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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: It’s mad, mad, mad... electricity.
Post Subject: The APS PurePower vs. good electricity.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 6/22/2007

A friend of mine asked my last night if I feel that PurePower’s Sound as good as a playback during those extremely seldom moments when electrify is good. It was a good question and I feel that it is worth to cover.

First off all I can not say about the PurePower generally but rather about the sub 10% loaded PurePower running only 3 items of my front end (Transport, DAC and preamp-buffer). Also, my APS unit looks like improperly operating so, go figure if the my current PurePower’s Sound comes from the PurePower’s functionalities or from the sonically-luckily malfunctioning circuit…. :-) – That would be funny!!!

Ahyhow, I would accept the sonic results of the sub-10% loaded PurePower “as is” and go from there.  Surely my comment would NOT be apply to the over 10% loaded APS unit.

The sub-loaded APS regenerator turned out the closest sounding devise among all that I have seen compare to “good electricity”. Here is my abridgment describing where I feel there is a difference between the times when electricity “sounds perfect” and the situation what the front of my playback runs from the APS  (sure, putting the whole system on the APS would be more rational…)

1) The “good electricity” directly from mains has very-very-very slightly more credence at lover MF and upper-upper-upper bass. In my care it was not a big deal and I easily balanced it with Macondo adjustment.

2) The “good electricity” has slightly softer topmost octave, having less conflict between HF and silence. The Power Plant roll off and dehydrate a lot of HF, the PurePower keeps it there but makes it very clean. However, the “good electricity” makes HF… DISAPPEAR. None of the units I have seen do it. However, be advise that I run now my “Water Drop” tweeters intestinally VERY HOT (I have my reasons). So, take my comment in context of my deliberately too “hectic” tweeters.

3) PurePower has an effect of “Hyper Texture”. Not the crappy “hyper resolution” but the Hyper Texture. This Hyper Texture is extremely interesting effect and it VERY different from the effect of a properly loaded OTL’s Hyper Texture. The APS’s Hyper Texture creates certain discrimination upon the micro articulations in musical material. Interesting that this Hyper Texture exists across the whole frequency range and looks like very evenly distributed dynamically. The Hyper Texture does not have as negative feeling as it sounds. If the Hyper Texture would be present only within a specific range or at specific volume level then it would be a coloration but as I can see so far it is evenly speeded and I found it so far that it has a positive contribution to presentation. The PurePower’s Hyper Texture reminds the Mravinsky’s X-Ray like articulation…., in a way…. An attentive reader woyukld say: the Hyper Texture AND slight reduction of harmonic in lower MF – is it sound too recognizable? Not really – it is different with the APS unit. I would not finalize my observation about it because who knows how my APS snit will sound what it will be fixed. However, the Hyper Texture impact is easily detectable, and I am not quite sure at this point if the Hyper Texture might be considered as “coloration”. BTW, I have quite a lot of suspicion that the Hyper Texture come form the residuals 20kHz pulses…. I think is it is so then PS audio should still this idea for their multi wave schemas….

4) PurePower does slightly increase the subjective dynamics compare to the times when electricity is good but is loops to the good electricity in terms of dynamic viscosity and dynamic inelegance (read more about the dynamic viscosity in my posts where I was discovering Melquiades). When electricity is good then Sound has “infinite dynamic”, allowing the dynamics to be “slow” (very positive word in my vocabulary). However, when it is necessary (and do not think juts about the micro-dynamics but about any transients) then it instantaneously throws a huge “infinite” dynamics, still (and it is VERY important) keeping references of the listening awareness in awareness to the boundaries of the dynamics coordinate system. (This is what sold me to use the 6E5P as a unique driver). The PurePower dos not look as it has this effect of “intelligent dynamic”. The PurePower throw more vicious dynamics MOMENTARILY but PurePower does not feel where we were a juts before it or where we go next. It would be similar to a figure skater: with  good electricity the figure skater does all his jumps and tricks right in the dead center of the arena vs. the PurePower make the skaters do some crazy jumps and tricks bounding from the arena’s walls, converting the figure skating into a ….hockey. Hey, APS is a Canadian company it should be kind of hockeyc….! :-)

This is pretty much what I feel so far but it is very important to understand that there is no such a state of Sound as “when electricity is good”. I might recall perhaps 3-4 times per year when my playback was close to this electricity state….

Rgs, Romy the Cat

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