PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 12 Mains Regenerator

PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 12 Mains Regenerator

The DirectStream P12 is PS Audio's most compact high-end personal power generating station in the world. It is the successor of the venerable P5 Power Plant relied upon by thousands. The P12 is all-new, based on the P5, but rebuilt from the ground up. It features an ultra-low impedance analogue power amplifier, pure DSD FPGA based sine wave generator, and the lowest distortion available in a Power Plant. The P12 is capable of powering most small to medium-sized systems and bringing forth all that’s possible from your system ensuring you get the same great performance every time you listen.

The P12 includes 4 separate zones and 1250 watts of pure regenerated power, delivered to each receptacle through thick copper buss bars. From medium to large power amplifiers to the smallest pieces of source equipment, the P12 will work magic on your system’s performance. Many of the very best high-end systems around the world rely on the P12 Power Plant for protection, purity, and performance.

With your system powered directly from the output of the P12, dynamics and openness are breathtaking. New voices, new harmonics and a renewed sense of musicality are yours the moment the P12 starts up. This is one of the most important pieces of audio equipment you can own, building a firm and reliable foundation for your system that will serve you for years to come.

Features

• Built in Boulder
• 1200 VA output
• 3X lower impedance than P5
• 4 EU/UK outlets
• 10 amp AC input EU/UK
• 230 volt Regulated EU/UK
• Range 200 –285VAC EU/UK
• 100% regenerated AC
• MultiWave
• Pure Sine Wave
• Integrated oscilloscope
• THD meter
• Improvement meter
• Power meter
• Control over the LAN
• Adjustable output voltage
• Colour touchscreen
• Field upgradable

The DirectStream P12 Power Plant takes your incoming AC power and converts it to DC, similar to what comes out of a battery, and then with patented PS Audio technology regenerates and produces new sine-wave-perfect, regulated high current AC power. In the process of regeneration, any problems on your power line such as low voltage, distorted waveforms, sagging power, and noise are eliminated.

Since the introduction of Power Plant regenerator technology in 1997 many reviewers, as well as many thousands of customers around the world, have experienced for themselves just how critical, essential and unique a Power Plant is. One long-time reviewer remarked that “It is the first component anyone serious about high-quality audio should get.”

It’s good to understand the importance of power in a high-end audio system. Everything we hear through our system is really the power from our home’s wall socket manipulated by our electronics to make music through our speakers. The quality of that power is critical to the success of any high-end system.

Legacy power conditioners

Traditional power conditioners have been widely available for several decades and range in price from a few dollars to multiple thousands.

Most power conditioners on the market today are passive filters. This means there are only passive parts inside such as capacitors, resistors, transformers and coils of wire. Power conditioners do not have the ability to add missing energy back onto the power line to correct for the serious issues in the AC, nor can they lower output impedance—critical to high-performance audio.

While some respected high-end power conditioners do provide better sound for many systems, they are only scratching the proverbial surface—unable to address the fundamental problems found on the AC line. They cannot rise to the level of an active regenerator ensuring your listening experience will always be the same. Quite simply put, by relying on passive conditioners to clean AC power, one relinquishes the performance, security, and reliability of an active PS Power Plant.

Power Plants are not power conditioners

Power Plants are personal AC generators that provide hard-working perfected results from the AC power line. Power regeneration uses active components like those found in large and powerful audio amplifiers to rebuild the AC power and produce clean, clear, distortion-free, regulated AC to the equipment.

Power Plants also provide excellent protection and cleaning of radio, cell phone, and computer interference, but more importantly, regeneration provides a steady, regulated, ultra-low impedance source of pure AC, unaffected by the equipment’s demands for power.

The key to the Power Plant’s success and what makes it so unique in the industry is the way it makes the power better.

Instead of simple filtering, as a legacy power conditioner does, the Power Plant repairs the main power issues caused by the equipment itself: dynamic fluctuations.

Dynamic fluctuations occur with every power amplifier or receiver on the market. When a loud musical passage is reproduced, the power amplifier draws more power from the wall to feed the loudspeakers. When this occurs, the voltage at the wall decreases in direct relationship with the loudness of the musical passage. Louder is worse.

Traditional power conditioners only worsen this already bad situation

If, on the other hand, the system is powered from a Power Plant AC regenerator, the problem is entirely eliminated. Dynamic voltage fluctuations are stopped completely and the power amp receiving perfectly regulated, steady AC power regardless of the demands from the power amplifier.

In a high-end system where perfection is hoped for and compromise is not an option that’s acceptable, the improvements brought by a Power Plant are instantly recognized with a simple audition that shows both with and without perfected power.

