My P10 has 5 Zones, as does a P15. In the P10 manual it talks about grouping things like digital components together - the later power products (P12/15/20/StellarP3) don’t seem to mention grouping of different component types.
I am hoping that there’s a PS Audio Expert who’ll answer my questions (any user of a regenerator needs this type of information, or maybe not). I’ve been asked, in effect, to supply PSA with this information. I’d also like to know which components are likely to benefit from the clean function.
I’d like to understand what a zone is and whether there’s a difference between the older power plants (P3/P5/P10) and the newer power plants.
For example:
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is a zone purely a group of outlet circuits that are enabled via a relay, and if so, is there any cross contamination between the outlets within a zone, and is this different in the latest range of regenerators compared with my P10s (I now also have a StellarP3 and need to decide where best to use it).
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also, is there cross contamination between the zones, e.g. might a noisy switch mode power supply on one zone have an adverse affect on, say, an amp on another zone?
If there is cross contamination between components is it important not to mix components with switch mode power supplies with more conventional power supplies. Further, in the old documentation it talks about analogue and digital components, however, it’s not easy to decide what’s what. If mixing is important with a P10 then I’d like to know how to categorise the components in my system. I have the following components:
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A melco N1A server. This probably has a conventional power supply, disc drives, an ethernet connection, and the way I use it a USB output to play the selected music. This is my main source of music and is typically replying ripped CDs. The Melco uses a USB disc optical drive - mine has a wall wart psu - I should probably disconnect it unless I’m actually ripping a CD (unless of course I can keep it connected to its own zone without it having an impact on any other zones!)
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a Linear Power Supply to feed four coax reclockers and one usb reclocker
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A USB recclocker - USB-In, USB-Out - no rescaling, just reclocking
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a Chord M-Scaler - this is coax digital in and coax digital out. It has a switch mode power supply (but Chord think it’s suitable for the application). I use it to upscale my 44.1/16 to 88.2/24. It’s input is USB, it’s output is Coax
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a femto clocked reclocker to reclock the 88.2/24 to 96/24 ready for input to the digital crossover/equaliser
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a DEQX HDP-5 digital crossover and equaliser with impulse response correction and FIR filtering. The output of this is three 96/24 coax feeds. In order for it not to need to do its own sample rate conversion I feed it with 96/24 from the coax reclocker (it has other inputs but this is the main input when playing music (typically ripped CD) from the Melco server)
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three more coax reclockers (femto clocked) leading to the dacs
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three Directstream Dac, so its power supply feed a digital circuit which outputs via an analogue circuit.
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three two channel power amps - two BHK250s for mid/treble and a Crown CE4000 for bass (being a very powerful amp this has switch mode power supply circuitry).
In summary, I need to establish what zones actually are, both on the older regenrators and the newer regenerators. I’ve just obtained the Stellar P3 and intend to use it just for the three Direcstream dacs (it has one spare UK outlet, so I could move one other low power component over to it).
It’d also be nice to know which components benefit from the clean function. For example, in a directstream dac I guess there’s an input transformer associated with its main power supply - there’s also a transformer on the output - does the clean get to the parts of the directstream?.
If PSA want to tell me who I could ask these questions to directly then please PM me - I could maybe produce a table for someone to fill in some answers for me.
[I’ve made minor edits to the initial post]
I’ve decided to add one more request, which is to try to understand which types of component benefit from Multiwave values of 6, as seen on the larger regenerators, and what is the tradeoff between multiwave of 6 versus the lower output impedence of the latest regenerators.
UPDATE 11th June 2020.
I power off the entire system between listening sessions. I do not listen daily. Is this detrimental to the sound of components such as amps and dacs and how long a ‘clean’ would be needed to restore things.
Also, specifically regarding the Direcstream dacs (seniors), which level of multiwave is best for them (I use 6 at present).
Thanks