LPS vs SMPS

Letter from Hong Kong (24-20): ELO on LPS and SMPS

Editor: In HiFi circle, it's almost taken for granted that LPS is better than SMPS. It hasn't been close to universally true for me (quite the opposite) and therefore I'm quite gratified that ELO finds the same. We should be true to our ears rather than audio lore. Mind you, some of the very highest end, like megabuck Swiss Nagra, CH Precision, Soulution etc use SMPS.

Preference on Power Supply - Mesmerised 

There's beeen a lot of  debate on the implementation of LPS to replace SMPS. Results is quite polarised. Some prefers the super black , quiet background and improved imaging while some find out that LPS is robbing the life out of the music. So far my experience is pretty mixed. LPS does wonder to one piece of equipment while doesn't on another. So I think one shouldn't preclude which is defintiely better than the other. It is case dependant and also depend on the quality of the LPS and designer's intent and understnading of music! 

I always think that decent power supply is very important to sound quality . Yesterday, my friend RC came to visit my place for a listen. He brought along an iFi Power X 12V/2A . I am very familiar to this little PS and is already working great with my WEA. But this time he gave me a completely new idea. 

We listened to streaming through  my WEA and after a few songs, he suggested me to replace the walwart PS of my modem to the iFi. I gladly obliged and OMG, the sound has literally improved across the board. Before , my setup's sound is good in listening to softer music and due to Douk E6's character, dynamics was a bit softer. But once I replaced the stock PS of the modem to iFi, the piano's attack , size and body has actually stepped up by a very large margin. He also brought in some other gadgets but none was so significant than this implementation! 

Story did not end here, we then switched over to play LPs from Sound Burger and the overall sound was quite decent. Again , I replaced the walwart PS of my U4 to the iFi, same effect! This combo of SB/U4/iFi produces sound that is very respectable, the dynamics, bass, vocals and soundstage both improved more than 30 %. Lesson is power supply, a good one, be it SMPS or LPS can do wonder to every single piece of equipment starting from the source , i.e. modem to router to streamer onwards etc! Well, I always lamenting a Plixir LPS....hmmm

Eventually I had gotten an iFi Power X to power up the Douk U4 and am enjoying immensely the sound of analog which is very at ease and natural that reminds me again that nothing can replace analog. Lucky I got some old LPs from old days and from friends of Eagles, Pink Floyd, Santana, Eric Clapton , Police and some nice Audiophile discs so  that I have a decent selection to become nostalgic~  of course I have been buying more LPs , but less from HiFi grade ones, instead go for very old edition which I usually find more balanced.

Even further improvement??

Yes, a few days ago, I inserted a DIY LPS made by a nice c-hing FM (a mere $45USD) into my modem and yet experienced another lift in SQ in overall system through my WEA as well as through U4! When I first bought the LPS, the sound was lifeless and uninteresting despite a bit quieter in the background. I spoke to FM and he replaced the sliver plated DC cable to another one made of Belden cable and voila, everything that I had anticipated has been realised and music has came alive!  What a difference a DC cable makes!

I discovered way more details and nuances of music details, quieter background and less digital noise without sacrificing the dynamics and PRAT of the music! This improvement now also extends to my Soundburger as well!. The soundstage has widened further, dynamics has improved and bass dig deeper and with more body! I have immense enjoyment with my new LP from Andrea Vollenwieder only for $11USD!

Well, does an LPS always work? Just when I pick up confidence on LPS from the same guy, I have ordered an LPS for Douk E6 to replace the cheapo USB cord of 5V/1A which I use a cheapo USB charger for charging phone to power the E-6! The LPS is nicely built with quality parts, so I have a lot of high expectation that sound may be further improved. To my utter surprise, sound quality not only does not improve, but then overall sound has took a setback. The sound while is cleaner, but it has become lifeless and the microdynamics was much better with USB cable which the pppp to ffff of sound was so clearly heard to a point that I am in awe! Sound on steroid indeed. I suspect by using 3 UMI signal transformers and 6 earth boxes, the background has blackened to a point that it has reached an equilibrium and any more blackening will make it sound dry, as if life being sucked out?! But for now, I cannot reach a conclusion and is definitely case by case where sometimes LPS helps but sometimes don't. Don't ask me why, but it is what I have heard!!! 

I spoke to FM and he told me he has a well built commercial grade SMPS to try out and on a Saturday morning I hook that up and start auditioing it. Overall, it is better than the LPS, however, I still much prefer using the USB charger and is actually too obvious to hear the difference. It's more dynamic in macro and micro, high frequency extension is great and it  has the liveliness that I most treasure! So I now find out that LPS may or may not help. For Douk E6, since it uses DHT , according to a seasoned tube amp designer, the use of LPS will amplify the noise 10 folds so LPS is not recommended to be used in DHT preamps! One learn something new everyday for sure~

On my E6, Results in a  nutshell : USB phone charger > SMPS > LPS

As of now, 

U4 - iFi PowerX 👍

E6 - USB phone charger 👍👍

Modem - DIY LPS by FM 👍

Wattson WEA - iFi PowerX 

Wifi Router - walwart SMPS (next step after I have found a LPS to replace my iFi in WEA)

UMI S2 - USB phone charger , mixed. For some reason, too much hum when hooked up to U4, while on WEA is fine.