The touch panel

Touch the large, full-colour display on the front of the Power Plant and a whole world of opportunities open up. From here you can measure distortion, both incoming and outgoing, improvement levels, and power consumption. You can also change all your settings such as the turn on/off sequence, adjust the output voltage to the perfect level, turn individual zones on or off and measure the power quality with either the built-in oscilloscope or the THD analyzer.

The P12’s front panel controls offer a wealth of options not normally associated with AC power products such as the ability to measure the distortion of the incoming and outgoing waveforms plus the ability to actually see the waveforms with the colour oscilloscope.

MultiWave

One of the major advantages of generating new power from old is the ability to also generate new waveforms that enhance the capabilities of the power feeding your equipment.

MultiWave extends the peak charging time of the sine wave so connected equipment has more energy storage and less power supply ripple. Turning MultiWave on is like adding a larger capacitor bank to your connected equipment’s power supply. The audible results are dramatic and produce a bigger soundstage that sounds far more natural than with a simple sine wave.

CleanWave

CleanWave is another feature of the Stellar Power Plant 3 and helps connected equipment demagnetize their transformers. AC power is never quite symmetrical and the small asymmetry that occurs can magnetize connected power transformers.

Activating CleanWave from the Power Plant 3 remote control can remove this problem from connected transformers resulting in far cleaner audio.

200 times lower output impedance

Low output impedance is critical to maintaining a dynamic and robust presentation. Dynamic sags in the power line occur whenever your power-hungry equipment demand power to drive your loudspeakers or projector causing noticeable degradation in the performance. Placing anything in the path of the power, like a power conditioner only worsens the problem.

A Power Plant, on the other hand, regulates the power and provides a constant output regardless of the dynamic demands of power-hungry equipment or your neighbours. When your power amp is asked to produce loud orchestral levels you want to make sure it has all the power it needs. Power Plants have such low output impedance that even the hungriest of amplifiers won’t be starved for clean AC power. The results of feeding your equipment with low output impedance are dramatic: unrestrained dynamics even under the loudest passages, an open, wide soundstage that does not collapse with volume and a naturalness to the music that is remarkable.

100% Protection

Owners who have invested in a Power Plant can rest assured their connected equipment will be safe from any power line event such as over voltage, under voltage, surges, spikes and potentially threatening problems.

The input voltage to the Power Plant is fully protected by state-of-the-art clamping devices and the output of the Power Plant is fully regulated so even large voltage swings that would normally damage connected equipment are made safe by either clamping or regulating. In most cases, connected equipment enjoys the protection and performance benefits of fully regulated power, even under extreme circumstances.

High current soft start

Another protective measure found on the P12 is a high power soft start feature that soft starts even the biggest power amplifiers.

With a Power Plant, there’s no longer any need to worry about starting up a power-hungry amplifier. Using the unique high current zone built into the Power Plant, even power amplifiers that might trip a home’s circuit breaker are soft started and power up as nice and polite as could be.

This soft start feature also helps prolong the life of connected equipment from large inrush currents needed to fill up empty power supply capacitors.

Monitor your system’s heartbeat

You can monitor your power quality and performance of your equipment from the front panel of the P12 with both its real-time distortion analyzer and working oscilloscope. Measure everything that’s going on affecting your system’s performance. You can also monitor and control your P12 over the internet from anywhere in the world.

The P12 will monitor your power line quality and report any problems to you through the web page, text or email. It’s up to you. The P12’s real-time and online measurement system includes surges, voltage levels, power usage and power quality as measured by THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) on the line.

The data is stored on PS Audio's servers and available via the web interface for the P12. Customers can look at power quality over time, or drill down to specific times of day to find out if there’s a problem involving the home’s power. Sagging voltages, high distortion and multiple brownouts are occurring more than one might think. With the installation of a P12 in the system, you can accurately record events and present them to the utility company for repair or just keep a log.

The P12 Power Plant was the 2nd generation following the Power Plant P5 and incorporated our patented regenerator technology. That patent, awarded to PS Audio on October 15, 2007, was the work of our Chief Engineer, Bob Stadtherr who invented a new type of regeneration circuit that improved the efficiency of the internal regenerator by a whopping 70% (from 50% to 85%). While others have tried increasing the efficiency of AC regeneration by means of a class D switching amplifier, our patented technology is pure analogue all the way.

Building a 1200 watt analogue regenerator in a PerfectWave chassis was a serious design challenge. There was the issue of heat as well as getting enough energy storage to meet the long-term and peak demands of a regenerator of this power. It is not uncommon for the equipment powered by a P12 to require peak current in excess of 60 amps for distortion-free performance.

