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  High Definition Power |
High Definition Power The dream of an ultra efficient Power Plant has been with us since the beginning; back in 1997 when we first introduced the world to the idea of pure, regenerated AC power. Throughout the past decade, we’ve also dreamt of other marvels: like an effective no-loss AC filter, true surge protection in all products, Power Plants with multiple isolated outlets, built in harmonic distortion analyzers, remote controls, system wide power distribution and we even dared to dream of industrial designs so beautiful they would lift the spirits of even the most demanding of customers. And as long as we were dreaming, it seemed only fitting that we should be able to have all of these wonderful pieces at prices so low anyone could afford them. For nearly 10 years we have been pursuing these loftiest of dreams with nothing to show for them. Nothing, that is, until one of our engineers had a breakthrough of such proportions that it began to change everything in our company. The world of AC power has never been the same since we introduced the Power Plant and we guarantee you, it will never be the same going forward. Four new products Two breakthroughs, one patent and five years of engineering later, we introduce a new line of AC power products that will  define the next generation of power for the high-end world: the Premier, the Quintessence, the Quintet and the Duet.With an industrial design inspired by the new BMW series of automobiles and motorcycles, the line’s look was created by a new rising talent in industrial design, Chris Malato. Chris spend nearly a year fawning over the line and introduced such innovations as solid cast aluminum body parts mated with machined, extruded and formed elements. The results are stunning. The Premier Power Plant Imagine a Power Plant in a chassis the size of a P500, but capable of delivering 1500 watts of power and driving your entire system. Imagine a Power Plant with 10 Power Port AC receptacles, five isolated zones, Nano Crystalline filters and protection for your cable and phone equipment. Imagine a Power Plant with a front panel display that includes a real THD harmonic distortion analyzer built in! Imagine being able to control MultiWave, CleanWave, panel brightness and power with the touch of a remote control. And, imagine all of this in a beautiful solid metal package for the same price as a P500 used to be, $2,195. And then imagine that same Power plant available for $200 less during the month of September during the introduction sale. Imagine no longer, because it’s all true. The Power Plant Premier is a stunning work of art and genius combined into one efficient and affordable package. Orders placed now through your local dealer, distributor  or online retailer will be honored at $1,995 for the month of September only. Shipments begin in October.Quintessence Imagine everything in the Power Plant Premier except the regenerator for $1,000 less and you have the Quintessence. The Quintessence provides the ultimate chassis based Power Center. 10 Power Port AC receptacles, 5 isolated zones, true microprocessor controlled surge protection, three stage AC cleaning with almost no restriction, Nano Crystalline filters, both common mode and differential mode IsoZones, harmonic distortion analyzer, AC voltmeter, remote control, over under voltage protection and all at only $1,195. Then imagine an introductory price of just $995 for the month of September only. Shipments begin in October for orders placed in September. The Quintet Imagine running your entire system from a seven pound piece of sculpted solid aluminum, with 10 Power Port AC receptacles, 5 IsoZones, Nano Crystalline filters and true microprocessor controlled surge protection. Imagine power delivered through ¼ inch copper bars, over under voltage control, DC triggers, switchable power zones, and near zero loss AC power delivery. Imagine all this in a beautiful package that cost just $695. Then imagine buying that same package at an introductory price of just $495 for the month of September. Shipping begins in September. The Duet Imagine running your power amps with complete microprocessor controlled protection from surges and spikes  (they are unprotected now).Imagine unrestricted AC power that’s clean and pure. Imagine four Power Port AC receptacles, two IsoZones, common mode and differential mode filters and Nano Crystalline technology. Imagine placing multiple Duets where needed and never having to worry about your connected equipment. Imagine the improvements you will hear and see when using this new Power Center. And imagine all of this for just $395 and then enjoy an introductory price of a mere $295 in September only. Shipping begins in September as well. Lots to imagine There’s a lot to imagine, and these introductory prices will only last through September. It’s our way of saying thanks for waiting. Thanks for the patience to let us develop the world’s finest AC power line. Thanks for being a PS supporter. Now here’s the rest of the story behind these amazing new products. When Power Plant dreams come true Bob Stadtherr has been PS Audio’s VP of engineering for close to a decade. Before that he worked with Paul at Genesis Technologies and developed the fabled Digital Lens. Bob designed every Power Plant we ever built, beginning with the P300. He’s been intimately familiar with the poor efficiency problem all Power Plant AC regenerators suffer from. Power Plants convert the AC power from the wall to DC, then regenerate that power into a perfect, clean  and regulated AC sine wave. When they do this they are less than 50% efficient. This means that more than half of their energy turns to heat, the other half is used to power your equipment.Bob shared our dreams of conquering this problem. We tried everything we could think of including class D amplifiers (too noisy) with zero results. We even looked at several of our competitor’s products that claim to be regenerators and rejected them. One produced more distortion that the wall when driving tough loads, the others were only correcting devices and not pure regenerators. The challenge of regenerating up to 230 volts rms, with peak current requirements exceeding 50 amps (in the US) and all the while maintaining a steady, regulated, low distortion output for equipment was daunting. Then Bob came up with one of those rare moments of genius. He knew the Power Plants were inefficient because they are basically giant audio power amps. These audio amps are inefficient because they have huge voltages in their power supplies. (strike but) But what if there was a way to reduce this power supply voltage? What would happen if we built the same analog power amp, but figured out a way to make the power supply provide only what was needed by the amplifier and only when it needed it? Bingo. A Power Plant that was 85% percent efficient. A Power Plant that lost only 15% of its energy to heat and a Power plant that could deliver nearly everything the wall AC had to offer in true regenerated form. A Power Plant that was a dream come true. The rest of the dream Bob’s visionary idea that would eventually become the Power Plant Premier, was not to see the light of day quickly. While a great idea, it needed a lot of engineering to become a reality; nearly 5 years in fact. As work on the new Power Plant went forward we began to think about AC power filtering and isolation. We looked at all the designs out there: parallel filters, series filters, surge protection, spike protection and power delivery and wondered if we couldn’t build a better filter than the UO’s and UPC’s and then marry this new Power Plant technology with a new isolating filter. Standing back and looking at an overview of the entire field we concluded that there are four basic missions  of a passive power filter:
