Balanced Power on Regenerators?

Power Components
1

A friend and I have been discussing power regenerators and power cords a lot the past six months or so. Many of the people on the Decware.com forums swear by the PS Audio Power Plants, so I saved up and picked up a P10 that I’m pretty happy with (it turns out my Decware amp with huge filter caps do a lot for the power already - I hear a bigger improvement in sound with my smaller tube amps including guitar amps).

So my good listening partner heard my P10 on his Decware amps, and was immediately smitten and picked up a Power Plant Premiere. He recently purchased a P300 for his second system at a lake house or something, and when comparing the two said the P300 sounded considerably better than the PPP. It was suggested to him by another Decware forum member, that it’s probably because the P300 is a balanced power setup.

I did some research and I see many reviews raving on about how the older regenerators rocked because of this balanced power scheme.

So now my question is - if the balanced power was so good, why doesn’t the P10 have it? (Or does it and I just can’t find it documented?)

Is balanced really that good, and if I’m using tube gear, is it possible an older balanced regenerator might sound better?

I’m just curious about the changes, and what’s (currently) better.

Thanks!

~Eric~

2

Hey E,

Interesting that our pal had these results because I had a P300 in my system for years and in my opinion and system I prefer the sound of the Power Plant Premier.

More and more I think every system (and its environment) is different and there are many ways to get to audio happiness. :)

3

I also thought the PPP sounded better than my P600 and P300 and my P10 beats all of them. Only the pre-PPP regenerators provided balanced output (and adjustable output frequency). The early models were much less efficient than the PPP and later Power Plants. It certainly seems possible that balanced power might sound better in a given system, as lonson suggests. But, the later models have better regulation and more reserve power so generally I would expect them to sound better than the early models even though they do not produce balanced power.