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Radio Power Supply in HiFi Application

Hello everyone, long time forum reader first time poster. I have what might be considered a noob question by some so forgive my ignorance: what’s the difference between radio linear power supply, “lab”, and the audiophile ones? I know the audiophile ones state they’re focused on reducing noise, but wouldn’t the others have this same purpose? The reason I ask is because I picked a used marine radio LPS for $20 locally to use with the uptone Mac mini conversion kit to get me by until I can afford something better, but the sound quality upgrade has been very satisfactory considering the $200 investment, so I’m now wondering whether it’s really worth spending the extra money for an uptone or sbooster for can additional to $700 or so. Hope to hear thoughts/facts on the topic and thanks in advance,

Mat
matias9
roxy54's avatar
roxy54
7,984 posts
 
Don’t feel bad matias9. I must be noobier than you, because I don’t have any idea of what you’re talking about!
noromance's avatar
noromance
9,769 posts
 
If it sounds good, then no need to spend. I used a $30 LPS for a class D amp and it sounded great. It's possible there are better components in the expensive units but you may be looking at diminishing returns.
roberjerman
4,319 posts
 
Spending $700 more is a waste of money.
cal3713's avatar
cal3713
1,421 posts
 
They're probably all the same, in fact I'd personally be biased *towards* testing equipment where poor noise suppression would interfere with operation and is likely to be detected by the user.  The old radio equipment was also *very* sensitive to electrical noise, so aside from being old and possibly in need of new capacitors, may also be better made than a modern audiophile power supply. 

In the end it's all about producing the cleanest DC sign wave possible and keeping that perfection going under increasingly heavy loads (so do pay attention to voltage and current ratings).
cal3713's avatar
cal3713
1,421 posts
 
And long story short, your purchase may even outperform the fancy $700 one. If you can get an audiophile pls with a return policy you should give it a go and find out.
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