PS Audio P15
The DirectStream P15 is the second largest high-end personal power generating station in the world, next to the P20.
It is the successor of the venerable P10 Power Plant relied upon by thousands around the world.
The PS Audio P15 is all new, based on the P10, but rebuilt from the ground up.
It features an ultra-low impedance analog power amplifier, pure DSD FPGA based sinewave generator, larger power supply, and the lowest distortion ever available in a Power Plant.
The PS Audio P15 is capable of powering any size system and bringing forth all that’s possible from your system ensuring you get the same great performance every time you listen.
The P15 includes 5 separate zones and 1500 watts of pure regenerated power, delivered to each receptacle through 1/4″ thick copper buss bars.
From medium to large power amplifiers to the smallest pieces of source equipment, the P15 will work magic on your system’s performance.
Only the very best high-end system around the world rely on the P15 Power Plant for protection, purity, and performance.
With your system powered directly from the output of the P15, dynamics and openness are breathtaking.
New voices, new harmonics and a renewed sense of musicality are yours the moment the P15 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.
The DirectStream P15 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.
Legacy power conditioners
Traditional power conditioners have been widely available for several decades and range in price from a few dollars to multiple thousands of dollars.
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 of the better respected high-end power conditioners do provide a significantly better sound and performance level for many systems, they are unable to address the fundamental problems found on the AC line.
Unfortunately, this means they cannot ensure your listening and viewing experience will always be the same.
Quite simply put, by relying on passive means to help the AC power, one relinquishes the security and reliability of a system running from a PS personal generator.
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.
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 eliminated 100%.
Dynamic voltage fluctuations are stopped completely, 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 recognised with a simple audition that shows both with and without perfected power.
The touch panel PS Audio P15
Touch the large, full-color 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 P15’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 color 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 demagnetize 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 irregardless of the dynamic demands of power-hungry equipment or your neighbors.
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 P15 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 P15 with both its real time distortion analyser and working oscilloscope.
Measure everything that’s going on affecting your system’s performance.
The P15 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 5 zones available on the P15 it is important to know which piece of equipment is being powered by which zone so you can access from either the front panel or the web interface.
On a PS Audio P15 it’s easy.
You can name each zone anything you wish via the P15’s easy to use graphical interface available through the front panel touch screen.
Once the outlets are named then it’s quite easy to set 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.
IR and trigger controls
In the back of the P15, there are two mini jacks that can be assigned as either an IR input or output or a DC trigger transmitter or receiver.
For the IR capabilities, the P15 can be assigned up to 15 separate IR commands for any zone and these IR broadcasts can be triggered by any number of assignable events.
This helps PS Audio P15 owners maintain complete control over not only the AC power, but by directly controlling that same equipment through a remote control.
If you have equipment that needs a DC trigger to turn it on or off remotely, you can assign one of the mini jacks to be either the sending or receiving unit for these commands and remotely turnon/off equipment or have that equipment remotely turn on/off the P15.
The P15 Power Plant is their second largest Power Plant, big enough to handle just about any size system.
The P15 incorporates their patented, highly efficient, AC regenerator technology.
That patent, awarded to PS Audio on October 15, 2007, was the work of our Chief Engineer, Robert Stadtherr who invented a new type of regeneration circuit that improved the efficiency of the classic 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, their patented technology is pure analogue all the way, using a stereo Class A/B power amplifier to output the regenerated AC.
The original design concept for the P10 Power Plant was to build a no-holds-barred AC regenerator without any compromises, such as fans, power and size restrictions, and the P15 is its successor.
The unit’s physical requirements, including its massive heat sinks, were created first in our mechanical engineering department based on heat dissipation and power supply size requirements.
Now, with over 7 years of field-tested experience under their belts the P10, which enjoys an enviable reliability record for its thousands of worldwide users, paved the way for the next generation Power Plant, the P15.
Their engineering department started with the proverbial blank sheet of paper and redesigned the internal electronics from the ground up, including an all new analogue power amplifier and signal source.
Because signal purity is so critical to the success of a Power Plant, they turned to the purest and best sounding waveform generator they know of, a DSD DAC.
Based on similar FPGA architecture to the DirectStream DAC, the P15’s internal signal source is the cleanest, purest, best sounding sinewave generator in the history of PS Audio.
Each and every PS Audio P15 Power Plant is hand built by skilled artisans.
Every employee at PS Audio is proud to let the world know it’s “Built in Boulder.”
PS Audio P15 Specification
– Duty Cycle: Suitable for continuous operation
– Moisture Sensitivity: Not sealed against moisture
– Operating Humidity: <80%rh
– Max Operating Altitude: 12,000′ (3500m)
– Electrical Supply Nominal Rating: 230V 10A 50/60Hz
– Nominal Input Voltage: 200 – 285 VAC
– Maximum Continous Load: 1500VA
– Maximum Peak Load: 3600VA
– Voltage Regulation: 1V
– Output Distortion (Resistive Load): <0.9% (0.2% Typical)
– Output Distortion (Reactive Load): <0.9% (0.2% 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 15% of setting
– Over Voltage Limit: Continous 5% of setting 15 sec, duration 10% of setting
– Energy Dissipation: 3670J
– Peak Current Surge: 84,000A
– 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 8.5″ (43cm x 36cm x 21.5cm)
– Unit Weight: 73lbs (33kg)
– Shipping Dimensions (W x D x H): 23″ x 20.5″ x 13.5″ (58cm x 52cm x 34cm)
– Shipping Weight: 82lbs (38kg)
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