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Hi all -A battery powered phono preamp holds a lot of advantages due to removing itself from your AC mains, but how about the impact on dynamics?? Better, same, worse, etc. . .
Edited to add: I am referring to purchasing a phono preamp which can run on its own built in battery power supply.
Thanks
Craig
Edits: 10/05/15Follow Ups:
Boozhound Labs is an insanely good value if you have even modest soldering skills. I built the Phono amp and head amp and used a hammond project box for the chassis for a total investment of $200. It is just absurdly good for the price.
I use batteries and think they sound wonderful. I suspect John is right in that they just save money and are not necessarily a better option. I bought lithium rechargeable standard 9V batteries and they work fine. Very clean and clear. There is plenty of dynamics. I don't know if that is the circuit or the batteries or what, I never heard this circuit with a wall wart power supply. Right now I have it in a system supporting a VPI Prime ($4K table!) I will probably upgrade the phono amp eventually but so far it has stepped up to the plate!
Nate
You can't cheat an honest man, never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump -- W.C. Fields
Hi all -
Thanks for your responses! The collective knowledge base here at AA is pretty incredible.
Craig
The primary reason is in reducing conducted EMI from the mains supply.
"Dynamics" is largely related to the slew rate of the amplifier design. Unless the designer is Clueless, it is unlikely that an amplifier would ever be "starved" of current in reproducing a transient.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
It is interesting that the most of the highest rated and most respected phono preamps have power supplies based on AC mains. I'm not saying it couldn't be done I am just pointing out that the advantage of a battery power supply did not stop many very highly regarded phono preamps from performing with AC power.
Ed
We don't shush around here!
Life is analog...digital is just samples thereof
I believe the main advantage of battery power is in its cost savings. It often costs more to produce an AC power supply that performs as well or better than a battery power supply, especially for components that require very low power like phono stages and DACs. Small sealed lead-acid batteries are very economical. I significantly improved the performance of the original Audio Alchemy DAC-In-The-Box by replacing its wall-wart power supply with a sealed lead-acid battery. I suppose I could have built or purchased a higher performance AC power supply, but the battery was a lot cheaper and I used the wall-wart to charge the battery.
Best regards,
John Elison
Put a film cap across the battery terminals, ideally on the inside of the AA DAC-In-The-Box case, near where the DC is fed. 40uF, say, if you can fit it.
Regards,
Andy
Honestly, Andy, it has been at least 20 years since I used a DAC-in-the-Box. I've graduated to hi-rez digital along with truly high-end DACs. They no longer require battery power supplies.
Thanks,
John Elison
Battery power is a way, not the only way. Because the question was about dynamics, I wanted to make clear that there were at least two examples of dynamic sounding battery phono-pres in my experience. I personally have no real preference, but when I heard the Nova 2, I liked it and wanted it and felt and still feel that the battery power is a bonus, but would have bought it a/c powered if it sounded as good. I formerly had a Lukasheck ac powered phono pre that was very, very good. Also, I had a Doge 8 preamp with a very nice built in phonopre. A friend still uses that setup and it sounds excellent. However, you have to buy very good nos tubes to get it as quiet as it needs to be. I have even been lucky enough to spend some time with the vaunted Ypsilon phono pre. The most explosive phono pre I have heard by far is the Aesthetix Io, but the separate power supply alone is larger than most amplifiers and has more tubes than most as well. Some people use one supply per channel.
Many paths to Nirvana.
Tom Collins
A battery tends to have a higher effective series resistance, and a little hysteresis and dropping voltage with loss of charge that has to be designed around. So just putting a battery as a supply with no considerations, could impact dynamics.
If you put in some regulation circuitry with something to make sure the rail doesn't droop with fast or deep current draws, there shouldn't be a giant difference. But ... you are building a power supply to handle the battery, and they have their own issues. In some cases it might be easier to design a quiet power supply (Sutherland seems to be moving in this direction)
Nothing is free, it's all tradeoffs!
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I doubt it.I make an SLA-powered, JFET-based MC or MM phono stage - the 'Muse'. People buy it because:
* it is very quiet
* as an SS phono stage, it has performance which equals commercial ss products 4 or 5 times the price
* but some people do prefer what a tube phono stage delivers - but JFETs deliver better resolution than those tube phono stages which it has gone up against (one buyer replaced a C-J phono stage with my Muse)But you need a cap across the batteries, for best sound. Just like you have filter caps on a mains-powered PS.
Andy
Edits: 10/07/15
According to some very good people I've spoken to, you are dead nuts on about battery supplies. Their suggestion for a simple solution is to feed low impedance capacitors from the battery supply. You still have the clean DC from the Battery and faster response from the capacitors so long as the battery supply is large enough.
what type of caps to use and how many uF! :-))
Andy
I don't know what your point is. If you see some kind of advantage in decoupling your audio gear from your AC power mains, why stop at the phono preamp? Why not power everything off of batteries? Otherwise, IMO, you're achieving a tiny reduction in noise in your turntable signal path at the expense of a steady voltage level. I don't get it.
A battery powered phono preamp sounds like something a DJ in a club would use as a backup unit, in case he couldn't get a reliable power-strip connection. I'm not facing those kinds of emergencies.
I don't mean to be mean. That's just how I see it.
----------------------------
"We should look beyond the measurements." ~ From 'Engineering for Poetry Majors, 3rd Edition'
"Show me on the doll where the bad math touched you." ~ Vinyl Cop
Lots of folks spend thousands of dollars on AC conditioners to get rid of noise. You can't see any other reason for batteries?
I use batteries all over my system...actually now that I think about it, my Stax headphone amp is the only thing that runs off of ac. Is it for everyone? No way...I'm embarrassed to tell you how many batteries I have in "power supply" boxes, but I have zero spent on line conditioning. And my system sounds the same no matter the time of day.
Steve
Poinzy -
I am not referring to a backup - I am referring to a phono preamp which contains rechargeable batteries used for power rather than using your homes AC line - several high end manufacturers have designed preamps this way. One that comes to mind is Sutherland (I can not remember the model).
My question is for anyone who has used a battery power powered phono preamp; did they notice any changes to dynamics when the preamp was using battery power rather than when using AC / wall power.
Craig
I have experience with 2 battery phono-pres. One is the Nagra BPS that a friend owns, the other is the Musical Surroundings Nova 2 that I own.
The BPS is crazy dynamic. I think Fremer called it a pipe-bomb. My own Nova 2 is very dynamic, but not quite as much as the bps. I prefer using mine with an SUT for low output moving coil, but it can be used straight in as it is very adjustable.
Battery permits the noise level to be practically non-existent, as such, macro dynamics are better exposed as are large dynamic swings.
As always, you should listen first.
Tom Collins
I meant to say "micro dynamics" in the last post, sorry.
Tom Collins
Did you know you can edit your posts?
You didn't need to write another post; you could have made the change to the original post.
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