For now, I will use my USB charger for Douk E6. Next step is to try to experiment LPS on my Wattson, until then adios!

LCY Supertweeter , Room Imbalance Acoustics, Home Visits

Letter from Hong Kong (24-19): ELO Home Visits and LCY Supertweeter

Editor: As mentioned in my last communication, starting with this article my editing of others' articles shall be minimal. Regular readers shall notice the difference.

As a HiFi lone ranger I would call myself, I mostly work on my system alone but of course Kwong is my long term trusted HiFi companion sharing same belief. Dr John is another one whom we get acquainted when I start reading and commented on his posts, eventually writing here occasionally. Icefox is the walking Baidu/Google search of HiFi (the word encyclopedia seems obsolete in today's world hence not use here LOL and Dr Lo , a high school classmate and also is a seasoned audiophile with his own unique hifi path~

I do participate in a few small private hifi chat groups talk about mostly music and some HiFi stuff but home visit is very limited either to my place or visiting others setup.

Recently , I have met some really nice hifi lovers who had selflessly given me some constructive advice which helps to improve my setup! 

Home visit to my place by a Hifi Lover

I met JC when I bought the LITE DAC a few years ago, which has a cult following and a dedicated discussion forum on modifying and opamp rolling! 

On and off, we have been exchanging txt messages and I showed him some photos of my rig from time to time. He has then shown some interest and wanting to hear it. Seldom invite new friends over to listen to my setup and is a great opportunity to let someone who is new to my setup to give some constructive advice. In the end, it went well, at least he did not complain, or perhaps refrain from it. Instead, he was surprised by the realness of playing Youtube music and analog setup using my new toy Sound Burger from Audio Technica both via Bluetooth from my Douk U4, which he had never given a serious look at  music from Bluetooth before .

JC was inspired by the sound playing Youtube music videos from my system that he pulled the trigger and bought one along with the TB retro looking antennae. His downstairs neighbor who is a researcher on BT and satellite transmission, said his BT controlled model plane can fly from Kwun Tong to TKO under control thru BT signal which is a full 4 to 5km distance apart!! Perhaps I should ask him to design a BT antennae for me~ 

Later, he connected the PJ Miaolai A4/Antennae (PJM A4 is equivalent to Douk U4) to his system where he found the sound to be very analog and musical ! Stock antennae tends to be more hifi but thinner and with more digital harshness in my opinion. Ultimately he thinks the stock cheap one has better high extension and openness. My comparison of the stock one and the retro sci-fi looking antennae and my findings is that the retro looking one is far more musical in my setup that I am willing to sacrifice the high frequency extension.  Everyone will have their own setup, taste and preference !

He then invited me to his studio which is at a stone throw distance to my office, his place is like a museum with a lot of collectable gears inside, yet the sound does not sound a bit dated at all! Learnt a lot from him and he spent a lot of them explaining and hinting  and finally got me hooked up to a super tweeter which is another story to tell which I eventually bought a pair of LCY 100Mk2 and is still experimenting with it and the journey has just begun...LOL

I think he is now a happy camper of A4 despite he much prefers the black colour to the uglier looking silver version LOL! I told him he can change the sound be replacing the capacitors of A4 but instead, he uses the best cables to test it which I think purely for fun. The lineup is VDH MC Silver Mk2 plus and Habst USB cable.....costing more than the costs of 100 units of  Douk A4 and he said the performance is many folds better! He also did some tube rolling of many tubes and found out WE is of best result while I'm enjoying the one from JAN 5670..

Room acoustics - Room imbalance and imaging

I have met another really nice gentleman on R33 and he generously share his own knowledge on speaker placement. His belief is once speaker is positioned properly, you don't need to buy uber expensive gears ! I haven't started to implement his guide but it did triggered me to solve the problem of my uneven spaced living room with one side sticking close to glass door to my balcony and one side is completely opened up! But luckily , I suddenly remembered that my Dynaudio Crafft has some gain switches and I immediately tried to reduce 3db on both highs and mids of my left speaker against the wall and the imbalance towards left side has switched back to middle! Originally I only tried it to adjust gains simultaneously on both speakers but not just one unit. Previously, I had tried toe in left speaker but effect is minimal, so the gain switch does help immediately and if not this nice gentlemen triggered my determination, I would have never fixed this chronic issue.. LOL

As a return favour, I introduce him a Hifi absorbing/refection board manufacturer in Taobao which he can customer made with dimensions, shapes , patterns and colours to fit your own need!! That was actually another discovery from Kwong, my long time Hifi buddy!

