I have a dedicated spur (very heavy guage, at the breaker box a conventional circuit breaker not an earth leakage detector¹). At the audio end I’ve four outlets used for a Power Plant Premier, a Quintet (for less ‘critical’ equipment) a Duet (for my electrostatic speakers) and a sub plugged directly into an outlet (as advised by some).
The spur runs many metres through the house and in places has to be close to other mains circuits and some other electronics. I suppose it must pick up some interference by induction. So I’ve been considering balanced mains. I would do this with a transformer at the breaker end so that common mode interference would be much reduced at the audio end. I would use a transformer rated at 5kW or more. My sub has a 1250W class D amp in it and my power amp is 2× 200W (class G) with a maximum power consumption of 1000W.
5kW+ transformers don’t come cheap so before I take the plunge I’m wondering whether the gain in ‘blacker background’ might be good but that I might suffer a loss of dynamics as a result of increased mains circuit impedance.
[Beyond my breaker box is a local mains supply that’s many, many decades old, but the local sub-transformer (up on a pole) is only a few years old and less than a hundred metres away.]
I welcome comments.
Peter
¹ Sanctioned by a qualified electrician but after having read Paul’s comment above perhaps I should swap it for an earth leakage breaker for extra safety.
Balanced power through a transformer can be effective though, depending on where you live, you might already have it available. I know that in the States you can have an electrician wire it up so you get balanced power from the pole. Since you’re using meters to describe length, I suspect you’re not in the States - you may already have balanced power. I would check first.
That said, if you decide to add an isolation transformer then make sure it’s damned big. 5K isn’t too small. The worst thing you can do is go too small and when you draw high current at low power factor loads you’ll get increased distortion. Staying with a big transformer reduces that tendency.
Since Peter is in the UK I would have guessed he already had balanced power (but I don’t know that for a fact). In any event I wonder if he’d get a bigger bang by upgrading his PPP to a P10.
A couple of questions regarding the discussion … Is there a way to tell if I have balanced power coming onto the house? Does it require three phase on the pole and getting two of the phases, or is it something else? Moving on to hardware, I have a P-500 that I have used for many years. Since the P-500 predates the PPP, does it output balanced power? I have been considering a P10, but have been procrastinating. One thing that would help push me over the edge is if the efficiency of the P10 was much better than the P500. I “know” all about the other improvements, but I would have to reconfigure the system to get all components hooked up to it (which might be a good thing).
And to answer your other questions neither the P5 not the PPP have balanced power outputs. The only regenerators we ever made with balanced power outputs were the first versions of P300 through P600s which were highly inefficient.
Thanks Paul! My first regenerator was a P300 which wasn’t very powerful and seemed quite inefficient. The P500 seems more efficient though it is still constrained in power output, too bad it’s not balanced. P10 is getting closer …
I own two P20s. Prior to that, the P10, PPP, P1000, P500, etc.
I’d like to use one small balanced toroidal isolation transformer for each of my low-powered source components (each rated at more than double the peak draw of the component) such as my Aurender music server, network switch boxes, USB conditioners, DAC power supplies (two for my MSB Technology Select II) AFTER the P20’s output duplex, likely the 150W or 400W models from PLiXiR:
Would this adversely affect the PP20s, apart from the inefficiency losses of 2-3% dissipated as heat? Do the balanced isolation toroidal present an undesirable load, particularly during the powering-on process? Hence, should they be plugged into only the “High Power” duplex outlets of the P20s?
I’m assuming that the electrical load is mostly just resistive, with very low capacitance and inductance.