PS Audio Premier Power Plant - too little bass! [caution:big files]  

I saved for almost a year and paid $3700 for this. I used to use a P300 Power Plant with MWave4. The Premier is more efficient which is why it can't do MWave4 like the older Power Plants. The Premier can only do MWave1. I was hoping it would be different but it wasn't, I'm still hearing the open, flat, thin, empty, too much midrange, lifeless MWave1 signature except it is little faster with more low-level detail than both MWave1 and MWave4 of my P300 Power Plant.

The problem is where is the bass? I wrapped the Premier with 5 sheets of ERS Paper and it increased the bass a bit. I added a couple more Harvesters and upper bass got huge. But it still sounded empty in the mid-bass. I let it burn in for a few days and didn't hear a difference. I added extra ERS Paper inside my amp and still not enough bass.











I did a blind test and compared Sinewave against MWave1 and the result was obvious, with MWave1 I heard more bass transients and with Sinewave they were gone. Now I knew I was going to get twice the improvement if I could have MWave4.

So I put back the P300 Power Plant and plugged it into Premier. Based on a year of experimenting I knew that Toroidal transformers benefit the most from MWave4, so I hardwired my Benchmark DAC1 back into it. Problem solved! I got crazy bass and fullness, more blackness and whiteness, more transparency, more dynamics, more life, more bass transients, more shimmering, more body, faster, darker, warmer, fuller, deeper, heavier, more realistic, more detail, more oomph, crazy highs, crazy lows, I feel it in my body. All this from changing MWave1 into MWave4!













So my DAC1 has MWave4 from P300, but the rest of the gear are plugged into Premier which only has MWave1, it's on the edge of sounding unacceptable, there still is something very subtle missing but it's still listenable, it's okay for now. I don't have enough ERS Paper for my P300 because I moved it inside my amp! That must be the problem. ERS for P300 gave more bass the last time I tried it.
I remember something else now, I tried some Sorbothane feet under the P300 before and got too much bass so I promptly removed it. I'm going to try it tomorrow, but first I need to rest my body from tweaking 24 hours in 2 days.

My rack is like a puzzle to put together, I have most of them hardwired. My rack needs to be lifted up to be moved but my table is in the way, so I have a motor on the table to lift it up, it's the only way. I can fine tune the height of the table so that the cables are long enough for the gear on top of the table.
When I need to hardwire interconnects I need to lift up rack and put in the middle of the room. But now when I have P300 hardwired on top of the table I need to bend my body in weird shapes and come from behind the rack with the soldering iron, I got a few burns. I also need to do the horse stance above the rack and bend forwards behind the rack.
When the system finally is hardwired I need to plug the connectors into the Premier, but the space behind the rack is only 20cm so I need to do a few pelvic thrusts to press it in. After that I need to plug in my Cary transport which has a 50cm Valhalla and I need to lower the table, since the table is so low I need to bend my body at the side of the rack, it's very tight and I almost get stuck between computer case and rack. Afterwards my legs are weak and I fall to the floor. But it sounds better so it's worth it.

That was the first thing I did.

I put the Premier between wall and Ultimate Outlet + P300 Power Plant. I added a Nordost Vishnu power cord to connect the two. The Vishnu hadn't been used for almost a year. I'm using Nordost Valhalla in my whole system.


Added Premier + worse cable into the signal path.

First impressions: Dull, lifeless, muddy, lack of transparency, loss of dynamics, there is something in front of the music, background isn't black anymore, it sounds messed up. Transients sound incomplete, blackness in between transients is lacking badly. Muddiness is unbearable, I just want to turn it off.

I didn't know Vishnu was this bad.

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I tried it again, but this time I threw away the Vishnu and used Valhalla for everything. I borrowed my computer's Valhalla power cord, that one doesn't have any ERS Paper though.

I plugged P300 Power Plant and Cary transport into Premier. Only the amp and DAC are plugged into P300 with MWave4.
I never expected an improvement like this! I'm hearing very quiet details everywhere, they are so subtle I can't hear them properly. I can just hear there are loads of very quiet stuff going on. It's very deep!

A month ago my system sounded very thin which gave the illusion that the decay continued forever, but after I plugged a Noise Harvester into the wall the body increased and it sounded like the decay was cut off too early. But now when Premier is powering P300 Power Plant I don't hear the decay getting cut off anymore. In every track I hear new low-level sounds I never heard before, I didn't even know there was anything there!

I still have the Ultimate Outlet between P300 and Premier (cables not long enough). I'm hearing some reduced dynamics and speed from it, little less highs and lows.


Later I replaced the Ultimate Outlet with JuiceBar and it didn't help much. It sounded very boring, there was no speed, there was only low-level detail and nothing else.
Having only the DAC1 plugged into P300 seems to be the best.

I didn't buy the Premier without backup plans. I need it for my computer, it saves me more electricity. The computer used to use a 2nd P300 with a table fan cooling it, but it blew up after a week, so I have temporarily used an Ultimate Outlet for the past half year.

You wouldn't consider getting Premier?

The voltage from the wall is around 243, the output of Premier is 233. When it goes into P300 it downsteps it a little further (somewhere around 140-180 volts I believe), and then the P300 outputs 120 volts from that. I don't see the problem with this.



The biggest difference came from plugging computer into Premier. There are new low-level details everywhere even with mp3.


P300 is not hot if it's upside down with the cover slightly open. I used to run DAC and amp like that 24/7 for half a year, it was just barely warm. I'm using headphones so the ICEpower amp doesn't draw much power, the display of P300 said 10 watts total. Now with the DAC1 it says 0 watts.

Music sounded fine today, more low-level detail everywhere, in movies I hear laptop harddrive spinning and other subtle stuff I never heard before.

But in music something subtle is missing from the bass, so I put some Sorbothane feet under the P300, now I get too much bass! Bass is emphasized and there is less midrange detail. It made it sound worse, the bass and midrange sound less distinct now, it sounds muddy. I think my impressions were similar almost a year ago when I last tried it, I need to try to find it in my megabytes of logs.

The rubber feet made bass heavy, dull, boomy and muddy.

Next I changed to tennis balls, but suddenly music stopped playing, Valhalla conductor came loose from P300 and I had to solder it back. It takes about a day to warm up my system again.

But it doesn't seem like tennis balls give tight enough bass transients. I need to get 15 more Solid-tech Feet of Silence, I asked a dealer how much discount I get.

If I buy something I need to buy enough to complete my system, I don't want to keep spending money on shipping, I'm too poor for that. I also asked PS Audio how much 100 Harvesters cost. I will thread a conductor through the holes so in the end it gets very cheap. I can hang the Harvesters in the ceiling. Maybe there's a problem when sleeping though. Sort of like stars blinking in the sky.

The series called '********!' had an episode about that. I have seen all episodes...

What is the price for the Faraday cage? What do I need?

I got back from Stillpoints and the ERS Paper roll costs $5500 in Sweden, they gave 30% discount. I don't know what they were thinking since it's only $3935 from Partsconnexion for an equal amount (225 sheets).

People use paint for looks? I don't care about looks, it's a waste of money, like clothes and shaving.

Either I'm insane or I'm hearing new detail and speed than yesterday. I guess burn in might be true then. I have computer plugged into it now, might be why.

I woke up and listened, it sounded better but I refused to believe. I didn't listen for the whole day and now I listen again. Still sounds better than yesterday.