Alternative that's easy and good for the PSU1

Your power board and adapter plug look handy items for those using UK style power plugs.

Good to hear you are happy with your tweaks.

A fellow here who spent a deal on power conditioning and improved mains supply etc in his home reported rather interesting findings:

He lives in a fairly heavily industrial area, but most of the industry is only during business hours (not 24/7 factories) - after all his expenditure on additional heavy mains wiring, mains regenerators etc. he felt that he had gained little from the expenditure - until he happened to be home during normal business hours, then he reported that all his power filtration made a significant difference and was obviously doing what was expected of it.  He had not previously noticed as significant a difference since he was not normally using his equipment during periods of heavy local power use.

I have found it to seem beneficial to separate SMPS power adaptors out onto their own power boards not connected to my mains filters and run my audio linear supplies behind the mains filtration.

It may only be my imagination but it seems to have cleaned things up a deal.

Thank you for sharing your findings.

Lapkwan,

your PSU1 is a "linear" power supply, it uses a transformer (heavy); a Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS) is lightweight and uses high speed electronic switching rather than a transformer to do its work of voltage change. (think that is right - you can check for yourself).

They are the common plugpack/wall wart type of supply provided with switches, routers etc.

Due to their greater energy efficiency, they are becoming mandatory worldwide (sadly for audio) and are provided with many items of new equipment.  They are the type of power supply in computers and one was provided with one of my DAC's.  They are also the type of PSU provided as a cheaper option with certain GSP products.  WRT those, Graham has spent a lot of time in previous years and there has been extensive testing of the results, such that products using them do not suffer detrimental effects to SQ from the forward carriage of artifacts of their mode of operation.  This was the subject of lengthy R & D work @ GSP for a number of years following the mandating of their use in the EEC and other countries in order to maintain the standards of sound quality expected by GSP customers.

They are also the type of power supply provided with items such as the Logitech Squeezebox and many other things, they are, to my knowledge, used inside newer DVD players etc.

Amongst other aspects of their operation, they allow passage of a miniscule "residual current" - which can sometimes be felt on the surface of equipment so powered.  Experience has shown it to be beneficial to ground this residual current for better sound quality from equipment so powered.

I am thinking specifically here of the Novo HPA and also the Solo HPA when powered by the "green" PSU (SMPS).

I have a number of audio devices (external soundcards, DAC etc. etc.) and noticing some grittiness to the sound of the system at one stage, I re-arranged my power boards and plugged all the linear supplies into my power conditioner and all the SMPS into a different board not connected to the power conditioner.  This seemed to improve the overall sound quality and I now make it a practise not to connect SMPS to the same outlets/plugboards as other audio equipment not having such supplies.  Perhaps I also re-arranged interconnects and resolved the situation by that, perhaps the SMPS feed some noise back into the mains, I am not certain either way, try it where or if applicable and see what you think.

Hope this clarifies the situation some.

regards,

Tony G