• 2-channel: PrimaLuna ProLogue Classic integrated tube amp (Class A/B, 2×40W max.), Thorens TD-350 turntable (12W), Audio-GD Reference 7.1 DAC (Class A, 38W), Oppo 83SE universal player (35W), Squeezebox Touch net streamer (3W)
  
• Multi-channel: Pioneer SC-LX82 7.1-ch. AVR (Class D, 190W max.), Monitor Audio RSW12 powered sub (Class D, 500W avg.), Oppo 83SE, Panasonic Viera TX-P46GT30 TV (165W avg.)

Byzantine Empire  and PurePower.

spytsi wrote:

Everybody here remembers that Romy's initial acquaintance with PP products was through model 1050; at some later point he upgraded to model 2000. Since then quite a few user opinions appeared on this thread to discuss how did the PP1050 develop over the years. Where there any PP1050 users to also experience buzzing or humming of any kind? Did the —seemingly problematic— revision/upgrade for PP2000 during late 2010 also affect the sonic behavior of revised/upgraded PP1050 units in a similar manner? Were there any PP1050 users that at some point experienced similar sound from their newly purchased units, performing significantly better when running on battery than on AC regeneration mode? Any feedback on model PP3000, introduced during late 2010? It would be interesting to know, especially from thread readers that might have not yet posted their experience with PP1050 or PP3000.

spytsi wrote:

On a side note: what does the labeling of PP models (following their 4-digit number code) stand for? Maybe "i" for international (120V), "hv" for high voltage (230V)?

spytsi wrote:

Romy, since you are the person who discussed extensively with the manufacturers the imperative need to deal with the problems encountered on their revised PP2000 units (Nov-Dec 2010), did they recognize the need to apply this (hardware?) treatment for this bug on their entire product line (1050, 3000, both i & hv), or just on the 2000i/hv devices? Apart from implementing this treatment on their product line prospectively, did they also happen to do so retrospectively = did they fix all already stocked late-2010 PP units before being sold to customers?

spytsi wrote:

Do you think PP1050 will suffice for my needs (especially during multi-channel playback at nearly-max load), or should I opt for PP2000? I'd like to note that both systems are almost completed and no major upgrades are planned for at least the next 5 years.

spytsi wrote:

PP1050hv has 4 schuko receptacles; 3 of them will be occupied by the 2 amps and power sub; all the other devices can be hooked on the 4th receptacle through a BlackNoise audio-grade power strip, or alternatively hook them on PP1050 through a power filtering device (Belkin Power Console PureAV PF50). Which solution of the two appears as more solid? Can PF50 be fed by PP1050 without any electrical or sonic "side-effects" to either device? On a theoretical basis, is it a good or a bad idea to insert a filter between PP1050 and my source/DAC/TT? I mean, could PF50 filtering cancel all the benefits of running my source/DAC/TT on regenerated power? Alternatively, what about chaining the two devices the opposite way: use the PF50 filter to power PP1050? I guess that's similar to feeding PP2000 through the AdeptResponse units recently discussed here. Or would it be preferable to use a Kemp balanced isolator source to feed PP? BTW, can regenerators run on balanced AC?

I do not know, spytsi. On a theoretical basis it might be a good idea to put some kind of filtration to an isolated load that runs from PurePower but in practice I was not able to find anything that can run after my PP2000 that did not ruin Sound. Your mileage might wary but I kind of abandoned any other devised with I discover PP, so I do not know what is nowadays out there.

spytsi wrote:

Although I'm convinced in finding the optimal answers to these questions by personal trying-and-listening, still I'd greatly appreciate your experienced approach to this, like I would for the comments of other forum members.

Be careful with “comments of other forum members” or with my own comments at this matter. When you build your playback you shall not be caring about compliance with some kind of knowledge out there but only with the actual results you get and with compliance to your own reference point. It is not to mention that you live in own country where electricity has absolutely different problems from other countries.  I would not even mention that 220V units might be very different by sound and design then 120V units. So, make your own mind with your own result and pay little attention to what people say out there.

Ok, looking at the flawless performance of my PP2000 I decided to get the PP3000, which was ordered today:

http://www.purepoweraps.com/pdf/USprices.pdf

As I turn my entire playback on (phonostage and Pacific) I suck 96% from PP2000. The PP2000 still operate very fine but if I add anything else with input choke then it begin to bypass when choke has initial inrush current.  With PP3000 it will be I guess around 70%...

