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  Multiwave I MultiWave™ I was a technological breakthrough with sonic benefits perhaps as great as the Power Plant itself. Introduced several years ago, MultiWave technology stunned the world with its breakthroughs in AC power delivery. No more were we tied to the standard 60Hz that comes out of our wall sockets. MultiWave I was based on nearly a year of research and is perhaps the only Power Solution™ in the world that utilizes multiple frequencies to power AV equipment (until the introduction of MultiWave II). What is it? In a nutshell, MultiWave Technology is the incorporation of simultaneous multiple waveforms to feed a power supply. Instead of using a single pure AC sinewave to feed our audio video equipment, we have discovered a better source: MultiWaves™. There's now a new version of MultiWave I, and it is called MultiWave II. You can read about MultiWave II which is the new standard for MultiWave Power Plant performance by clicking here. How did your system benefit from MW I? The first thing folks noticed after installing the original MultiWave kit in their Power Plants was that even the basic 60 Hz sine wave sounded better, and not just a little better, but a lot better. Why? The Power Plant's already low distortion sine wave generating functions were improved by 100% and the results were immediately audible. What we originally wanted When we first introduced the Power Plant to the world, our goals were simple: deliver a pure regulated and balanced AC sinewave, a sinewave that is cleaner and lower impedance than what comes out of the wall socket. We quickly learned that the 60Hz or 50Hz available to people from their utility companies was not the optimum frequency. Higher frequencies helped our AV equipment sound and look better, and so we made every Power Plant with the ability to adjust its output frequency. But, it wasn't perfect As any Power Plant owner knows, raising the frequency has mixed results. The good news is that when we power our equipment with a frequency higher than 60Hz, we begin to hear the soundstage get deeper, wider and the highs become far more open and natural sounding. While these are all very positive benefits, there is an optimum point that we reach and beyond this point the sound tends to sound lean in the mid bass regions. As a reasonable compromise, most Power Plant owners have settled on 90Hz as the best overall frequency. Could we have the best of both worlds? A number of our original Power Plant customers asked the question as did we: 'why not combine two frequencies together so we could have the best of both worlds?' A wonderful suggestion and a great thought. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. Let's take a look at what would happen if you combined 60Hz and 120Hz together.  First, let's look at our 60Hz signal, so as to refresh our memories of the basic waveform that come out of our wall sockets. Next, let's take a look at the two waveforms separately. That is, let's see what 60Hz and 120Hz looks like before we attempt to combine them into one waveform. In the example of the right side, 60Hz is the red trace and 120Hz is the blue trace. This is pretty simple to understand. There are twice as many of the blue trace signals as there are of the red trace signals. When we use 120Hz to power our equipment, we are charging our equipment's power supply twice as fast and our systems sound better at the higher frequency because their power supply ripple is lower.  So now, if we combine these two frequencies, what happens? Take a look at the next scope photo to see. The new waveform is labeled as the 'composite' and the 'normal' is the original 60Hz waveform shown here for reference. Note how we no longer have the nice, clean and smooth sinewave shape we started with? This isn't the best looking waveform, so combining them in this fashion is not the way to go.  The perfect waveformJust what is the perfect waveform for a power supply? Was it a sinewave? No, actually the perfect waveform is a square wave (believe it or not). Unfortunately, the transformers in our stereo and video equipment can't handle a square wave because they are all bandwidth limited. This means they have a limited range of frequencies that they can accept, and a square wave is full of higher frequency sine waves that would drive most power transformers crazy. Now realizing what we wanted, but also convinced we could not have the perfect waveform, we proceeded with our research to find the best composite waveform possible. The waveform would have to be acceptable to all power transformers on our audio video equipment, and would have to embody the benefits of multiple frequencies in order to be successful. Our good friend and senior research engineer at Northrup Gruman Aerospace, Doug Goldburg came up with a novel way to combine the waveforms and still maintain their sinusoidal shape. Here's what we found out Now that our patents have been applied for, and realizing that the Power Plant is the only AC generator in the world that was capable of producing any shape of wave that we could dream up, we felt it was time to tell the world about our discovery.  The secret of MultiWave is found in the very nature of the power supply it is intended to feed in the first place. That is, power supplies are big integrators, or filters. They take a frequency in, and integrate that frequency to DC. What this boils down to, in simple terms, is that the frequencies you feed into a power supply need not be a composite. Rather, we get the equivalent of a composite response even if we stack the frequencies together. And that is the key. One frequency, followed by another frequency, is the same as a multiple frequency without the problems associated with it! Let's take a look. The Sequential Frequency Multiwave What you see in the photo above and to the right is pretty ground breaking material. We refer to it as the Sequential Frequency MultiWave. You see a 50Hz sinewave, followed by a 120Hz sinewave. These are absolutely pure  harmonic free waveforms even though they don't look that way. If you look closely, you can see where the transition between the two waves begins (it's marked as well). This transition is taking place at what we refer to as the zero crossing point, here represented with the red horizontal line.This might be a bit difficult of a concept to grasp immediately. Don't feel badly, it has taken us a long time to figure this out, develop it, and then make it available in a Power Plant. To help make it easier to comprehend this breakthrough, look at the scope photo above and on the left hand side of the page. Starting from the very left edge of the scope photo, you see the blue trace. This is the 50Hz waveform. Moving to the right of the photo, the color changes to yellow, and it should be easy to see a perfect low distortion 120 Hz sine wave, followed in red by yet another 50Hz waveform.  