GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site

In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: It’s mad, mad, mad... electricity.

Post Subject: PP battery wearPosted by Lx_ on: 1/3/2011

Romy the Cat wrote:
The recent LX’s posts made me to think about the PP2000 buttery. He reports that his buttery got way weaken from 2009. I used my older PP2000 from December 2008 and my currant problematic “upgraded” problematic PP2000 used the same battery as I got in PP2000. On this unit I have a very short run from battery – a few minutes at 75% load. The PP2000 indicator shows the battery discharge 50-60% when then unit shot itself down and my PP2000 never do 20% discharge as LX reports.

Actually I just tested battery discharge. Here is the result:

Some comments:

This is a 2 year old unit that is always on (to keep the DAC on at all times)
When the system is operating, PP load is at 38% (system consumes around 600W including PP and external PS not plugged on PP consuming ~25W)
Battery starts at 100% but almost instantly drops to 56%
Discharge rate is not linear but not by too much
Level drops to 0% and stays like this for around 1 minute
Overall operating time on battery alone is less than 14 minutes
When plugged back to AC, PP level starts at 61%! (not shown above)

I am not concerned about accuracy of reported level as I am not interested in it but the test provides some nice results. In particular level drops right from the start/jumps way back up when replugging; this is probably an indication of battery age (much like 6C33C start up gap, except that for PP bigger gap means older instead of newer). Also level drops right to 0%, contrary to Romy's; his unit is probably older and much more "used" (more load, and system on always?). Last, 14 minutes is not much in itself, but way less than 2 years ago (30-40 minutes if I remember correctly).

Romy the Cat wrote:
The fully functional and properly sounding PP2000 do sensitive to incoming AC, I commented it years back. The difference between properly functioning PP2000 form one AC and another AC is minor but recognizable.

I do not remember seeing you provide details about this. Could you elaborate on how sound is affected by AC in your system?

Romy the Cat wrote:
The PP2000 still does what it does and the result from ether type of AC is acceptable but why the quality of incoming AC matter? I was writing about it in past but now I can proposer the following: my observation is that the incoming AC influence grows with buttery got weaken. If a year back I have absolutely invariable performance from my playback, then this year I did detect some bad and good electricity days. It was not where even close to the playback running from the wall and the deviations were very minor but since I am very tuned to recognize those things up I think that my observations are correct. I said “I think” as in 2010 there were a lot of other factors that might offset my judgment but I do count all the things in. Gains, all comments that I am masking now refer to my old pre-upgraded and well-sounding PP2000, prior to the current sonic PP2000 issuers.

Unfortunately at the moment I cannot say that this is true for my PP. As reported earlier, I find that variations in AC are a lot easier to hear now than 2 years ago. There are several factors coming into play:

My system has been improved a lot and is way more revealing now
I am better trained at recognizing differences in SQ
PP2000 has become more sensitive to AC

I put them in what I think is more important first, least last, 1 being the clear major contributor and 3 being a possible candidate based on Romy's suggestion for which I have no proof at the moment.

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