2. tech-talk
  3. 180124-170745

Don’t over power condition!

Recently I bought the Aurender W20SE. Sounded incredible first day, just everything you’d expect from a 22k streamer, jaw dropping. But then I started getting dropping and smearing, sounded like CD skipping. Frustrated I lost the original bliss of the finest sound I’ve ever heard, I began having regrets of dropping the cash on the piece. I worked with the excellent Aurender customer service through their great app, they wanted to download some new software into the W20SE after sending them an audio clip of the dropping and smears that were irregular, maybe one every other song.

 

But do you know what the actual problem was? Over power conditioning! I had the Puritan PSM 156 hooked into the Audiowise RF Stop, and as soon as I got rid of the RF Stop and plugged it in directly into the Puritan problem solved. One of the wildest lessons I’ve learned thus far in my young HiFi journey, over power conditioning can destroy your sound.

128x128brandonhifi
ebm
9,311 posts
 

Great observation I agree 100%.

larryi
4,033 posts
 

There is something wrong with at least one of the components involved.  Even if there is such a thing as over conditioning, there should not be such a gross manifestation of a problem.  It sounds like the conditioner is not working correctly.

itsjustme
682 posts
 

agree with larryi. What measurements did you take. Did you watch the line voltage at the output of your conditioning mess long term. Something’s wrong.

 

Example: this is unlikely the real issue, just an example of how things can go wrong. Three power conditioners are used in series to clean, clean more, adn clean even more.  Now i agree there is no such thing as "too pure" power, but what you may get is either:

 

1. a voltage drop on each that either takes some piece of your system out of voltage regulation.  Bad things happen then.

2. You keep increasing series (output) impedance and dont deliver the current necessary on demand.  A streamer doesn't need much, but a power amp may. And when it draws heavily (back to #1 - voltage drops, goes out of regulation).

3. If no regulator, maybe the bias falls out of class-A, since many bias circuits are voltage dividers and you get a % of the input voltage.  yea, its a bit more complicated, but the effect still exists.

or of course, just broken.

More to discover