Just picked up one of these from the 2nd hand forum.
I seem to have ended up doing a tour of the Plenue line; at various points I’ve owned the D, D2, M, M2, R, V, P1 and P2 mk II. I guess having owned so many DAPs is a common affliction among head-fi’ers
Seriously impressive sound, and not quite what I expected based on other impressions. Detail and sense of space is phenomenal, and I’m only using the single-ended as I don’t have any headphones that can take balanced at the moment.
I had the P1 about 3 years ago, so difficult to make comparisons, but I was never really satisfied with the sound. The bass seemed rounded off and I couldn’t get the impact I wanted even with JetEffects. Looking back, maybe it was an impedance matching issue as I was mainly using Momentum M2s at the time, which have 18 ohm impedance vs the 3 ohms on the P1 output, and I was newer to all this and didn’t realize impedance matching would be a thing.
As I said, that was a while ago, but the PS sounds quite different from what I remember of the P1. Either that, or my hearing has changed
It has real punch and weight down low. But the biggest thing is probably the power. I don’t think I’ve heard a Plenue with this kind of drive before, not even the P2 mk II or D2 balanced outs which are rated as higher Vrms. Don’t know what this amp is doing different, given it’s only 3 Vrms but man it feels powerful, like there’s real drive at hand even at lower volumes.
I see in the settings you can have the cradle out as 1.3 or 2 Vrms. That suggests those pins are a fixed line out? That would make it the only Plenue with a dedicated line out? (if you buy the overpriced cradle though).
I bought the P2 mk II earlier this year, but ended up returning it within the exchange window as I found it quite colored: very warm and again with softened bass impact. So I a bit nervous about the PS and wondering if maybe I only liked the lower priced Plenues ;
But so far it sounds great. There’s a certain “live band/instrument” sound to it. I do wonder if some specific treble frequencies that are pushed forward will get fatiguing after a while (my ears seem to be very sensitive to some treble presentation that I haven’t quite figured out). But so far, so good. My unit maybe hasn’t had that much burn in either.
Need to get some balanced headphones to hear what that output can do.