Talk about shaking the bushes!

I like this line from the Stereophile "industry news" blurb:  "The Tripoint Troy employs harmonic tuning to create an extremely neutral, warm sound..."

"Harmonic Tuning"?

Riiighhht...

It's one thing to have a serious go at actually reconstituting AC current into stable AC voltage waveforms.  It's something else altogether (and who knows what it is?) to stick a bunch of crap in a box and simply insist that it does "good" things.

Something I do appreciate, however, is the totally absurd pricing, which you just know they had quite a laugh over at some point.  I mean, you have to hand it to them on this score...

I would not give the last word on power regeneration to measurements; but, at the same time, there are a few things that would be reasonable indicators that something was actually happening.  John Atkinson rightly brought measurements back to Stereophile.  So, measure this, already.

Paul S

I do not know where in what people say about Tripoint BS stops and the realty starts.  I do not refuse that by reducing or injecting harmonics into the AC fundamentals it is possible to moderate sound. Does Tripoint it and if it does it then does it do it in a proper sensible way is an open question.

As I understand they have two devises: one ground controlling devise and another is powers controlling devise. The ground controlling devise in a way reminds me the “explanation” for this one:

http://www.musicdirect.com/product/86638

In contrary to my skepticism I would like to experiment with those Tripoint devises. It is possible that they do some impact to sound, why not?  Dose it has any explanation to what Tripoint states? I do not know. Dose this impact as unambiguously positive as Tripoint would like me to believe? I have no idea and I do not think that anybody besides me will be able to tell it.  If Tripoint went to CES then they are looking sales. The way to sell those things is to ship it to customers for in-home trials. Everything else is BS. To find a reviewer-moron who has equipment with starving grounds and to confirm that “with Tripoint it sounds better” is not too convincing for me.

Romy the Cat wrote:

It is possible that they do some impact to sound, why not?

drdna wrote:

I can tell you already it will work. I have experimented extensively with adding lengths of metal to cables. It works well, but you can do a lot more by fine-tuning the amount of metal and in fact adjusting it slightly from left to right to balance the two sides. To get a very rough idea, I bet you have some lead solder lying around. It's very cheap. Cut off a coil of this and connect it to one of your speaker spade connections. Now hear the difference.

Romy the Cat wrote:

It is possible that they do some impact to sound, why not?  …. To find a reviewer-moron who has equipment with starving grounds and to confirm that “with Tripoint it sounds better” is not too convincing for me.

Adrian I can tell you that it is very much unknown if it work. Well, we need to defend what is “it” and what would be the definition of “work”. In my response you missed a very critical element - the notion of “starving grounds” and this is the key to what shall not be overlooked in the recognition if “it will work”. If you tried something and it work then it does not mean that it “work” universally. To dig it a next level is a bit tricky and never done by audio-reviewers, so we are accustomed to fast and superficial results. Let me to explain.

I also experimented extensively with the very same subject. It was not my idea but a friend of my who discovered it and built us a theory of the local election pools. He went further and come up with different methods to supply different types of elections by different means – I will not describe all details but it was extensive. What it was dumped in me I rendered many of his recommendations - absolutely nothing worked for me. They he told me the pattern – the effectiveness of those mans is in direct relation with the ways how grounds are implemented in a given system and particularly the amplification.

If you try all those methods of creation of local pools with Japanese mass-market stereo receivers that have suffocated PS, no good thin grounds, overly complex signal paths and printed circuit boards then adding local “electron pools” to cables, closer to the load will “work”. The reason is because the that equipment is ground starved to begin with.

Now, look how the “electron pools” are implemented in Melquiades.

