batteries would fizz out explosive gas when charging. Might even see the bubbles sometimes on some of them. Newer batteries work on different molecules but the idea is the same. None of them produces power as perfectly smooth and silent as we want.

Then the power has to go from where it's stored to where it's needed. At low voltage this gets real important real fast. What I'm getting at, there is no silver bullet. Just a whole bunch of things that can be done better or worse. Study enough of them, you might well be able to make a better battery supply than CA.

The good news is they already have a battery option for your motor. This means it will be real easy to convert to battery. Probably all you need to do is connect to where the option would connect. I would use lithium ion and make sure to use a charger that not only cuts off when playing records but that disconnects from AC as well. Without this feature RFI will ride right across the battery and this noise will detract from performance. Been there. Done that.

R. Daneel Olivaw

Battery power supplies are great for turntables, phono stages, and all kinds of low power components. They all run on DC anyway. The trick is to get the right voltage to the right place, something they don't tend to make very easy. But it is worth doing even if you do have pretty good AC. Simply because the battery supply is disconnected from and eliminates all the RFI and noise riding on the AC.

Sbooster and Farad both make very high quality power supplies. Sbooster is AC, essentially just a higher grade power supply. Farad is virtually a big super cap battery supply. Going with batteries you could just buy litium ion batteries in the right voltage and figure out how to hook em up. Use a charger with a relay designed to stop charging so the unit is disconnected from AC when playing music.

I had a battery supply just like this for my Teres turntable motor. It was a nice improvement over AC, and consisted of little more than a motorcycle battery and a charger on a circuit board. 

The trick isn't really the power supply. Those are easy. The trick is getting the power supply connected. Not that hard, it can be done, but usually not plug and play.