PS Audio's new Power Plant  

I've got one ordered but it won't be here till December or early Jan. Seems like they're including a new filter: http://www.psaudio.com/newsletters/10-06.asp First shipments are due sometime this month.

Well they have delayed shipping of it because they suddenly invented a new filter they wanted to put in it. If you follow any of the threads in the PSAudio forums they have been talking about it.

Second if you also follow any of the threads in the forums they have you will see them deny any kind of warrenty or repair on PSAudio gear and your own gear if there is any power surges, lightning strikes etc... Most companies that offer "surge suppresion" will deny claims on the units. Even though PSAudio is full of great advertising on the website saying they fully protect you, I have read the threads of them where they deny service.

Third if you look at the amount of wattage these units service it doesnt come up to much, a couple of components and you have used up all the power on them. Just do the math of your gear and see how much it really can hold.

Fourth if you know the company has known issues in the first place with other things they sell, then why go to them?

Also ask them for specs on any of the products they sell.

The only real solution for you is whole house units. Chu who posts here can fill you in on those.

The new power plant outputs up to 1500 watts. As for lightening strikes, I know of nothing that would protect you if your house took a direct hit.

PS Audio is very customer oriented and helpful if there is a problem with their gear.

As for "known issues" I'm not quite sure what you mean speco2003.

Steve

Speco2003, for what it's worth I've received terrific customer service from PS Audio over the last four years. There are many companies I'm leary of doing business with, but PS Audio isn't among them.

Bulldogger, I will be getting one as soon as they come out - I get dealer pricing due to my AVS review being used back on the first Stereophile ad for the P300. Talk to me then and I will let you know whether I will keep it and sell one or both of my P600s.

Your right about the nothing really protecting spikes, yet on psaudios very own website they say the ones they sell do. Some of the people who bought units from them had strikes hit and PS denied service. If you wish me to link to the false advertising on their site I will as well as the PSAudio forums where numerous customers have had issues that cant seem to be resolved.

Paul Mcgowan repeatadly makes outrageous claims yet when pressed for real data he wont produce it only a trust me its true answer. Anybody else see a problem here? Keep in mind Paul is not an engineer he is a DJ.

Maybe you're not reading it correctly

I feel that Paul McGowan and PS Audio are honest and do not make false claims about their products. After looking at customer repsonses on PS Audio's site and Audio Asylum, I just don't see a multitude of complaints.

Speco2003, I respect your feelings toward PS Audio. I just feel that they are in the minority. Given the success of their products, they must be doing something right for most of us.

By the way, I have two of the new Premier Power Plants on order.

Steve

You're entitled to an opinion.


Which is obviously biased.

I'm biased, too, as I have had two P600 power regenerators for years and luv them. Oh well.

...yeah, but, your opinion doesn't hold much weight around here....did you have a point to make?

If I could make two cents for everyone who valued your opinion, I'd make ten cents.

Your opinion holds no weight around here.

Folks:
If you do a search on threads regarding PS Audio power products, its clear that Speco2003 and Targus is heavily biased against the company for whatever reason.

Just ignore them and listen to those who have actually had PS Audio products.

I have PS Audio products and my experience is they offer top notch customer service. I have the Lambda transport from 15 years ago and the tray mechanism is falling apart. Even though that product is discontinued and obviously out of warranty for a good 10 years, they still provide help and suggestions when it comes to servicing the unit.

This claim from their site turns me right off.

Lowers distortion by 10 times

I call BS on that one.

As for the 'protection' that the device offers, I can tell you this:

a) Too many power bar companies (the expensive and the $10 kind) claim full protection of a product when plugged in. Truth is, how the heck can you then tell if a failure of a piece of equipment failed due to an age or power related problem? eg:

"I had a party last night, turned the volume to 11, at 1:30 AM the amp crapped out"

Should the power bar/regenerator have protected the amp? How is a tech to prove or disprove the amp failure was or was not due to the surge protection?

b) In theory, a dedicated independent power supply. AC or DC that's properly designed will supply 'cleaner' power than plugging something into a regular AC outlet that has a lot of other things plugged into it. OTOH, the power supplies of all electronic equipment is so well filtered that you'd never see the difference IMHO.

c) If some heavy duty spike like lightning hit a typical house, guaranteed that NOTHING in the house would be spared. Everything would get damaged that was plugged in, as lighning can jump over switch contacts of devices that are turned off. Wanna bet that PS Audio would deny a warranty claim to one of their devices that was hit by lightning?

d) Lowers distortion by 10 X? Give me a break!!! I'd like proof of that in person.

Super, now I have someone else to sneer at at CES this year...

I just perused their site a bit further. Here's another wonderful piece guaranteed not to do anything:

http://www.psaudio.com/products/noiseharvester.asp

Funny, this unit runs at a frequency 10 X lower than anything else. they really seem to like the 10X claim.

So I claim the PS Audio site has 10 X more BS on it than other sites.

Thanks for the info Curt. Given that the Premier Power Plant is back ordered, your comments may free up orders so that I can get mine sooner.

Best Wishes,

Steve

I swear in my next life I'll come back as an elderly gentleman, I'll study proper English thoroughly, speak with an accent, throw around $10 descriptive words like candy, start a high end A/V accessories company and make a great living raping the heck out of some of you.

I just can't do it in this life...