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/PDF/Melquiades_SET.pdf

The last capacitor of PS  located (point “M” on circuit) is located in physical proximity, in fact it is physically welded into the main negative bus. The main negative bus is 3 twisted pure cooper wires of 8ga – it is thick and on place it has some parts of car-audio cooper grounding cable (it is a finder-thick). Pay attention that all 3 power supplies dumped to the very same negative buss. Then, the Melquiades tubes have grounded cathodes. That was a very essential and absolutely deliberate part of the design – electrons come to tube from power supplies via cathodes. If you look at the Milq pictures then you will see VERY thick wire coming to the cathodes. In fact do you know how the negative bus terminal is mounted in the amp – it held by the cathode pins of the tube sockets.  So, in the amp everything is done in order to not impede the electrons flow to the tubes and give to the cathode enough copper mass. The result is self-evident – the amp dos not need any ground help. 

I can use my own 15 feet burden in backward copper pool or I might use not ground of any kind – to the sound of the amp it will have absolutely no difference. I can add different metals to speaker’s thermals, I did it extensively - it has absolutely zero effect in my system. You can add a railway track to my speakers – not effect of any kind. The point is that adding the metals and paling with “electrons pools” makes sense only if the amp has initial issuers with “electrons starvation”. I do not know what power amp you use and how negative bus is made in there in relation to cathodes but from what you report it looks like it has some room for improvement.

Think about it as if an amp is a turntable. You can make a TT with million adjustments and each of the adjustment would do something to sound. Alternately you can make a TT that has a default right sound and no ways to change it. I bet the bus-loaded amps would react to cables much different than if the need the help of external “elections pools”…

Affect sound, sure; why not?  What in the signal path is inaudible?  By all means put lengths of solder on speaker terminals, etc.  But don't forget their claims, which should at least bear some consideration when we agree that this stuff "works".

I have already tried all sorts of stuff that "affects the sound" but simply does not effectively deal with sonic problems caused by BEP.  Maybe this is why I have such a hard time accepting an attractive $30k (or 8k, for that matter...) box of stuff that affects the sound?  And maybe it's also partly because their "explanations" sound painfully familiar. 

I agree that the money back guarantee seems like the least they can do, here.  No, I don't know what's in the box.  But 30K a pop should cover shipping both ways, too, come to that.

Paul S

Romy the Cat wrote:

I can tell you that it is very much unknown if it work. Well, we need to defend what is “it” and what would be the definition of “work”. In my response you missed a very critical element - the notion of “starving grounds” and this is the key to what shall not be overlooked in the recognition if “it will work”. If you tried something and it work then it does not mean that it “work” universally.

Paul S wrote:

Affect sound, sure; why not?

drdna wrote:

Okay, this is of course an excellent point. Naturally, if the system is optimized to begin with, this type of stuff will not have a beneficial effect. If you have done the experiments before, then you know what to expect from this, and probably there is simply not a need for it in your system.

I do not remember what power amp you run, I presume some kind of SET and I do not know what topology is it. But if you playback reacts to the "electrostatic reservoirs" then you might try to do the following. Open your amp and find the cathodes. Make a 2-3 inch circles from copper litz of 6ga. You will not find litz like this, so use 30-40 short pieces of 22ga. As the result you will have 2000-3000 copper parallel leads attached to cathodes. Run the amp for 30-40 hours. See if the sound of your amp change and the most important if your amp will react to the  "electrostatic reservoirs" on the speaker side as it was before.

I do not know anything about it and never heard about this conditioner. Today I was pointed out by a site visitor to this power conditioner and the visitor claims that he likes it, witch itself means absolutely nothing.

http://soundapplication.com/

There is no explanation, technical data, white papers or promises from the company of any kind – juts list of the endorsements and “reviews”. Hmmmm, not very helpful, and frankly speaking a bit disrespectful. It is necessary to know the operation principles of power devises as they work ageist different load and therefore different condition.  Anyhow, the company is in Berkeley, CA. I have no idea what their devise do, I presume it is just a different time low-pass filter. Did anybody use this? If it is a transparent enough filter then I might be used after PP2000…