I consulted with my tech folks and they told me that by use more powerful output stag and by beefing up coils and caps it is perfectly possible to get more power without affecting anything else. I do a bit nervous as it is not the SAME unit as the tested PP2000 is. It has larger buttery with higher voltage and I am sure many other things that are different. PurePower assure me that the PP3000 in the fields for a while and that they never had any complains of problems. Well, let see how it goes, I am cautiously optimistic….

There is nothing that forced me to come with it. I is not that I am frustrated with electricity of obsessed with   conservation idea. Furthermore it is not that I drop everything and will do anything with this idea. Still, I think the idea is very elegant and if I have a good ready to go kit in my disposal to experiment with then I would not mind to try it.

My house sits next to conservation land.  There is a creek running from nearby hills into the conservation lend. The creek is flooding in the conservation freely but in the space what houses are it confined in a large 4 feet diameter pipe and runs under ground. Right next to my house the pipe exit from the ground with 13-14 feet drop. The pipe exit is very convents located a feet above the conservation land floor. The creek never dries and never froze. Even in drought it has ~5-6 inches high water flow across 4 feet pipe, regularly it has 1 foot water flow and during rain it has the whole 4 feet pipe filed with huge pressure.

So, I wonder why do not install at the exit of the pipe a hydraulic turbine?  It is 24/7 free electricity that can let say to power my PurePower battery charger. This is the idea of complete disconnection from the grid (greed?) very much attract me. It is not difficult to implement and I am sure it has to be some kind of kits out there. All that I need a turbine wheel that will engage water and alternator. I might even take a fraction of the water from the pipe and coffin it in my own in-pipe turbine. I am not sure if it would be legal but the idea is very attracts me…

It is highly unlikely that I will go for this project

For sure I do not care about the conservation efforts and I do not care about recuperation electricity back to grid in order to earn credit. I do not think the wind power is useful for me. Wind in my case would require humongous size of battery; I would estimate at least 1000A/H, which would take a half of a room. I do have space in my house but I do not have stupidity to go there.

The hydraulic wheel on another side is very different creature. It has more or less stable power generating capacity and it might employ small battery, I would say 100A/H. The 100A/H at 72V is also a large array of batteries, with cost of many thousand dollars…

Here is how I think about the notions. Regardless what would charge the battery I would still use the PurePower inverter as it is proven to sound very good. The PurePower use 72V and the new 3kW unit that I hope to get soon use 95V – this will be a LOT of batteries if I go there. I am not sure that the PurePower own charger will be able to charge them if needed. The PurePower own charge is very flimsy. So, for the project I would require to get one more PurePower, juts for sake of inverter and to build external battery charger or to rework the PurePower’s stock charger to accommodate much larger battery. I am not convinced that I will be able to generate from my hydraulic station the power I need.

I look at the different ideas and was trying to assess the power I might get from my flow. Here is the site that I find useful.

http://www.waterwheelplace.com/main.html

The waterwheel of 3-4 feet set at slow speed to be silent, plus a transmission and high efficiency alternator would most likely give to me 300-500 watts that will not be sufficient. I need stable 1kW of continue power. I also have no idea how the alternator that will be charging the buttery will sound. So, since I have no frustration with default PurePower running from grid I do not see myself to dive into the hydraulic project. If there was some kind of hydraulic generator kit that included all that was available then I do not mind to install it and to run let say my pool pump or my backyard lights from it. Still, it is only money saving and I do not particularly care about this part. Well, I care about it but it does not excite me. Still, the idea is elegant and if I know that I can get from it my 1kW of continues power then I might consider it more practically.

It was an interning event last night. The sound turned incredibly bad from electricity perspective. I did not have anything like this for a year or so it was very bad and it was clearly electrical. The PP2000 was working fine and the distortions in the raw side of the wall were incredibly low – it was almost a perfect sinusoid. Still, despite that there were no visible signs of problems the sound was horrible and disconnection from the grid did fix all problems immediately. I was wondering what it might be.

