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In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: Valve Preamplifier for Macondo/DSET
Post Subject: The damn wall wartPosted by anthony on: 5/13/2019
 Romy the Cat wrote:
However, over the years I have seen that the low voltage adapter get weaker and impact the remote control functionality. Also, the type of the low voltage adapter I used did have very profound impact to sound, which absolutely makes no sense. I had 4 or 5 of them over the year and the difference was very noticeable. Again there is no explanation for it but it is what it is. Ask Guy to send you a new power adapter, it costs like $20-$30, and you might find that it worth it.


Interesting.  Yes, the remote has been suffering from reduced functionality but the batteries still measured 1.5V each so I put them back in.  The wall wart getting weaker might be the problem.  Since it has arrived, I've run the Placette from a step down transformer feeding it about 120V instead of the normal 240V in Aus.  To achieve this both the power cord and the wall wart for the Placette are plugged into the variac, which I had forgotten about until I turned it off the other day.  The wall wart power is used only to change the relays and should be plugged into a different, general household, power circuit to the power cord for the linestage circuits, and of course I have never done this because I have only one variac to step down to 120V.  The long-term intention was always to change-out the transformers and wall wart to suit 240V mains so I can plug things directly into the wall, but it has never happened.

I must say that with the Placette turned off the Phasure dac direct driving the DSET has never sounded so good.  Perhaps my Placette transperancy issue is caused by the wall wart injecting noise into my audio mains circuit when it should be injecting it into a different circuit.  Perhaps it is the variac causing the issue, or even the Placette itself as I originally thought.

First thing to do is make good on converting that wall wart to 240V so it can be plugged into a different circuit.  Output according to the label is 5V 1A, and I have some linear power supplies already made for a different (abandoned) project that will handle that easily.  So when I get some time I will re-purpose one of them and experiment further with the Placette.

Romy, thanks for your input here, I had put looking at it in the "let's do that later" basket which probably means quite some time down the track.  I would be interested to hear roughly how the different power supplies have changed the sound, and if you plug the wall wart into a separate non-audio circuit or if it goes into your PP3000.  

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