Squeezebox/DAC powersupply

Hi all,

Apologies in advance for what I bet is such a basic question, but...

I run a Squeezebox Duet and Beresford 7520 in to an Audionote 300b. All files are Flac. For comparison, a friend brought round a Naim CD player and power supply, a pre-amp. Suffice to say, the difference in sound quality was v significant.

The puniest element of my transport system is the power supply. What role does a power supply play in my set-up? Why do external power supplies seem not to take on a prominent role in music streaming systems? I"m a bit confused to be honest...!

Thanks very much...

J

 

Was your system better than the Naim or worse?
Keith.

 

The sound with the Naim CD and power supply was superior....

 

I'm using a Squeezebox Classic with CI Audio PSU.

The PSU for the SB is a big sonic upgrade, having left my Naim CD5i collecting dust lately.
(not that the SB3/PSU is better but very close to the CD5i)

I'm expecting a good external DAC to give even better results. (considering a DACmagic)

 

all audio relies on the power supply to produce a potential on which the music signal is overlayed [simplistic view] so a poor psu will provide poor sound no matter what the following electronics are ...


don't believe anyone who tells you the sb3 can't be improved by uprating the psu ...there are a lot of people who say that as it has switched mode elements within the unit the addition of a better psu can't possibly help .....

this in my experience is wrong ....I've built a far number of sb3 psu's over the last couple of years ...rebuilt a kit for someone to who was having problems ...

every one of the units improved the final sound both from the didital and analouge outputs ...

the secret is a big traffo ie 75 to 100va then 200000 + uf good quality caps I use panasonic fc's

to a lesser extent the rectifier diodes will add some noise so I tend to use schottky's 11dq10's will just about do the job but 30 dq10's might be better..

the type of power cable and plug arrangment will also play its part .....

I use an sb3 into a dax decade .....though its not quite upto the quad 99 cdp2 feed into the same dac ....the quad ...however hard I try will still only play one disc .....the sb3 has 100000 tracks to chose from !

 

Early this week my Cambridge DACmagic arrived, to boost up the performance of my Squeezebox Classic.

After only a few days of warming up and listening my experience is that the addition of the DAC gives a bigger improvement, than the dedicated PSU from CI Audio (already) did.

Also, changing the CI Audio PSU for the SB, for the original el-cheapo SB Power-supply plug, didn't seem to make any sonic difference, now that the SB is used trough it's digital output.
(same experience I had when hooking up the SB to a Naim SuperNait, with its internal DAC)

regards,
ALco