power regeneration and the BeePre

[Grainger49]

I'm curious, did it cure the hum in the BeePre?

[4krow]

 Let's understand a difference between some of these PS Audio regenerators. The P500 produces balanced power, whereas the PPP and the P3 units do not. In my experience, balanced power has made a positive difference on the performance of my gear. I won't go into detail here, but that is my experience. I have owned the PPP and for me, it didn't have the same effect. Of the three different PS Audio units that I have owned the P500 is my favorite. One thing that all of the units should have in common is the ability to deal with voltage spikes, sags, and line distortion on the power line itself. One last thing that I might add is if someone is using an older unit, the power supply caps should probably be changed. As to the hum that you are experiencing with your Bee Pre, it does sound as though there may be a problem with the unit itself, not that your current power situation didn't cause it in the first place. Lousy power makes things ugly, and can be hard to deal with.

[johnsonad]

I have a PPP and have for years, longer than about any piece of audio gear.  It's the one constant in my system and the one I wouldn't want to do without. My plasma and most of the audio gear are hooked into it.  Regenerated constant 120v power is nice especially if you have noisy mains, move often or have way out of spec wall voltages.

[aroide]

Update on my hum research:

No change to the hum with the P3 in.  It is low level and accompanied with a low level 'thermal noise' type hiss.  The hum is in the left channel only.  The EE in me thinks this is 120/60 coupling due to the power switch and cabling running down that side of the BeePre.  When I opened my preamp up to inspect solder connections and grounds on that channel, I did notice that I wired my power switch in a way that ran it much closer to the preamp circuits than the manual photo showed (pic attached).  I had just enough wire left to redo this and keep the wire as far away from filtered preamp circuits as possible.  This DID make a reduction, just not to essentially zero.

But I did fix my issue.  I put my magic home-brew -12dB L-ped attenuators back in the system (thread here on how I made them).  I made these as the gain of the Bryston 3BST amp was far too high for the BeePre and I had lots of thermal noise hiss and some hum.  When I switched over to the Rogue Atlas Magnum amp, I thought i didn't need them as the gain is lower.  But putting them in, reduced the hum and hiss to inaudible, and also had a side benefit of making the system sound much better.  Before I was running the BeeQuiet in the -27dB range.  Now its in the -9dB area.  The BeePre sounds much better operated with a stronger signal.  It likes it here.  And I still have headroom to get as loud as I ever will before hitting 0dB.

I still haven't spent the time to apply the silver paste to the outlets and breaker, but with the P3 in, and the attenuators back in, the system really has come up a notch in musicality.  I can't tell which change did what at this point.  I did turn on multi wave, and nothing bad happened.  But I didn't hear anything very obvious change.  If I had to guess, it made vocals appear a bit further back (which I don't like).  I'l have to see how it affects vinyl and my turntable.

Was the PS audio regenerator worth the price?  For me it was.  It fixed some nasty voltage droop issues that, I believe, caused my BeePre regulators to go offline.  And it has improved dynamics and musicality in a noticeable way.  Before I had this, I thought my system sounded best late at night.  Which I later realized was because other stuff (heat pumps, washers, dryers, plasma TVs) was off and voltage drop was minimal.  Now any time sounds really nice 

[Doc B.]

Nicely done, a coherent and logical description of how you went about fine tuning thngs.

[Grainger49]

Glad to hear that you have solved the hum problem.  It can be maddening!  You surely were down at the noise floor of the BeePre. 

IIRC, when Paully and I did the final assembly of his BeePre we used hot glue to tack down a number of wires/cables to the top plate.  Those things can move over time flipping and tweaking on a circuit.

Unless you have aftermarket outlets just buy some Hubbell hospital outlets, don't worry about the silver paste.  If the prongs within the outlet is fatigued it still won't grip.  And if it were me, retired EE, I would just replace the breaker.  The same thing goes for the breaker's prongs. 

Don't get me wrong, the silver paste will help (hey! send me some!).  But the devices are suspect.

I know you know this but I have to say... don't use mulitwave on the turntable.  (if it was you who said that your TT is DC powered, ignore me)