Revisit to Dr Lo's home

The only change but a most significant change is to install a dedicated German custom made speaker stands for his Harbeth P3SE Special Edition and it costs him over a whacking $10000HKD!  Well, it all worth it and the results is really great, now you find quality bass that is missing before and the analytical power has increased with tons of micro details being revealed!

Conclusion

It's always nice to meet new hifi lovers as it will always give you something new , inspire each other and can improve the performance of you setup with all the constructive ideas, of course there will be trial and error in this process which is inevitable! 

As usual here's some of my latest street works~~

Editor's Note

Click pic to enlarge. PJ Miaolai (Douk) U4 (Bluetooth) with Holland Amperex 6DJ8 on adaptor. Headphone Output as Preamp Output (Cable Sommer SC Club Mk II with generic 3.5 to RCA adaptor) into BRZ (Weiliang) FU50 (old-stock 6J7 on adaptors and WE422 rectifier). Loudspeakers Beydas "Stirling""15 ohm".

Letter from Hong Kong (24-18): The Thin Red Line

Dear Readers:

This is another letter from one of my better days...dictated more than a week ago, and edited now:

"...Last night Hong Kong's English television, the Pearl Channel, which usually airs lousy action flicks, suddenly put on a decent movie, Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line. Now, I am a big Malick fan and have actually seen almost all of his movies except this one. Imagine my delight when I found out it's on, and together with the commercials it was long - over three hours, just. All the Malick character traits could be found, except in this movie he uses mostly original music and less classical music, which is regrettable to me because I still remember his use of Mahler etc

My illness has mostly breached my body's defense and I am commencing more intense therapy which I am sure will cause ups and downs. Nonetheless, I am really pleased that the first round of therapy has improved my condition to the point that I am writing this article. This shall be a protracted struggle but I hope there will sometimes be windows of relative comfort which will enable me to write a little bit more. I actually miss writing and for the first time I am using Voice Typing, which saves my energy a bit.

From the above pic you can see that I have picked up enough energy to set up a system by the television, and longtime readers would recall this station, which was fairly complicated in the past (featuring one of my longtime favorites the Yamaha NS1000, as in here). As my illness limits my energy and forays I now seldom return to the old house where I still have some of my treasured gear (much of my best gear though followed my move to NYC in 2018). Instead, I hope that I will find enough energy to move some of those precious gear into my current abode so I hope that you shall see changes in the system very soon. Right now it is the most primitive system consisting of gear that I have brought back from Shenzhen. Reasonable sound but having those stuff here will enable me to do a little bit more in depth comparison which shall be perhaps interesting.

With my limited energy I would prefer and I hope you will understand that I will spend them on my own writing. This means I shall change a bit the way I edit. In a word, I shall probably not edit very much and you shall notice the difference. For me, Editing is not just proof reading but also an effort to enforce a uniform style, which may or may not be preferred by all. The Blogspot software is full of bugs and there is basically no support and little update. So authors who write on their own templates and then transfer them to Blogspot will find things deranged a bit. I used to try to ameliorate this and I have my ways but it has been time consuming and I shall not continue to do that. Hence, you shall find articles in more conversational or streamlined manner, which may actually be a good thing. In my own writing, I may also simplify. For example, although not read by many, my Classical Recommendations are important to me. Creating them is actually cumbersome as I try to import pictures of the albums into the troublesome Blogspot template. I thought of discontinuing this series, but I think I just may write things in a more notepad approach, raw.

There are articles coming from our other authors. ELO has actually accumulated a few and I am going to publish them soon. Shawn P also has some interesting stuff up his sleeves and I hope to read about them in due time.

For the meantime, I'm still here and I am very happy to be writing to you, as I have always been. I hope the next communication would come soon..

Cheers..."

以上来自我最喜欢（无二）的饭店，深圳的老大昌。超正宗的上海本帮菜，别的地方找不到的味道。由上而下：冷盘：醉鸡，熏鱼，海蜇，马兰头；草头，烤麸；韭黄鳝糊炒面，萝卜丝酥饼，素菜包。我每星期都会想去。

人气素食连锁素满香深圳店爆红，30元任食，被港人挤爆。

味道是不错的，不过不是每人都会喜欢搭台和磕磕碰碰。

回到街坊，现在少见超大平底锅煎的锅贴。深水埗元州街这家及格，

底脆而连在一起。馅也不错，只是皮稍薄。当然，要吃更好的，

只能飞去台北。

桂林街新荣记20元艇仔小碗但料足味道OK。肠粉等冷的就不要叫。

这面是即炒的，质感OK.