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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: It’s mad, mad, mad... electricity.
Post Subject: Congratulations… as usually.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 9/19/2012
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 manisandher wrote:
So, the PP+3000 arrived... and went pretty much straight back.

As soon as I switched the battery pack on, it started hissing and emitting a God-awful smell. I packed everything up and had it collected the next day. The retailer (Audio Emotion in the UK) told me that the battery pack had suffered a massive trauma during transit - something like a spike going into its underside. I didn't notice anything untoward - although to be fair, I didn't purposefully look at underside of the shipping box or battery supply.

There was one thing that I did do before I packed everything away though. I tried switching the head unit on without the battery pack connected to it. And it worked! Everything displayed correctly, telling me that the battery pack was 'N.C.' Two things that I can report without the battery pack connected:

1) The by-pass switch did not work. Maybe the battery pack is required, although I can't for the life of me understand why this would be the case.

2) I didn't really like the sound. It was weighty and full-bodied, but the delicacy and sparkle that I've become accustomed to with the PP2000 was gone. I would totally accept that actually it might be the PP2000 that's 'at fault' here - injecting some noise or whatever into the regenerated AC -but whatever the PP2000 is doing, it seems to do wonders for the sound. Also, there's obviously the strong possibility that the PP+3000 needs the battery pack to perform optimally. But the fact that it 'works' without one, and really was regenerating the AC (I had 245V going in and 230V coming out) was really confusing for me. I mean, does that battery actually do anything under normal operation? Or does it just kick in when the mains AC drops too low? If it's just the latter, I'd much rather have a battery-less regenerator - it'd be much, much lighter and should be a damn sight less expensive (especially taking shipping costs into account).

Audio Emotion were happy to send me a replacement PP+3000. But based on my initial experience, I declined and asked for a refund. I may well order the PP+3000 again in the future, but won't do this until others in the field have reported their own findings. Apparently, Audio Emotion have shipped >20 other PP+ units with no reported issues whatsoever.

With this post, I may well ruffle the feathers of Audio Emotion and/or PurePower, but quite frankly I'm not casting any judgement on them, just stating my experience.
 Mani, thanks for the report. It is sad that your unit was basted, let hope that it is not emblematic for the new PurePower+ and has to do with your specific shipment. Let hope… On another hand - they pick it up and replace it. So, there is no damage….

The fact that the unit was working with no battery is not surprise to me. It is also no surprise that the bypass did not work as to do bypass the unit need very temporary to be switched to battery operation (while the contacts of relay are re-engaged). So, no battery, no bypass.

I would hold the judgment about sound until you have the fully functional units. You see, as PurePower flats the input AC to DC they have very little filtration, I think they use a few hundred microfarads to kill the residual ripples. This is very inadequate amount of capacitance for the huge currants that are flowing in there. The reason why they do it is because they rely upon the huge filtration capacity of the battery. An acid buttery have very low internal impedance and acts as a phenomenal buffers that shunt all pos AC-DC transformation ripples. So, what you used was only God know what and I would not be surprised if it was a very random result.

Frankly I am bit suspicion about you (or your old PP2000 unit) as my and your ether unit or our expectations of performance are different. My PP2000 does not “injecting some noise” and I do feel that if you report it then you unit might be defective.

For sure you have rights to decline trying the new unit but it looks like your dealer do what dealer has to do: send a replacement. If they have sold >20 PP+ units with no reported issues whatsoever then they might (or might not) say truth. I spoke two weeks back with PurePower and they insisted that they have no negative feedback from the fields. Well, I do not think that they would advertise it if they would. Still, if it cost nothing to you and if you initially wanted to try PP3000+ then I do not know how that misfortune you had did changed your mind. 

The Cat

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