Today I was talking with Pure Power asking about the shipping date of my PP3000 and I asked them if they experience anything similar. They told me that they did observe that they have witnessed that noise between neutral and ground med some systems go sound. This is very interesting as I did not monitor this noise. I was under impression that this noise is constant for any given inhalation but PurePower suggests that it is not. Well, yesterday there was first day of rain, perhaps it wet ground and did make something special ground condition that made the day special. Who knows…

I uselessly measured the voltage between neutral and ground and anything under 1.5V I considered acceptable however I did not look into the noise level and noise structure.

Today sound is fine and I did make some initial digs. I will compare them with the day what the sound will be VERY good or VERY bad. Take a look

This is the neutral and ground noise at the exit of PP2000.  All above is .5V per square.

 This is the neutral and ground noise at the entrance of PP2000.

This is the neutral and ground noise at the wall, the entrance of PP2000 with PP2000’s main switch off.

This is the same as above only with .05V per square.

Then I desided to hear how the noise sounds. I took my HP selective voltmeter and filter out all sun 10.000Hz. The nose was very distinctive 33dB and with very characteristic whistling.
 

Let to see what other day will bring. I am very curious to know what it will be. Is it possible that THIS nose makes all difference? It would be not a big deal to shunt this nose with a cap; I wonder how it will affect sound….

Romy the Cat wrote:

The last nigh I tuned the playback and witnessed one of the best sound I had... ...The leading idea is that something environmentally got changed that affect out perception and make brain to get positive sensation from sound. However, what might it be? Solar wind, moisture, pressure, pollen, smell, radon, amount of chicken in my belly – everything was in normal values but the sound was MUCH better than usual... ...My entire house was disconnected from the drip by main switch and my stand by generator was shut down. The wire running across my room still was showing virtually unchanged voltage and I have a good 2 acres of land around me that had no electrical devises. Where is that noise and voltage came from and how it affected sound, if it was.

spytsi wrote:

On November 3, the very day that you witnessed this unusually good (electricwise?) quality of sound and recorded that voltage in the wire run in your home, the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded some major double solar activity. The detailed report can be found in the following link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News110411-x1.9-cme.html If this solar activity is somehow related to the effects you heard and recorded, it remains to elucidate the exact mechanism(s). Just a guess...

Yes, it is a good way of thinking; in past I did think about solar wind and looked a few times at the solar wind monitor site.  I did not observe any relation but for this subject my observations are too insufficient. BTW, the event with sound that I described above took place 2 days before the solar activity.

I do understand that it might be many exotic things but frankly I do feel about something much more mundane and much more manageable.  I do have some ideas about it that fascinate me, unfortunately any ideas require to buy some tools and to do some tests….

steverino wrote:

Why do you think the improved sonics were related to the residual noise or more precisely the hypothetical delta of noise components from one day to the next? You were very non specific about what was better and to what degree. If you are perceiving better sonics because of less noise from the equipment when not playing musics or greater perceived "blackness" between notes that might have some relationship. I would also suspect noise if I heard better treble without hearing as much relative improvement in the bass. However, other kinds of changes to sonics like dynamic headroom probably have little to do with minor changes in low level whistling noise levels…

Steverino, in my view very correctly pointed out that I did not name the specifics of what constitute better from my moment above. Definitely there are zillions different aspects of being better or worse, how from all that multitude of differences I recognize better electricity day and worse electricity day?

The people who have interest to monitor this thread do feel that it has the flowing sequence:

1)    Expressing frustration about sound of electricity
2)    Looking for a solution
3)    Discovering PurePower regenerator
4)    Experimenting and testing PurePower
5)    Dealing with PurePower’s idiosyncrasy
6)    Expressing a sentiment that “something” still gets path thought the PurePower
7)    Attribution of that “something” as something that is not directly related to electricity.

My primary objective of this post is to talk a bit about that “something” and how I see difference between the sound of that “something” and the sound of bad electricity. So, in my new definition the “bad electricity day” might not necessarily to be the bad day die to the electricity. Do not get me wrong. Electricity might be bad for Sound, might be horrible for sound but the point is that the bad electricity days sound different then bad days because of that “something”.  Below I will describe how the bad electricity days are different from the “because of something” days.