The answers were a surprise. No one, including us, really had all the areas covered very well. Most products protect from spikes but provide no protection from surges (despite their claims). Some products provide good isolation between equipment, others don’t isolate at all. Some clean the AC line, some don’t. Some provide unimpeded power but don’t clean well, others provide cleaning but impede the AC power. We found no products (including our own) that met the challenge any well designed AC filter should. Yet another breakthrough The single biggest challenge of the four requirements is providing unimpeded power and great filtering and isolation at the same time. That is something no one had yet managed to do. Parallel filter devices such as those from Audience, Shunyata and Richard Grey have excellent unimpeded AC paths on the plus side, and less than good filtering and almost no isolation on the negative side. Series filters, like those from PS, Monster, Panamax Furman and APC provide good filtering and isolation, but  have impeded AC delivery paths.Not one company provided both excellent AC filtering and isolation coupled with unimpeded AC. This is because only a series filter can provide meaningful filtering and isolation. But series filters will always be worse than parallel filters for delivering unimpeded power. So, the breakthrough would need to be a series filter with almost no elements in the AC path. That breakthrough is called Nano Crystalline. Nano Crystalline Any effective AC filter needs a strong magnetic field to develop at the frequencies you want to eliminate. In the UO and UPC-200, we used ferrite magnetic material in giant baluns to build a strong field. But these giant baluns require relatively long lengths of wire wrapped around them to be effective and the wire is what impedes the AC flow. What we really want are tiny donuts of magnetic material with short lengths of wire producing the same strong magnetic field. We found the solution in a breakthrough of modern technology called Nano Crystalline. Developed by the Hitachi Corporation of Japan and used in exotic aerospace applications, Nano Crystalline posses the highest magnetic permeability attributes of any material in the world. So strong is the magnetic field of this miracle material that we can build superior filters in 1/10th the size of even the best cores previously available. Nano Crystalline is built using the wildest science you can imagine and everything happens on a microscopic  scale. Nano Crystalline is impregnated onto sheets of film and then wound like a roll of tape. You can almost visualize “tiny robots” hard at work on a nano scale busily building sheets of Nano Crystalline. Connecting all the dots Once we solved the filter problem the others challenges were more of a straight forward engineering exercise to put it all together. We would connect the filters to the power source through quarter inch thick copper bars instead of wires to make sure there was nothing in the path of the AC. We would then need to cross another hurdle; that of designing a new protection system and dispel the myth that’s been floating around our industry for as long as power filters have been built. The myth of surge protection. True surge protection You’ve heard it a zillion times: “surge and spike protection included”. We’ve used it and everyone else in our industry has used the term when advertising their products. It has become synonymous with AC line protection. But is it true? A surge and a spike are different and cannot be properly lumped together. A surge is defined as a relatively long lasting increase in power line voltage, at least 10% above normal while a spike is defined as a quick, high voltage transient. Both are dangerous, but both are not covered in most equipment. Spikes are handled by AC clamps. The clamps appear on products as inexpensive as a $10 power strip to multi-thousand dollar high-end products. These clamps can be MOV, TVA, Zener etc. but they all share one thing in common: they activate at relatively high voltages, typically around 160 to 180 volts AC (in the US). They will not protect against surges, which start at about 130 volts and can go as high as 150 volts. These high voltages are potentially destructive to anything connected. Surges happen mostly after power outages but can occur any time. When the power returns after an outage, it typically comes on at a much high level than would be considered safe for most equipment. Surges can damage equipment with multiple strikes and may be the cause of many a mysterious product death or performance loss. The truth about surges is rarely discussed. Don’t believe it? Ask the manufacturer of your power product  what happens when the AC voltage rises up to a damaging 140 volts (280 in Europe and Asia) or higher? What will their equipment do about it? If it does not have the means to automatically disconnect the equipment, then you risk damage. If they tell you theirs has a fuse for this purpose, just smile and say “thanks”.Beware of having unprotected entertainment! Power Plants protect from surges and spikes, but UPC’s, UO’s, and most all of our competitor’s products do not. Instead, these products provide only spike protection and leave your equipment vulnerable to surges. This means you are most likely having unprotected entertainment and risk death or destruction of your valuable equipment. Surge protection needs to make sure the equipment is disconnected from the AC line whenever the surge occurs. It cannot rely on something like a fuse because fuses are dependant on current draw. CD players, surround processors and small electrical draw equipment will not burn a fuse when a surge hits. Without a microprocessor controlled voltage measurement system that can disconnect your equipment instantly, you are unprotected and at risk. A new era of power products The wait for this line of power products has been long. Each of the four new power products from PS provides unheard of performance and safety for connected equipment. The Premier provides nearly unlimited regulated and pure AC for any connected load. It allows you to see what type of distortion products are on your line and it allows you to see in real time, the reduction of those harmonics on the output of the Power Plant for comparison. For the first time in AC power history, customers can take control of their AC power. The Quintessence has all the same features found in the Premier (except regeneration), and provides three stage AC cleaning and a distortion analyzer to view the quality of your home’s AC power. Both the Quintet and Duet Power Centers provide real protection, real filtering with unimpeded AC power delivery. PS Power. Real Power Solutions™ for the world of high-end audio and video. |
