PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 12

The P12 is their most powerful compact regenerator with 1250 watts of pure power.

From medium to large power amplifiers to the smallest pieces of source equipment, the P12 will work magic on your system’s performance.

Dynamics and openness are breath-taking with the P12.

This is clearly one of the most important pieces of audio equipment you can own.

Expect far better micro and macro dynamics as well as a cleaner, lower noise background.

Don’t starve your music or risk damaging your equipment.

A P12 gives you greatly improved performance and safety from just plugging into the wall socket and far better dynamics, bass and a much bigger, open soundstage than any passive power conditioner on the market.

The PS Audio 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 and unique a Power Plant is; the term accessory doesn’t begin to describe its value.

It’s good to understand the importance of power in a high-end audio system.

Everything we see and hear through our system is really the power from our home’s wall socket manipulated to make music through our speakers by our electronics.

The quality of that power is critical to the success of any high-end system.

The problems with power

AC power that is available in our homes is not perfect and is getting worse with time.

Problems include fluctuating levels, noise, distortion, harmonics, unreliable performance during certain hours of the day and dynamic losses.

All AV equipment relies on this AC power to produce the music and video we listen to and watch in our systems.

The quality of that AC power has a direct effect on the audio and image quality in a high-end system and without steady, perfected power, one cannot depend on the same level of performance day in and day out.

Legacy technology passive power conditioners address none of the real problems with power in our homes.

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 actually repairs the main power issues actually caused by the equipment itself: dynamic fluctuations.

Dynamic fluctuations occur with nearly every power amplifier or receiver on the market today.

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.

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 analyser.

The PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 12 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 unique feature to the Power Plants and helps connected equipment demagnetise their transformers.

AC power is never quite symmetrical and the small asymmetry that occurs can magnetize connected power transformers.

Activating CleanWave from either the Power Plant remote control or front panel touch screen 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 PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 12 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 analyser and working oscilloscope.

Measure everything that’s going on affecting your system’s performance.

The P12 will monitor your power line quality and report any problems to you through its real-time front panel measurement system including, voltage levels, power usage and power quality as measured by THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) on the line.

Input naming and customisation

With 4 zones available on the P12 it is important to know which piece of equipment is being powered by which zone so you can access it from either the front panel or the web interface. On a P12 it’s easy.

You can name each zone anything you wish via the P12’s easy to use graphical interface available through the front panel touch screen.

Once the outlets are named then it’s quite easy to schedule when they turn on/off or the sequence that they are powered on.

For example, you may wish for all your sources to turn on first, warm up and then when you decide it’s long enough, your power amps will turn on.

Specification PS Audio DirectStream Power Plant 12

• 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: Continuos -10% of setting 15 sec, duration 10% of setting
• Over Voltage Limit: Continuos 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)