Linear Power Supplies - any improvement in sound?

[elmarhe]

Hi everybody,
I believe in good power-supplies as well and have just ordered this:

Looks good to me on the website and is relatively cheap at EUR 115,-.

I will give it a thorough listen when it arrives and post the results.

[ACX]

[JeffD]

Hi there,

I just ordered and assembled a linear power supply for my cubietruck:
http://www.audio-creativeshop.nl/?produ ... led-tested

I ordered it without the transformer. I ordered a special higher amp toroidal one. Placed the fet on a larger cooling profile.
I'm totally in love with this system setup. Beets my modded Sonos with pico clock and adjusted power by a leap!
The digital signal coming from my Sonos sounds like good MP3 playing flac, while the cubietruck charged Rune sounds like music!
This difference was far less noticeable with a wall USB power socket!

image.jpeg (150.52 KiB) Viewed 26420 times

[elmarhe]

Hi everybody,
it took quite a while, but my power supply finally arrived and I have set it up for a few listening tests.
Since I live in Chile these years it is quite difficult/expensive for me to get european gear - thus I have to rely very much on chinese equipment. Some of that stuff is pretty good, though.
My "big" gear is still partly in Europe, partly sold, so this test is conducted using headphones.

The setup for testing the power supplys is as follows:
Player: RaspberryPi with PiFi DAC board (the Pi uses the HifiBerry DAC+ drivers)
Headphone amp: Little Dot Mark III Tube Amp
Headphones: Audeze EL-8 (the closed back variety)

The linear power supply being evaluated is Jay's Audio, 3.5 A (link in my post above). It uses Talema transformers and is of impressive build quality - even if it would sound the same, I'd still be happy with the purchase. I have to admit that I am influenced by stuff like that as well

To compare it, I use a standard wall-wart with 2 A that is normally employed to operate a tablet computer.

OK - so far, so good. But how were the listening results?
Depending on the type of music, the difference seemed pretty obvious to me. Mids and trebles did not seem that much different, but bass sounded significantly better with the LPS. Not more of it, but tighter. A bit like the difference between a bass-reflex enclosure and a big planar bass. I liked the sound a lot better with the LPS and I kept listening to the music quite a bit longer than with the wall-wart.

Mind you: I do not consider the result very reliable and I would not place a huge bet on my ability to recognise the 2 setups in a double-blind test. The interruption between comparisons is just too long (shut-down and re-boot of the Pi) and I am certainly biased because I like the appearance of the LPS. But this disclaimer aside - I honestly do think that there is a difference and that it is not just subtle!

On a side note: I also compared the Pi/Jay's Audio setup with my Sonos Connect. I think the Pi wins hands down! Again there is not a huge difference, but the Sonos seems to sound just slightly "muffled" and less energetic in comparison.

So - thanks again for Runeaudio! What a great project!
I am really happy with my sound and I enjoy vastly having an open system and not some black box.

Edit: Fixed an error in specs

[ACX]

[McPaul]

LPSu.jpg (79.98 KiB) Viewed 26050 times

Just simple LM7805. Regulated from 5V to 5.15V to eliminate the loss of U on the cable.
Using 12V 1200mA power source.

[BayleeWylie]

I found , and I was wondering... What would I need to make this work with my RPi2 and IQaudio Pi-DAC+? I don't know much about PSUs and all this, but I'm would like to build an inexpensive linear PSU if someone could give me a little guidance (don't fear to state the obvious). Thanks in advance

[PeteB]

[mrdtnl]

Hi Guys,

So i build my own LPS using a toroidal transformer from Amplimo 230v-2x6v-1.25a(http://www.ringkerntrafo.nl/shop/ringke ... -15va.html) and a Tentlabs heater supply.(http://www.tentlabs.com/Components/Tube ... index.html)
Placed this in a Modu case (which i will soon replace for a bigger one) together with a RPi2 running RuneAudio.
For a DAC i use my Marantz PM7005 amplifier(http://www.marantz.co.uk/uk/products/pa ... tid=pm7005), it has an usb dac onboard (CS4398) and Focal Chorus 716 Speakers.(http://www.focal.com/en/chorus-700/402- ... 91098.html)
Now i found that it indeed improved sound much over the standard ''wallmart power supply'' and that there's even difference between connecting the LPS via usb connector on the RPi or directly on the GPIO pins, the last one slightly better than via usb connector.
To give some examples on how ''much'' better it sounds: The sound stage is much wider and there's more 'depth' in music, also the bass etc sounds tighter and more realistic, especially in highs it improved a lot, with the ''wallmart PS'' the higher frequencies sounds a little distorted, more hiss and messy. My focals are pretty unforgiven when it comes to high frequencies and that is really noticeble with switching from a wallmart PS to a LPS. In short terms i would say it sounds more realistic and ''analog'' than ''digital'' with a LPS.
I found myself enjoying music more now than being busy with ''how it sounds and what we can improve''
I mostly play ''FLAC'' files, most of them are 16 bit 44100hz and a few high res 24b 88/96/192, or DSD files 2.8/5.6, as i'm very allergic for mp3 files
BTW: I use ''ACX'' sound signature instead of the ''RuneAudio'' which also improved sound (for my taste)

Modu-RPi2

DSC_0009.jpg (92.78 KiB) Viewed 25902 times

Best Regards,
Robert.

[otec]

I'm using linear PSU with Talema transformers and LT1085 regulator. Noticed an improvement in sound.

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