Mac Mini Power Supply

Thank you Mintzar!

If I may bother you further, did you just follow the data sheet schematics for the LM 338? I realize that one can never take a PS too far, I guess what I was curious about was "how far" you need to go to get the noticeable improvement you commented upon.

I know a couple of people that use the Ultra-Fi ECM in their MAC Mini based digital rigs and they feel it is a tremendous upgrade. Here's a link to one that is currently for sale. I'm not affiliated with this seller (don't even know him), but I do know the manufacturer and a couple of his customers who use the ECM. I'm not endorsing the product as I haven't heard it yet. Just passing along some information......

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?powrcond&1284048765&/Ultra-Fi-ECM-music-server-cond

I use Isolation transformers in my system that I modified to great benefit. I am yet to find a power conditioner that works better than the Isolation transformers. The ECM is a transformer-based conditioner. So I imagine it's decent. I just use hospital grade TXs made by Topaz, which are considerably better than the ECM (though bigger, heavier, and uglier).

I partially followed the datasheet for the LM338. I used a LM337 for the negative rail (which doesn't draw much current, I believe it's only duty is iSense).

I think just going from a switchmode supply to a linear supply would give a great benefit, I just wanted to take it a step further and put some decent parts in the supply.

There's a few regulators based on the LM317 that you can just do a parts swap (with a little research).

Before spending money on power supply or expensive power cord, please try the snap-on ferrite cores first to reduce digital noise. Just snap one on each end of all your power cables and digital cables. They are very effective and cheap.

Ferrite cores are a fairly standard trick. They are cheap and while they will filter out some noise, they are no replacement for a proper power supply IMO.

I personally don't like them because they greatly limit dynamics. I also found that the ferrite cores did very little when attached to the mac mini stock power supply.

You will also want a rather large ferrite core to make it effective. I have found that Neodymium magnets filter better than ferrite cores only they don't limit dynamics. Granted, I am still skeptical of magnets and am doing further tests to make sure I wasn't just hearing things.