Linear PSU - do they matter?

Oh well, it has arrived and is plugged in. We shall see if it makes any difference. If it doesn’t at least it has a nice red led. Can’t have too many of those

Well? what happened?

Don’t leave the thread hanging like this.

.sjb

Ok so, the smsl m8 dac had an appalling USB issue so abandoned that and got a digiberry spdif hat to connect to dac and upsampled all to 192/24 via Roon as the max with this input. Once this settled down I did a/b with and without the Lps. Call it confirmation bias, snake oil rubbish etc but imaging, solidity and treble all much better with the lps. 12 hours testing with well known stuff - works with this dac/lps combination at least

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I read a remark somewhere that basically said everything we listen to is, in effect, simply the power supply modulated

It seems logical, therefore, that a quieter power supply will equate to an improvement in SQ

Whether you can actually hear that or not is an entirely separate question

:smirk:

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This kind of conclusions are completely useless without knowing the psu demands of the device being powered, without knowing the specs of the switched psu or lps. There seems to be a tendency to believe theat anything with a badge “linear power supply” on it is always better then switched mode. This is most defenitly not true. There are very very good and very very bad power supplies of both kinds. Switchers are NOT by defenition nosier then linear supplies. Offcoarse they can be, but don’t compare a highend linear supply with a cheapskate chinese switcher that was supplied with your houshold electronics.

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Old topic, but I just replaced the stock SMPS for my Roon Nucleus+ with a Keces P8 Linear Power Supply. It has made a huge improvement in SQ, bringing more solidity to bass and midrange, and significantly improving resolution, particularly in the highs. Granted, I have an extremely high resolution system:

Speakers: Sound Labs Ultimate 545
Amps: Pass Labs X-260.8.8, KXR-Twenty pre.
Source :Roon/Tidal/Qobuz Lumin X-1 server,
Power&PC’s: Shunyata TritonV1/Typhon QR/various PC’s, 1 Dedicated AC line
Tweeks: Stillpoints under everything. 6 Stillpoint Apertures and various other room treatments.

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Same here with a Custom Hifi Cables DC3, designed and made by Sean Jacobs, who designed the PSU for the two-box Innuos Statement. Massive improvement. Very happy. I was extremely sceptical, but he has a 30-day money-back guarantee, so I took the punt. And very glad I did.

I’ve got a good portable DAC in for review at the moment. It’s battery powered. I’m finding that recharging it using a high quality linear supply gives better results than with a standard supply. Just a guess, maybe better electrons? :smiling_imp::thinking::thinking::thinking:

Maybe you can write an article about it

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I’m a firm believer in linear power supplies. And now a firm believer in upgrading the fuses on those! The sound quality of the Sonore Power Supply I’m using to power my microRendu 1.4 went through the roof with the addition of a Synergistic Black fuse (on sale at the moment - got mine for $60 from Futureshop in the UK). So much so I ordered a more inexpensive AMR fuse for the ZeroZone (Chinese) LPS I used for my NUC. Not actually expecting much more from that as it’s so far down the chain, but for $19 shipped from the UK to US worth a punt. Power cables make a difference too, but ime not so much as the fuse or the quality of the dc cable out. Of course as with everything in hifi YMMV!

I must admit I have not had much luck withe SR fuses. They were interesting in some respects but definitely muddied instrumental tones and textures, so that I much preferred my system without them.

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LOL Did you do a blind test?

I have not (yet) tested but lots of people have tested LPSs on digital (let’s not get into that can of worms - is SPDIF digital? partly…) and found a difference. With SPDIF, the timing can be affected directly since it is synchronous. With USB its a bigger mystery why it might work (asynchronous, clocked by receiving DAC). So the protocol and topology matter here.

Let’s be real, the differences are generally subtle, and if they are jitter related, will almost certainly be in the extreme treble where they make a more substation % error, often above any fundamentals- so in timbre, sound staging etc.

More broadly i have yet to find an audio app where power supplies are not THE most important component in the design. Its where i put 75% of my effort anyway.

Sorry to be ignorant, but what is the connection between the Rpi and the audioquest,and mostly importantly, is it galvanically isolated already?

Food for thought mostly. let us know what you find. I will be building one later. Posted on another thread (there’s a big one on this topic elsewhere, I’m too new to know)
G

I sure did - closed my eyes and Thelonious Monk never sounded so good. :slight_smile:

Like I said, YMMV, and that could be from device to device. All I know is what I hear…

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Hearing can be a fickle friend my friend.

Seriously though, Sonore themselves offer the SR fuse as an upgrade, and they are a company who don’t comment on the quality of the sound of their own products and don’t make promises of any kind, but have always delivered knockouts. So I’ll believe then that they heard enough of a difference in their power supply to offer it. On the other hand, I would be wary of putting an audiophile fuse in my Naim gear, as that is rarely recommended. But who knows? Hearing may be fickle, but so are most pleasures in life. I like what I hear (a lot!) and it only cost me $60, almost a pittance in comparison to most hifi.

I also heard a subtle difference for the better after tightening up my Porter Port outlets yesterday on my dedicated lines (one ground was very loose as it turns out). And that was a free tweak. But who knows, it could all just be one big auditory hallucination in my head and doesn’t actually sound any better than the Sonos on top of the microwave in the kitchen…

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Good one :face_with_hand_over_mouth: :sunglasses: :+1: