I’m looking to pick up a PowerPlant Premier or P5 on the used market. The Premier is older than the P5 and as such they’re typically found for less money. My question is, other than chassis design and power output (1500 vs 1200 watts) what are the audible or sound quality differences between the two?
See, e.g., here
The P5 is vastly improved over the PPP in absolutely all areas you can think of.
In particular: If one of (or the main) reason you are buying a power plant is because you have crappy power in your area, with lots of voltage swings, then forget about the PPP and go for a P5.
Thanks for the info guys. I’ve picked up a like-new PPP for an extremely good price on the used market. I want to try power regeneration out before I decide if it’s worth the large investment with a P5.
With that said, what exactly makes the P5 (and P10) better than the PPP? Is the hardware itself better? I notice %THD input is ~4.0% to 4.2% and output %THD is usually 0.5%. Is that normal performance? Would a P5 make it go lower than this? There aren’t large voltage swings in my house. Voltage is usually 119 or 120 volts or at least it’s been that way for the past week. I doubt there will be large variations in my area as my area doesn’t have a lot of industry.
I typically see the same THD on the line, and my P5 reduces this usually to 0.1%. My PPP does as yours.
Register your PPP and then look at the performance data after a couple of days. My voltage ranges from 117V to 122V every day, with the lower voltages starting as people get up in the morning and at their lowest around 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM, after which the voltage rises again. I live in a rural area outside of a large metropolitan area with my own transformer.
The P5 unquestionably sounds better. I do not know if this is due to better regulation, lower THD, or the much lower output impedance. My bet is the lower impedance. It is also a great more efficient.
Elk is correct. The P5 outperforms the older PPP because of hardware changes including a new internal amplifier.
Question I keep forgetting to ask. Why do I see pics of the P5 with 3 pairs of coaxial protection, yet my two P5 units have none? What this a option? Or was it removed from beta units for production models?
P5 doesn’t have any coaxial I/O. If you’ve seen pics of P5 with coaxial connectors on the back it might be a photoshopped image. I have seen photoshopped P5 images with the touchscreen GUI from a P10, etc. It’s been commented on in the forums before.
Ok. Not sure I buy that one. I would be surprised if companies like Upscale would Photoshop. Maybe Paul will chime in to explain?
https://www.upscaleaudio.com/collections/power-conditioners/products/ps-audio-power-plant-10
PS Audio have photoshopped their own products in the past…it certainly happened with some P5 marketing material. It has been mentioned on the forum before…
My P5 has three pair of coaxial connectors.
They do not appear to have been Photoshopped onto the back panel.
3 Likes
Yes, this one shows them:
I don’t recall any mention of them in the OM.
Modern Power Plants no longer have the coax connectors on the rear and haven’t for some time. True enough when we eliminated them several years back I did Photoshop out the connectors on the back panel because I was in too big of a hurry to reshoot the new back panel and there was no doubt some big time crunch - and then of course, promptly forgot to go back and take care of it properly. My bad. Guilty as charged.
The coaxs were reasonably useless and so we decided to remove them.
I want to add a little update. I was able to pick up a Power Plant Premier in like-new condition for $775 a few weeks ago. I want to make clear that I was severely skeptical that it was going to make much of a difference in sound quality. I was mistaken. The upgrade in sound quality is astounding. The upgrade in sound quality is easily greater than when I upgraded to a proper audiophile source component (Sonore Signature Series Rendu with I2S output) instead of going out direct from my PC via Optical or USB. It has worked wonders on the sound of my Sonore SSR, Directstream Sr DAC and Parasound Halo A21 amp combo . It sounds like a completely different system better in every way. Music just sounds so much cleaner, clearer and more natural now. The blackest background I’ve heard. Now I’ve got the taste for a P5. I hope to pick one up from someone upgrading to the new DSD P5 or maybe a showroom demo. I can’t afford a brand new unit at the moment.
I’m sold on Power Regeneration. If you’re skeptical or on the fence, just take my advice and buy one. You’ll thank me later.
1 Like
I have my trusty old Power Plant Premier as the heartbeat of a little used second system upstairs. My wife wanted a TV there to watch when on the treadmill and I added that. Unfortunately as has happened before there was a big bad hum coming in from the TV cable. I connected that cable to the coaxial input on the PPP and then to the TV from the coaxial output. . . . Hum gone. So:these coaxial connections are not entirely useless on the PPP imo.
Seegs- That is great to hear about the difference the PPP made. I too am a bit skeptical about what I may hear regarding improvements but I’m thinking giving it a try. Hopefully as members sell their PPPs, P5s etc and upgrade they post them here. Some of Paul’s new stuff is out of reach. Especially if I hope to upgrade to the BHK pre one day…
Thanks for the PPP report. I am a long time user of PowerPlants and find them amazing.
It is one of the few things one can add to your system which just makes it better without changing the character of the sound. It truly is a “removing of veils,” “cleaning the window,” etc. the reviewers claim of many products.
1 Like
Hello.
My p5 is one of the units with those coax inputs and I’d like to ask the original function of those inputs. Are they galvanic isolators?
I’m having some ground loop issues with my cable decoder and would be great if the p5 could handle that.
I think older units, PPP and the like had different operation principle to the current line up. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, older units were true regenerators creating sine wave(-s) from scratch, while newer units take a different approach - correcting “fixing” existing mains live signal to an extent permitted by the capacity of the unit at a slight expense of increased input resistance. I think, this is why, reversing mains polarity on newer units makes them useless (quite few EU countries allow mains socket to be in either direction). And this is why mains DC can cause a significant strain on the newer power plants as they try to “cancel” it. This is quite brilliant design if I understand the principle correctly.