"Never Connected" power supply

Intrigued to know if anyone has had experience of the 'Never Connected' power supply upgrade http://www.never-connected.com/ which aims to isolate the unit's direct connection to the mains, as endorsed by Trichord. There was a review in one of the mags against one of the Trichord/Michell phono stages which was very positive. The same external PSU is used for the Orca preamp, and I was wondering how big an upgrade it would prove - the price at £350 is rather steep for a pure punt. I slso saw somewhere that Trichord are recommending an upgrade of the DC-carrying cable between the PSU and the preamp. The guy who bought my Alectos has ordered this, so I'll check up with im as to thwether it was worth it.

 

Excellent upgrade, really does do what it says on the tin, I use 4 of these in the 850, I won't consider some mods without them, total reverse isolation of the supply.
You can customise them to suit your needs, they can work wonders, I'm about to slap a couple in the wad next too.
Really does work well

 

On paper its sounds like the sort of bullshit stand manufacturers claim.

How can it be isolated from the mains?

Does it work off cosmic power?

 

WM - even worth their salt on an already separate, external power supply unit like the Orca's then, as opposed to on a unit with integral PSU? I'm debating my next step up for a few mnths time (once my wallet has healed up from the Brystons), and the pre was what I was looking at - so the choice would be to upgrade the Orca with the never connected and maybe the new umbilical cable, or to try out some lternative pres.

 

This was HiFiNews's paraphrase of how it works.. Don't ask me if the science is plausible - that's why I like to ask for peoples' direct experience....

NCtechnologyprovidesan auxiliary reservoirfor
PSUcircuits. This reservoir is only connected
directlyto themainsforafractionof the50Hzcycle;
this periodis calledthe conductionangle.It lasts
threeto fourthousandths ofasecond,perhaps1%of
a half-cycle.Comparators assessthe state of this
reservoirand the conductiontimes,and direct a
controlsignalto a FETswitch,whichdisconnectsit
fromtheplayerpart.Consequently, the mainsis not
connectedduringthenoisyconductionperiod.At all
othertimesenergystoredin this reservoircapacitor
is availablefor transferto the mainsupplyandits
ownreservoiron a moregentleIow-noise'top up'
basis.Thustheinterfacebetweentherectifierbridge
andthe mainsupply,andthe rectifierbridge/mains
input,meansthe playeris 'neverconnected' to the
mainsandits unwantednoise.Thesuppositionis
thatit is this noisewhichpotentiallydegradesound
qualityandis the targetfor alternativesuppressors
andfilters.Reasonableproofof this is givenbythe
demonstrable changein performance.

 

hmmm...since when did HiFi News stop using spaces

I have an NC power supply in my transport powering the Trichord Clock4. I have no idea whether it (or the clock upgrade) were worthwhile since I had them done before I had ever listened to my transport. However, I'm confident they make my transport a good one

Michael.

 

It is electricaly isolated from the incoming AC supply.

 

Garyi,
Guess what it improves naims like you wont believe, I know I've done a few, its works explainable and patented.
YOu know the prototyopes were orginally strapped on my Wadias, can it make that much of a differnce, well you'd have to hear for yourself.
I've even put them in Spectrals, DCS, and Accuphases, Uber Teac's.
Basically it total isolates the incomming supply form the transformer, so in essence the circuitry the getting the supply form the N/C board, never 'sees' the mains bourne noise, so is 'Never connected' to the mains

 

Perhaps it is similar to the Technics 'virtual battery' of a couple of years ago? That used a capacitor as a (yes, you guessed) virtual battery. They also sold amps with real batteries.

 

the nc supply basically charges up some capacitors which then power the kit's own reservoir caps. while the nc caps are bing charged there is no connection between them and the kits reservioir caps and while the reservoir caps are being charged from the nc caps there is no connection between the mains and the nc caps. this happens fast enough that the kit's caps can always supply enough power to the kit (in theory anyway) therefore the kit is effectively never connected to the mains. iirc technics used a similar system called virtual battery in the 90's for some of their kit.
cheers


julian

 

Of course, the Technics version was much cheaper. For £350 you got a whole amp'. Presumably it means that audiophile mains cables become uneccessary? Huh? No? You need one of those too?

 

there's something between PDFs, XP and me that doesn't mix well...

 

Actually NaC its not

 

notaclue, the technics amp (or pre) in question was a pretty high end component in the mid 90's the su-c2000 pre (with the vb supply) and the matching power amp cost about 1600 quid. so probably more like 3k at todays prices. take a look at this months hi-fi world for more details.
cheers


julian

 

They also included it in cheaper amps. The a900 integrated had a virtual battery (I once owned the model below this) and I reckon this would have been around £400. It was quite a popular amp in its day. Also they had a cheap pre-power (I would guess around £500) that had a real battery in the pre IIRC.

Never really caught on, though.