Frankly the subject of electricity does not bother me too much. Since the incident exactly a year back my PP2000 works flawlessly and it looks like address all the electricity problems. Yes, I do admit that sometimes, very seldom sound do turn bad and in distinctive electricity-cause fashion but at this point I am not convinced that it is become the PP2000 still passing somethubg. Regardless what it is the PP2000 not only deal with eclectic problem but make my playback to sound in the way how I like. So, is because it’s cure of electricity of because any other reasons but it turns out the PP2000 is unavoidable for me. Furthermore I got recently PP3000, will get it next week, so the PurePower here to stay and here to deal with electricity If that  “something else” does have affect on electricity then it looks like PP2000 has nothing to do with it as that something else does not come from the wall’s power outlet.

I do understand that I am in unique position to observe that “something else” as I do have fine performing playback, I do have good means to cure and to monitor electricity (do not forget that I always can run PP2000 from buttery and to be completely disconnected from grid), I have attention, interest and attentiveness  to observe the difference of my playback performance  at any given time and I have ability to discriminate results. So, without further sucking my own dick let me to outline the difference between the bad electricity days and the days when that “something else” screw up my Sound.

The sound during bad electricity days is all about noise, all imaginable noise; it is like fog, dull everything into some kind of universal grayness. The colors are dirty, the upper mid and HF are literary dirty, the HF are very resonant with very grainy texture. The bass might be anything electricity want. Sound has very high compression and all sounds come as one flat hit of brick wall in a face. Colors are not there and instead of colors we have injection of gray pallet into all colors. I can in many words describe the sound of bad electricity. I do not think I will be original – anyone who has not good electricity and do not use PP2000 have it and know this sound.

However, what happened when electricity is fine but sound still is screwed by “something else”? Let me to explain.

The main distinction that I make is noise. During the time when sound is ruined by “something else” there is no noise and there are no all above-mentioned and another typical for bad-electricity days problems. Instead of noise sound during this period what I call “dry and sticky”. I know dry and sticky do not work out together, trust me, they do. The sound that I am after and the sound that I am getting in my room is wet and distinctive. The distinctiveness of the notes, colors, textures, expressions, dynamic nuances presented atop of a large and wet canvas of music  what I like and what I always am aiming for. Generally audio people do not get it and hardly understand it, not to mention witnessed it but those who do I hope get the point. When everything is fine then my notes compete with each other for expressiveness. When the sound turn “dry and sticky” then this large wonderful wet  canvass of sound, sort of pedal-point of presentation is not there but instead  there is field of dry desert with extraneous  and not-irrelevant to music (or perception) dehydrated pressure.  The room feels like it is untreated acoustically, there is no echo or noise but there is a sense of dry emptiness and parched meaninglessness. Then there are sounds. The sounds are the same as they have to be but there are come all together as one clammy substance. Let me to give you an association. After your woman washed her hair she is fluffy and beautiful. Each of her hair sticks out independently and distinctively. She has a pile of hair on her head but with close examination your see million of individual hairs living their own lives, sticking out of head in own unique ways and leading own intricate direction among others. In our age of a women is not painted then each her hair has one colorations and discolorations, some turn whiter, some sorter, some god know what. In other words her head is a playground for Gaussian-distributed hairs. Now, pretend that she did not wash her dead for a day than what you see? The same hairs but they lost the fluffiness and individual hair lost individuality. Individual sounds during the ruined by “something else” period behave in the very same ways how hair appears in the head of an unwashed woman. So, during that time sounds are very sticky to each other and they are presented atop of very dry surface. Pretend that you cut your unwashed woman’s hair and while they are still moisture glued them to a newspaper in the middle of Sahara? Got the feeling?

Romy the Cat wrote:

The sound during bad electricity days is all about noise, all imaginable noise; it is like fog, dull everything into some kind of universal grayness. The colors are dirty, the upper mid and HF are literary dirty, the HF are very resonant with very grainy texture. The bass might be anything electricity want. Sound has very high compression and all sounds come as one flat hit of brick wall in a face. Colors are not there and instead of colors we have injection of gray pallet into all colors. I can in many words describe the sound of bad electricity. I do not think I will be original – anyone who has not good electricity and do not use PP2000 have it and know this sound. Romy the caT

"The people who have interest to monitor this thread do feel that it has the flowing sequence:

1)    Expressing frustration about sound of electricity
2)    Looking for a solution
3)    Discovering PurePower regenerator
4)    Experimenting and testing PurePower
5)    Dealing with PurePower’s idiosyncrasy
6)    Expressing a sentiment that “something” still gets path thought the PurePower
7)    Attribution of that “something” as something that is not directly related to electricity."