Polite P12?

A couple of years back I bought a Power Plant P5 on eBay, and had them ship it to PS Audio to confirm that everything was fine. After checking it out, they shipped it on to me, and I tried it in my system. I discovered that my power amps sounded less lively and engaging with the P5 in the chain, so I sold that P5.

Later, someone commented that I was expecting too much of a P5, and that I should try a P12 or better. Consequently, I bought a used P12 and tested it with some of my power amps (all Class AB). It affected the performance in the exact same way. :roll_eyes:

I figured it should work fine with my lower current devices, so I plugged in only my Denafrips Gaia DDC and Ferrum Hypsos power supply (feeding my Wandla DAC). At first it seemed like things were nicely cleaner, but after a while I realized that it was similarly stripping some of the the fun from the music. I kept it in the system for a week, thinking that I must be imaging things. Each time I played music it sounded very nice, but it never drew me in.

Yesterday evening, I replaced it with a good power bar (just 20A commercial receptacles, no filtering or surge suppression), and the sound immediately blossomed. There was more presence, energy, and engagement. It went from beautiful and polite background music to something more alive and demanding.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite as clean sounding, but that wasn’t obvious. It was definitely less demure. The most important indicator was the extended listening session, late into the night. That hasn’t happened since I injected the P12 in the a week ago.

I’m trying to figure out what’s going on. The P12 should have plenty of juice for these two front-end components. How could it change the character of the presentation so much? Could it be defective somehow? It seems to function correctly, but perhaps the capacitors are old. :man_shrugging: Do power plants need to be recapped regularly?

Does anyone have any insights?

There are some amps that simply sound better plugged directly into the wall. My Levinson 534 amp sounds better directly into the wall. All of my other components definitely sound better when plugged into the P12. My M1200’s sound better connected to my P12.

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I can’t explain what’s going on, but I’ve had a similar experience with my BHK 250 amp. For a long time it and all my other components were plugged into a P12. Then someone whose ears I trust suggested that the system might sound better with the amp plugged directly into the wall. The difference was not subtle. Perhaps I should add that my listening room has two dedicated lines, one used by the P12 and the other now by the amp. My source gear, however, still sounds better plugged into the P12.

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I had a similar experience. However for a while i did use one for front end. What did it for me was as i went up the line on amps (and still to this day) i have amp mfg. that strongly recommend to not use a device like a regen and to plug directly into the wall. So i just moved on. Had a 20amp circuit put in and thats that. My amp now even has its own power cord.

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Am using a P10 and have my BHK250 plugged into it along with my DS DAC MK1 and Innuos Zen Mk3, PhoenixNET, and a Sony Bluray… def noticed improvement when I added it, but after reading this over and over, think I will try plugging the BHK250 directly into a wall. Am having a dedicated 20amp line installed next month - will have the amp and the P10 both plugged into that and see what I hear…

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Keep us posted, Ive got a P10 w no amp plugged in, but never experimented
thank