Well,

I have to tell you, Meiko41 that I was pleased to see that a local guy got a new PP2000. I kind of on the verge to get another PP2000 and this was a good preview what newest state of the PP2000 is. Even it was very clear the with PP2000 the guys system was doing MUCH better then driven from the wall but it was not my own playback where I know how I shall be. Also, the guy palsy is challenged in few areas, the areas where I would like to look at the PP2000 critically. So, to have a final assurance that the latest PP2000 was up to specks I tool scope and asked the guy to measure his new PP2000. My primary concern was if they have addressed this problem with “fuzziness” that I reported in my unit:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Site_Images/APS_Purepower_2000_3.JPG

Yes, the “fuzziness” does not exist anymore, wonderful! However, this newsiest PP2000 does much worse things then the “fuzziness” – it does VERY severe clipping under load, not only clipping but asymmetrical clipping. Amassing, I do not believe that APS ever tested this unit.  A regular 200W CLCRC powers supply of a preamp clips the sinusoid with perfect horizontal line down to a few volts; at time even more then it is clipped in the wall. Ironically the unit maintains perfect sinusoid shape what it driver from battery but clips when it connected to the wall. Since it runs fine from buttery then we cannot blame the idiosyncrasy of the load. The only thing that I can blame is the unit again has some implementation errors and never was properly tested. I took some picture that I will post when I have time later on.Romy The Cat

Romy the Cat wrote:

In the light of my forthcoming move I deal nowadays with much more prosaic problems then NASA's Mars programs. I for instance am trying to strategize what alternative power I might use to power my sump pump and am trying to figure out if it is possible to have a gas to electricity converter if the power is out… As, you see my mind is occupied nowadays with the subjects remote from Sound.

Sure the PP2000 is great but could it be even more kosher? Her is a direction to think – to regenerate the electricity and completely decuple from the grid. Te idea is not new – we were talking about it before but this time it has anew twist.

The house that I trying to close is next to a river (stream) and has venerable to water basement that getting wet during prolong rain. It will be dealt with and the Basement Treatment Company that I brought came up with various proposals how to address it (sump pump + French drain). One of the proposals suggests the use of battery backup sump pump. Well, I have currently 2 friends on my who live in towns next to where I will be moving in and they have no electricity. So, what the Basement Company proposes does make sense. Well, I was looking what the better performing submergible pumps suck out. For instance ½ HP Zoeller M98 sucks 9A and therefore the flimsy buttery that Basement Company proposed would be great to keep pump uninterrupted for an hour but it will be out of game for a day long interruption.  So, I was considering another power source and I got a good idea. The house has infinite supply of natural gas (heating, boiling), so who do not use gas power regenerator? When I begum to look at the park of the automated standby power regenerators then I asked myself a legitimate in context of this thread question – why do not create isolated  audio grid and power it from heavy-duty gas-driven power generator?

The idea sound great and I spoke with a few tech supports. Here is some data.

There are a number of gas generators out there, they all are more or less compatible. The smalls and cheaper of them are do not provide a perfect sine wave but larger of them have electronic stabilization, better frequency stability and they reportedly do good sinusoid with less than 5% harmonic distortions.  Mind you that this sine wave is pure mechanical made with no noise of any kind. All stabilization and regulation circuits might be bypassed and the playback system might be driven right from the generator’s collector. Let look for instance at the Generac Guardian Series 5502, 10.000 Watt, Air- Cooled gas generator. It is a unit that sits outside of house and produce 65dB of noise – compatible with noise of outside air-conditioner.  So, noise is not a problem at all. It is 10kW of new clean power absolutely decoupled from power grid – looks very good to me.   Generic suggest that this unit it has the best stability numbers - harmonic distortions are under 3%.

http://www.amazon.com/Generac-5502-Air-Cooled-Automatic-Generator/dp/B001DZLKGY

http://www.generac.com/PublicPDFs/0168170SBY.pdf

There are a number of alternative regenerators

http://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/Briggs-&-Stratton-40243A/p1979.html

Now, about the cost. The unit itself is not expensive – it could be bought around $2K that is less expensive then my current PP200 regenerator. So, for $2.5K it might be bout, shipped and installed. As the result the house would have assured infinite uninterruptable power supply. Then there is a cost of regeneration. The 10kW unit loaded 50% (my playback will never do it) need 103 cub feet of natural gas per hour. The cost of natural gas is falling nowadays, that is good.  Let do some math now.