Ahhh Curt you missed a whole thread on that one. I even bought one, did acoustic and electrical tests with it and it did nothing. It has a couple of film capacitors in it that we found cost 15 cents from neumark. If you notice thet have a film on the website about it. Yet never show any real tests with it. In one they show how noisy a dimmer is with a noise sniffer, then they put the NH on it and say see how it works, but they didnt put the noise sniffer back up to show if it really does.

Well we did real tests with it using some noisey ACand put a cope to it and in fact nothing changed one wit. The EE that took it apart with me explained that all the was going is that the caps would fill up and light the light.

Sold mine on Ebay.
In the pic you can see the 4 15 cent caps, thats not a lie, pull the numbers off them and check. Under the glob of glue is a couple of resistors, nothing more.
The second pic shows they use tabs to hold the lid on NOT GLUE,one tab by the light one down the center side.

Speco, stop exposing the magic smoke!



You also forgot about one vital part: the current limiting resistor for the blue LED. Oh, and the electrolytic cap that smooths out the 60 Hz going to the LED, so it doesn't flicker. Geez, if PS would have been smart, they'd save the money and let the LED flicker. They could then claim that the flickering was the filters actively working, taking the interference out of the line and transferring it to the LED. Maybe I could teach their engineers, err, I mean ad copy guys a thing or two...

Splaskin, what do you say about THIS product now? Anyone here ever use one of those? What did it do for you?

And I should add Curt I did not buy this to use. I bought it to perform the tests on, because I am sick of bogus claims by companies.

The audio tests were performed on a Meyer HD-1 with SMAART. People said they hear better highs or better los, if that was the case we should see a boost or a cut in the freqs, bbbuuuutttttt guess what? NOTHING changed.

Here is a post today from PSAudios forum.

Quote" Author
Topic: Harvesters dead?

Patrick821

Total Posts: 18

Member Since:



View My System posted 11/9/2006 12:42:46 AM

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I plugged one in into my JuiceBar and nothing happened for many minutes, then I plugged in the rest and only two were blinking. Those two were blinking every 3-6 seconds for 5 hours, but then they weren't blinking anymore, they are all dead now.

After I got the Harvesters I tried one on the output of the Power Plant and using Clean Sweep made it blink. But now none of the 5 Harvesters blink when I try the Clean Sweep. What is wrong?

I'm in Sweden with a 230volt line, don't Harvesters work good with it?

I didn't know these would fail that easily so I bought them from Audiogon, I guess the warranty doesn't apply then? How do I repair them?

barrows

Total Posts: 186

Member Since:
April 2005


View My System posted 11/9/2006 9:16:00 AM

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Hi,

Noise Harvesters will not always blink, as they only blink if they are encountering a certain level of noise on the ac line. The best way to test them is to plug them into an outlet with a vacuum cleaner. When you turn on the vacuum cleaner they should definately blink rapidly, if they do not, then there is a problem.
If you did not purchase these through your authorized distributor, you would not have any warranty, but you might try contacting the sellor. "

Heehee, ask PS Audio what Meyer HD1s are along with SMAART, and I'll bet they'll say they are some offshore knockoff brands...

Close they had never heard of SMAART or SIM, and responded with mmmm that mihgt be useful. We video taped the tests they saw them and said well its obvious that something like smaart couldnt pickup the small subtle changes the NH provides. yest by all accounts the changes are not subtle you know boomier bass etc..

keep in mind Paul is not an engineer just a DJ.

hydrogenaudio thread on power conditioners -- including PS Audio

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=49459

'Nuff said.

Does anyone here know John Gannon???

John is a well known ISFer/installer out of Michigan. He once was technical editor for Stereophile Guide to Home Theater. He has been a contributor to The Perfect Vision. Certainly he's on the short list of 5 - 10 best CRT calibrators/setup in the U.S.

Go back to 2000. When John initially setup my Dwin HD-700 CRT projector.
When he replaced the red and green lens with color filtered ones. When he compared my picture using the PS Audio P600, set at 60 Hz sine wave, vs
set at Square Wave, and agreed the Square Wave picture was better.

Yea, it must have been the Thai food and beer. What can I say?

Umm, your last 2 sentences are what they actually claim (not the 1st two). Their ad guys definitely have it together!

I stand corrected. They do. The DJ engineer must have designed it for the ravers in mind...

Steve, I can almost understand why a square wave would make a projector look better. A square wave contains more RMS power than a sine wave, so while the power supply in the DWIN converts everything to DC within the PS before using it's own internal switching oscillator to generate the voltages in the set ( any SMPS is therefore a regulated power regenerator in it's own right), the fact that you're inputting a square wave means that the resulting DC power within the projector is at a slightly higher voltage than if you drive the AC input with a sine wave. That would mean there's more potential energy in the internal filter caps which _MIGHT_ make the set run a bit more efficiently.

Unless I see and measure the setup however, the resulting higher voltage might strain your electrolytic caps within the DWIN power supply and it might die a premature death.

So once again, there's a reasonable explanation for what you might have observed. There's still way too much hocus pocus in the PS audio website for me to buy into it.

BTW, I repaired a PS audio piece a while back. The construction was unremarkable, average at best. For construction quality, give me a Levinson.

Curt, I'm only attesting to the PS Audio P600s that I have. I can also attest to their Power Port outlets. Haven't tried their other products.

I've had my Dwin CRT for 6 years and more than 10,000 hours. No one problem
CAP that!!! H!

The P600 is a well constructive piece with plenty of mass!! The P300 was a pipsqueak in comparison.