I have Kondo Japan tube gear, which makes Luxman feel like a horse drawn wagon (in vehicle terms) with respect to build quality and components used.
Not trying to put down Luxman, but Kondo in on another level.
The point is: even with a P5, my Kondo gear sounds fantastic!
Kondo gear is engineered with massively overbuilt power supplies, great quality power cords from Furutech, and great concern given to AC power.
If you feel the sound improved by connecting your Luxman in the wall, something was wrong with the way you setup your P20. It’s pure physics - there’s no way it can sound better running into the wall unless your P20 was already near 100% of its capacity, is not setup right, or perhaps is not working properly.
And I hope no one thinks I’m speaking ill of Luxman, I love Luxman products - they were my Dad’s favourite (and he was a professional violinist). Luxman makes beautiful products. We just have to consider the price differences and the selection of components, etc., is not going to be the same when the retail price delta is 10X or so…
Could it be that those who find their amps sound “constrained in dynamics” when plugged into a Powerplant just got used to the sound of their amps with high THD, variable voltage power? This can certainly happen - perhaps like in video, where brighter images are often equated with better image quality; but they are in fact less accurate.
I think that as long as your Powerplant has sufficient headroom, I cannot see how an amp will sound worse when plugged into it, regardless of the filters or components in the amp’s power supply.
It’s not the static power only, off course you need headroom there, but the dynamic power. If a power supply of a power amp demands faster transients than the regenerator can deliver, the rated SQ of the power amp is down the drain.
There is a big potential of this happening with (high end) switch mode power supplies, which is why Linn does recommend to run of the grid directly.
If I could afford it I‘d follow your and my dad and buy Luxman. Perhaps not up to par with the über / ultra quality Kondo Audio Note which indeed seems to be a different league.
My dad has the studio series pre amp, parametric eq., power amp and LED VU Unit. Everytime I listen to it via his 12“ woofer equipped Canton‘s I enjoy. The set is not connected to a power regenarator.
There is a big potential of this happening with (high end) switch mode power supplies, which is why Linn does recommend to run of the grid directly.
Right, but I would assume any P series Regenerator will not suffer from this. Does the community know of an amp that demands faster transients than a P5/15/20 can deliver? I know the model of Regenerator also makes a difference.
I did not have a good experience with the P20 and my amps that use so called “super caps”. even at 35% load, the p20 hummed a lot, the output distortion became higher than the input THD and the amps went into DC protection mode.
When I turn the amps off, everything goes back to normal with the P20.
But the P20 worked flawlessly with my other amps, including BHK300, and ARC ref160m.
I dont know if there may an issue with high capacitative loads that the “super caps” are said to induce.
2x Rated 1,2kw max (I don’t know the power factor for kva conversion). But p20 never went above 60%, keeping at 35% when idling (the amps are 30w class A biased).
Nevertheless, the p20 experience lasted for 1 day only. When the amps for into DC protection mode for the 2nd time, off to the outlet they went.
And the p20 returned back to normal beahviour. It surely did not enjoy it’s time with the amps!
P20 on 20a. dedicated power line, straight from the main box, 8AWG wire. The strange behaviour (higher outuput than input distortion) happened even with only one amp pluuged in the p20 (with no music playing, and everything else turned off). PSAudio even sent me a new oscillator board, to no avail.
Coda16.0…Double-sided gold-plated circuit boards and a very high-quality 3.0kVA toroidal power transformer. The 16.0 amplifier drops 150-watts Class A/B into 8 Ohms and 300 watts Class A/B into 4 Ohms. The first 100 watts into either 8 or 4 Ohms is pure Class-A.