The electric company charges Generation + Delivery, all together is about 40 cents per 1kWh. One 1 kW of electricity is about 3,4 BTU. 1 cubic foot of natural gas = 1 BTU, so to make 1kWh using natural gas I would need 3.4 cubic foot of natural gas.  The cost of Natural Gas is approximately $0.25 per cubic feet, or to make 1kWh via Natural Gas I would need .25x3.4 = 85 cents. From this number we need to subtract the efficiency of the regeneration methods. The PP200 is 90% efficiency and gas generators are I would estimate do no better than 40% efficiency. I was not able to get those numbers from anyone. I think it would be 40% as the large commercial very efficient regenerators do up to 50%-60%. So, the comparative cost of one hour 1kW loaded PP2000 regenerator would be sub $0.45, while the same 1kW regenerated from gas would be around $1.30. (Let discard that playback will not use 5kW). So, with all equal the bill got gas regeneration might be 3 times higher than electricity regeneration). I would ay it is expensive but marginally tolerable. Nowadays my electric bill for my Playback-only is about $100 per month; with gas it would be $300 per month (for Playback Only). Important is that it would be my chose if I power playback from grid, from PP2000 or from naturally-clean gas regenerator. However…

And this is the very biggest however. I have absolutely no idea who the alternators that are used in gas generators sound. It might be anything from a perfect sound to a complete shit – no one I spoke in the subject in the gas generators world knows it. I think if I know that there is one alternator out there that is sonically tested and that sound good then it would be possible to mount it on the axis of the gas generator and it will be the solution of solutions. Does anyone have any experience with alternators and with powering playback from them?

Regardless many unknown this field I find it is very lucrative direction to look. For sure it will take care about my sump pump but could it take my electricity battle to the new level of perfection? How to sonically test alternators?

Amir wrote:

AC power generation with gas seems to be a good idea, my friend had a idea about using AC motor coupled to AC generator for generating AC power. he told me we can use 50hz (in iran AC frequency is 50hz) AC motor (connected to home AC power) for generating mechanical rotation and couple it to a 50hz AC generator. he told me in this state distortion of home AC power can not effect on output AC power. I'm not sure it's true or not but this is a idea.

I find an interesting local Boston company where I might test the Motor-Generator option. They manufacture exactly what I might need: Motor-Generator sets for ultimate isolation. They offer single-phase brushless synchronous Motor-Generator pair with maximum distortion of 2.5% at full load. They offer ±0.5% voltage stability and since it is synchronous thing then a very naturally-stable frequency. The thing produces 80-85 dBA noise and made to handle any inductive load.  They make small Motor-Generator sets down to 5kW that I guess might be less noisy. I like their model version that has 10HP motor and 17A generator.  There is however an interesting question how a generator would behave under load.

After a 100 load is applied or released, the output voltage might change and return to the regulation value within some time. It called voltage recovery time and in their generators it is 500 milliseconds. Sure if I have 100A generator then it would not a subject at all, but how about the small unit? If I keep the operation as I have now then I would not worry about it as all my power-handle devises are running in class A and draw constant current. However, I might not have enough power in new room for my woofer towers and it would force to use class A/B SS amp. So, what would happen when 200-300 A /B amp run strong bass serge? This would easy suck 17A from generator and the question is: how the bass would sound if the Generator sinks for 500 milliseconds. It might be not auditable at all or it might be auditable. It might be buffered by the capacitance of the amp PS. Alternatively I might run a large coil in serial with bass amps to buffer current flow (what Richard Gray's Power Company dose). Anyhow, this all need to be tested and since the guys are local I might very much do so.

The biggest problem in this test is… that PP2000 does very well that might discourage me to do any efforts in the Motor-Generator isolation. Let see how it goes… but I like to have and to know my options.