Odd, the grey ones are installed in the later models. which likely had the Multiwave2...hmmm...you didn't like the sound quality. so strange as i've not heard anything bad about them before. The outlets however..... awful imho.
The maestro outlet is by far the best outlet i've heard from any company! One is on order to replace the Gaofei..I likely will keep the SR Teslaplex in my P300 as I want to run tube gear sometime in the future. And the Teslaplex seems to synergize well for most tube gear. But too bright for digital gear especially the Sabre dacs...but even with my R2R master11 I prefer something else.
Some of the P300's had a notorious failure rate with bleeding caps... that would affect the sound quality/dynamics obviously! The p300 should bring out the best in your system if it was setup properly. 50hz-60hz is ideal for most systems. and I have mine set for 117v...after testing output at the outlet, it actually was outputting exactly 120v.
Mine doesn't get very hot. its definitely warm. But the Multiwave2 fixes a lot of that supposedely. I don't use the Multiwave2 options. just pure sine wave. The fan is super quiet and works very well. I try not to use more than 100-150watts as the unit will warm up to the point it acts like a heater in my room. 100ish watts is ideal for this unit to stay warm, not hot... my m11, gustard U12 (now with ultra clean power), Paul Hynes SR3 and wife's NFB28 is plugged into it. about 150watts. or 110 approx without her amp turned on.
I'm considering upgrading all the caps with something fancy. I know there was a company doing upgrades for these a while back. But no longer.
the maestro outlet...check these links!
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/0114/audiophile_ac_outlets.htm
http://www.cruzefirstaudio.com/maestro_outlet.htm
another cheap option is the Volent USB card.
http://www.volent.com.hk/?page_id=632
BEST for CAS audiophiles
with VOLENT Labs latest USB 3.0 PCIe ultra low jitter clock mod card with discrete PSU, you can be sure your outputed USB signal is governed by ultra lowest jitter clock. the sonic is more musical and the soundstage will be darker and wider than your motherboard USB port. the treble have be more airy and you will hear more detail. The NEC USB chipset will be goverened by a ultra low jitter clock with special selected OCC Silver wire.
Discrete PSU will be power by OCC Copper with through SATA port to ensure purified power supply.
Lowest Latency you can sure
With VOLENT Labs Ultra low jitter clock usb card, you can sure your Windows Latency will be lowest which got the best definition. with a fine tuned WIndows 7/8/8.1, your Windows latency will be as low as 43us to 51us.
- Ultra low jitter clock with discrete PSU
Support WIndows 7, 8, 8.1 , drivers need to be install- Suport Ubuntu Linux
- Please ensure you have one PCIe slot on your motherboard , and one SATA Power which can power the USB card
- Reaneas usb chipset , 2 USB 3.0 Port at the back plate and 2 x Internal USB 3.0 port for face plate port (not provided).
- Full Height and low profile back plate will be provided
Suggested Retail Price: USD119
Originally Posted by JohnSwenson
Something very strange happened, I actually have a few minutes free so I can talk about this.
First off on REGEN clock jitter in general. The whole purpose of the REGEN is to improve the signal integrity so the USB PHY in the DAC generates less noise. Jitteris a PART of the signal integrity, but as far as I know not a very large part. Meaning going into ultra low jitter territory should not make much of a difference. I have designed a few USB PHYs and none of those would have much of any noise difference when the incoming jitter goes from really good to really really good. But that doesn't mean all PHYs behave the same way.
Note that the clock in the REGEN is not the same as the clock in the DAC that feeds the DAC chip(s). THAT clock is very important. The REGEN clock is not even the clock that is in charge of the timing of the I2S signals to the DAC chip, that is part of the DAC again. It is not even in charge of the USB processing in the DAC's USBreceiver, that is controlled by the clock connected the USB chip in the DAC. About the only thing it can possibly affect is the PG noise from the PHY.
The Neutron Star looks like a well implemented external clock but I have not seen a phase noise plot for it so it is hard to tell how good it really is. If anyone has actually seen a phase noise plot I would like to see it.
The connection of the Neutron Star to the REGEN shown earlier in this thread shows an unterminated connection. The coax is just connected across the original clock pads. This is not necessarily the best way to connect a clock. The BEST way is to have a termination resistor at the destination side that matches the impedance of the cable, which I presume is 50 ohms. But in order for that to work the output impedance of the clock also needs to be 50 ohm. I did not see anything in the documentation which specifies the output impedance. There is an output transformer but no information on its characteristics or the circuit driving it. So given the unterminated connection and non-specified output impedance, there are likely to be reflections at the connection to the board. Given the fairly short length of the cable they may not have any impact on the hub chip, but who knows, I certainly have not done any analysis on the SI sensitivity of the hub chip clock input.
All my previous experimentation with DAC clocks has shown that the external clock REALLY has to be much better than the on board one it is replacing to make any significant difference, the connection from board to board almost always adds enough signal degradation to partially counteract the "goodness" of the external clock.
Because of all of the above I was surprised by the amount of improvement heard with the Neutron Star. I would have assumed some small improvement, but not doubling the improvement of the REGEN. The only thing I can think of is that if this was a system that was already highly optimized, so the SI was already very good, the SI improvement of the off the shelf REGEN would not be all that large, so maybe in that case lower jitter may have larger percentage of the total improvement.
I want to emphasize that I am NOT recommending that everybody go out and spend $600 upgrading the clock. There is not nearly enough information to know how effective this is going to be on most systems. If you REALLY want to spend the money trying this you are of course free to do so, (it does void the warrantee), but be prepared that it may not double the improvement in YOUR system.
John S.