The biggest surprise was yet to comeRemember we discussed above that the perfect way to feed a power supply was with a square wave? Because a square wave is made up of one pure sine wave (called the fundamental) and many higher frequency pure sine waves (referred to as odd order harmonics), what if we combined just one higher frequency odd harmonic with the fundamental pure 60 or 50 Hz tone? What you would get by adding these two together is a 'partial' square wave. Look at the example on the right side of the page. This is what a partial square wave looks like. The advantage of this waveform is indeed ingenious. Because it is comprised of only two frequency, combined in a DSP engine, transformers have no problem passing it whatsoever. Further, while we have learned that a 'flat topped' sine wave coming out of our wall sockets is bad because it has a lower peak voltage value and lots of harmonics, this new MultiWave described above is very different and far better. Adding a small amount of the 3d harmonic of the the 60Hz sine wave results in a waveform with only one harmonic, gently added in (like a spice in food) to broaden the peak of the sine wave.  The Partial Square MultiWaveA broader peak in the sinewave means that your power supply capacitors have more energy over a longer period of time to charge. This results in less power supply ripple, and significantly better sonics and video performance. It will allow your equipment's power supply to act closer to the performance of an enormous battery. It might be instructive to compare this new MultiWave with a 60Hz sine wave. Note the scope photo on the left hand side. This compares and contrasts a 60Hz sinewave (like what comes out of your wall socket) with that of the new MultiWave. Notice how much broader the red trace is (MultiWave) to that of the sinewave (blue). This is important because when your equipment draws power from either the Power Plant or your AC wall socket, it draws that power only when the AC gets  right near the top and bottom of its shape. The top and bottom of an AC signal are referred to as the 'peak' or the 'crest' of the wave. It is interesting to note that the majority of the AC waveform's available power is never used by your equipment.As you can see in the illustration, only the top 1/4 of the power is ever used by your equipment - and a sinewave is narrow up at the top and so doesn't have very long to charge up your equipment's supply. Look at the MultiWave (in red) and see how much longer it stays at this 'on' for your equipment and thus charges it better. Then, we combined the Partial Square MultiWave with the Sequential Frequency MultiWave, and our socks fell to the ground with delight (whatever that means). OK. So what were the performance benefits? First, we decided to offer folks 10 choices of MultiWave, our 10 favorites. To keep it easy and simple, we arranged the choices from our favorite (first) to our least favorite (last). We later discovered, in MW II that we could narrow the choices down and have an easier selection process. The first choice in MultiWave I was 50Hz, 120Hz, 120Hz, sequentially arranged in that order. In addition, this first Sequential MultiWave is not a series of sine waves, but rather a series of Partial Square MultiWaves. Truly the best of what MultiWave has to offer. For many, you'll need look no further. Absolutely unbelievable improvement in depth, ambiance, tonal neutrality and life with never a hint of hardness or brightness. This is truly one amazing waveform. You'll quickly see why we made it the first choice. Second choice was a single frequency 60Hz Partial Square MultiWave. On our two reference systems, this is a close second to number one. It seems to have a bit more grain and a little less bloom in the midrange. Why did we include it? Two reasons, not all systems are the same - yours may benefit from this choice over the first choice, but perhaps more importantly, the first waveform may not work well with projectors or power amplifiers with AC motor fans inside. More on this in a moment. We won't describe all 10 waveforms, but suffice it to say we gave people a lot of choices and it was a great deal of fun to experiment with the various types. Now, with MW II, we have learned a great deal and offer 5 choices, one of which is known as TubeWave. TubeWave is specifically tailored for tubes and is a safe and wonderful alternative to anything offered by MultiWave I. What is the original Multiwave NOT good for? There are three forms of Multiwave I: Sequential Frequency Multiwaves, Partial Square Sequential MultiWaves, and one Partial Square MultiWave. Both the Sequential Frequency MultiWave and the Partial Square Sequential MultiWaves are not good choices for AC motors. If you have a fan motor built into your equipment, then these forms of MultiWave may not be an appropriate choice, however,  the single frequency Partial Square, PS2 MultiWave would.The single frequency Partial Square MultiWave runs at 60Hz, and is fine for most motors (except turntables). This is a great sounding Multiwave, second only in our preferences for sonics. So, bottom line, if you are using a piece of equipment with a fan built in, such as a projector or a power amplifier that has a cooling fan, then you need to use the Partial Square MultiWave, PS2. If your equipment does not have a fan or a motor, then you can use any form of Multiwave. Turntables are not recommended to be used for any of the forms of MultiWave, and tube equipment should generally be used only with PS2 as well. DVD players, CD players, and laser disc players are fine with either form of MultiWave, because their motors run off of DC. What about video? MultiWave patterns make a noticeable and marked improvement in video system, particularly with front and rear projectors. A brighter, more saturated and far more three dimensional presentation of the video is immediately obvious. Highly recommended. And now, there's MultiWave II MultiWave II is a major lead forward from the ground breaking work we accomplished in MultiWave I. It is revolutionary in its concept and it will be a revolution in performance when you hear the results. Power Plant owners with or without MultiWave I will be simply astounded at the level of improvement offered by MultiWave II. MultiWave II is now the standard available in the P500 and P1000 Power Plants. It is now available as a user installed upgrade for P300’s, P600’s and P1200’s. An upgrade to MultiWave II is something every Power Plant owner should consider adding as the the level of performance increase is quite large and provides a significant improvement to both audio and video systems. It is not necessary to have MultiWave I installed. If your Power Plant has no MultiWave inside, you can jump right over to MultiWave II. |
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