A careful look inside the P12 chassis will show the efforts we’ve gone to for heat dissipation. Note the 3/4″ solid aluminium heat spreaders on the heat sinks. These massive extrusions were designed in a computer simulation program that modelled the ideal thermal transfer functions necessary to dissipate evenly the generated heat from the multiple output devices.

The next challenge was adding whisper fans to the bottom of the heat sinks; fans so quiet that they would only be heard in extremely close proximity in a very quiet room – never from the listener’s seated position. To accomplish this PS Audio turned to two large 4.5″ boxer fans, mounted to a custom assembly on the bottom of the heat sinks. If you want to move enough air to cool something quietly, the trick is to use very large fans moving extremely slow.

One of the issues PS Audio's dealers wind up facing is the customer’s lack of knowledge about AC power regeneration. Power conditioners, as a class of products, remove very small amounts of high-frequency noise but have no effect on the actual power line voltage, wave shape and missing energy from the peak of the sine wave (flat topping). To help their dealers and customers demonstrate the difference between a conventional power conditioner and a power regenerator, PS Audio spent the engineering time to add both a THD meter and an actual oscilloscope to the front panel of the Power Plant. This has helped their dealers and customers show the measurable differences between regenerated power and simply “conditioned” power.

Each and every Power Plant is assembled from the ground up in PS Audio's local operation by highly skilled artisans that care about every piece that leaves our dock. With over 7,000 Power Plants operating high-end systems all over the world, they have a commitment to excellence to uphold. They understand that each product they build is an investment their customers make in both the product and their company.

Specification

• Location: Indoor use only
• Duty Cycle: Suitable for continuous operation
• Moisture Sensitivity: Not sealed against moisture
• Operating Humidity: <80%rh
• Storage Temperature: -40C to +40C
• Operating Temperature: 0C to 40C
• Max Operating Altitude: 12,000' (3500m)
• Electrical Supply Nominal Rating: 230V 10A 50/60Hz
• Nominal Input Voltage: 200 - 285 VAC
• Maximum Continous Load: 1200VA
• Maximum Peak Load: 3800VA
• Voltage Regulation: 1V
• Output Distortion (Resistive Load): <0.9%
• Output Distortion (Reactive Load): <0.9% (0.1% Typical)
• Output Impedance: <0.008 Ohm
• Noise Reduction: 100kHz - 2MHz > 80dB
• Efficiency @ 300VA: >85%
• Input Frequency: 45 - 65 Hz
• Under Voltage Limit: Continous -10% of setting 15 sec, duration 10% of setting
• Over Voltage Limit: Continous 5% of setting 15 sec, duration 10% of setting
• Energy Dissipation: 1270J
• Peak Current Surge: 90,000A
• Max Surge Voltage: 6,000V
• Clamp Level: 800V
• DC Trigger Configuration: Tip Positive
• DC Trigger Voltage: 5 - 15Vdc
• Unit Dimensions (W x D x H): 17" x 14" x 4" (43cm x 36cm x 10.16cm)
• Unit Weight: 37lbs (16.7kg)
• Shipping Dimensions (W x D x H): 24" x 21" x 10" (61cm x 53cm x 25cm)
• Shipping Weight: 48lbs (21.7kg)

About PS Audio

PS Audio is a renowned high-fidelity audio components and equipment provider catering to audiophiles and the sound recording industry. With a rich history dating back to 1973, PS Audio has been at the forefront of audio innovation, delivering exceptional products that elevate the listening experience to new heights. Founded by audio designers Paul McGowan and Stan Warren, PS Audio shipped its first products in 1974. The company's name was derived from the initials of its visionary founders, reflecting their commitment to crafting audio equipment that pushes the boundaries of sonic performance. From the very beginning, PS Audio has been dedicated to delivering uncompromising sound quality and engineering excellence.

PS Audio's product lineup encompasses a wide range of audio components designed to meet the needs of discerning audiophiles. From preamplifiers to mains regenerators, DACs to streamers, PS Audio offers a comprehensive selection of equipment that captures the essence of every musical detail.

PS Audio's unwavering dedication to excellence has earned the company numerous accolades and awards worldwide. From Editors' Choice awards by prestigious publications like Stereophile and The Absolute Sound magazines to consistently earning spots on Stereophile's Recommended Component lists, PS Audio has cemented its reputation as a leader in the audio industry. Experience the power of PS Audio's cutting-edge audio components and elevate your listening experience to new heights. Explore their range of preamplifiers, mains regenerators, DACs, amplifiers, power cables, and power conditioners, and unlock the true potential of your audio system. With PS Audio, immerse yourself in the captivating world of high-fidelity sound reproduction.