[uzi2]

John only gave "personal reasons" for the business closure, but before that he was awaiting components to complete my order. He recommended the Shanti when I asked him "What was the second best power supply?" It may well have been specific to my case in needing two 5V supplies. I'm more than happy with the way things sound, so I will leave well alone for now...

 

[DecentLevi]

Well that's good. Indeed one needn't mess with upgrade-innitus once you're happy with what you hear. With the Shanti DC cables however I would wonder if they would be susceptible to RFI/EMI being apparently unshielded and so thin. So maybe you can try something like keeping the LPS as close to the DAC as possible and tightly coiling (wrapping up) the extra cable slack.

 

[Jon L]

My Shanti arrived today
All traces of harshness in the treble are gone

I dunno... When I try various LPS and Battery Bank (internal regulator), I always note that treble becomes darker and smoother, but I also notice a decrease in life, sparkle, and (apparent) detail, which makes me HAVE to turn the volume up. The only times I have noticed an increase in BOTH smoothness and sparkle/resolution is batteries at their native voltage without any regulation.
I am already using such a battery for my USB soundcard and usb/spdif converter, but it's already a pain to have one battery pack, nevermind two, especially since 5V native battery thing is even more of a pain.
Am looking at Shanti and Nirvana to see which emulates native battery characterisics more.

 

[Zzt231gr]

My Shanti arrived today and I have given it a good work out and I am very pleased with the results. I t has a double benefit for me as it replaces the switching power supplies of the Pi4 and the Qutest. The Pi4 is connected to the 3A output and Qutest to the 1A. All traces of harshness in the treble are gone and I am more inclined to turn the volume up rather than down. It has a full bass, delightful mids and very clear highs
For those looking to replace only the Qutest power supply, I tested with an alternate source and found similar improvements.
For those looking at a Pi setup, I am running a very much underclocked beta version of DietPi running NAA.
The Shanti appears to have quite thin DC cables, in contrast to those that would have been supplied by Ciunas Audio and they are hardwired, but does come equipped with power lead and a full selection of adapters.

Thank you for posting your results,which are very promising!

Now,I will surely buy this or another Supercap psu I have in mind!I need only to power Qutest.

For DC cable,you can shield externally the one attached to the psu-this is what I am planning to do.There are special copper tape-like materials or copper braid on Ebay for example...

 

[GreenBow]

Just had another idea for PSU, though probably useless.

I was just scrolling through YouTube, and there was a vid about salvaging old PC PSUs.




However that PSU is likely to be noisy to a degree. It's old and not exactly specified as clean. Might be just the thing though, as I don't know. It should have a 5V rail as PC PSU do.

What I did go on to think about is my PC PSU. I bought it because of one of its specifications. It has low ripple on the voltage rails. It's from the Corsair RM series of PSU, which includes RM, RMx, and RMi. I have no idea if it filters RFI at its output, because I can't remember the whole story. I think they would be easy to test if someone knew what to do. They are highly regarded in the PC PSU world though.

I saw one of the RM series of PSU on an oscilloscope, and the low ripple was real. I saw it on a couple of videos, and one video literally recorded zero ripple. You're only going to 12V, -12V, 5V, and -5V outputs, so no 15V.

Might be worth someone doing a listening test with any old quality PC PSU. Honestly have no idea though.

 

[uzi2]

Just had another idea for PSU, though probably useless.

I was just scrolling through YouTube, and there was a vid about salvaging old PC PSUs.




However that PSU is likely to be noisy to a degree. It's old and not exactly specified as clean. Might be just the thing though, as I don't know. It should have a 5V rail as PC PSU do.

What I did go on to think about is my PC PSU. I bought it because of one of its specifications. It has low ripple on the voltage rails. It's from the Corsair RM series of PSU, which includes RM, RMx, and RMi. I have no idea if it filters RFI at its output, because I can't remember the whole story. I think they would be easy to test if someone knew what to do. They are highly regarded in the PC PSU world though.

I saw one of the RM series of PSU on an oscilloscope, and the low ripple was real. I saw it on a couple of videos, and one video literally recorded zero ripple. You're only going to 12V, -12V, 5V, and -5V outputs, so no 15V.

Might be worth someone doing a listening test with any old quality PC PSU. Honestly have no idea though.

The big thing for power supplies to achieve noise isolation is that they are either charging batteries or super capacitors. If neither is present then the job is not done...

 

[dac64]

The only times I have noticed an increase in BOTH smoothness and sparkle/resolution is batteries at their native voltage without any regulation.

me too! poweradd vs nimah battery

 

[Zzt231gr]

Nah,I am pretty sure that these psu are not designed with trully noiseless output in mind...

Supercaps seem to be the future!Virtually no noise and perfect transient response with extemelly low output resistance.

 

[GreenBow]

The big thing for power supplies to achieve noise isolation is that they are either charging batteries or super capacitors. If neither is present then the job is not done...

Well I did know that a PC PSU was a completely off the wall suggestion. However Chord are issuing Qutest with a stock wall PSU, that is claimed to RFI free. Plus it does not engage capacitors or batteries. It's kind of besides the point though because this is a thread discussing replacements for the stock supply.

I don't know the full story over PC PSU, but some are designed to an exceptional standard. No idea what the current delivery will be like in terms of use for a DAC. Gaming PCs will experience quick current load changes, which may mean there are capacitor stores in the PSU. (Sometimes gaming PCs are drawing half CPU and GPU power, then suddenly a lot more.) … When we talk about quality PC PSUs, we are talking about gaming PC PSUs. As more quality comes with higher wattage. The average non gaming PC will have a reasonable quality 250 watt PSU. Quality PSU for gaming start around 500W.

I know one aspect about PC PSU that might be of interest though. The capacitors. In quality PC PSUs, they build them with Japanese capacitors. Both first and second stage. No idea what they mean by stages though, but if it's the output stage then it would be applicable.

It's not a discriminatory point to make, to say the following. Quality PC PSUs avoid Chinese capacitors because they are of significantly lower quality. (That's not me being nasty either. It's all information that is discussed in PC PSU builds.) Poorer quality capacitors cause PSUs to fail much easier, which is what no-one wants. Often because when PC PSUs fail, not only do they need replacing and your PC is down. They 'can' take out other PC parts when they die. In other words when we build a gaming PC and review PSUs, we look for all Japanese capacitors.


Anyway that's possibly way off the mark. However going back to the Chord PSU, some have stipulated it's not putting out RFI to the DAC. It's apparently dumping noise back into the mains. That then gets into the amplifier that is driving speakers, or a headphone amplifier. I have no idea if that's true, however it's not unheard of. E.g. I have read that the Sony PlayStation PSU dump noise. E.g. two. I have read that we should isolate our digital and analogue power supplies, because the digital ones dump noise into the mains.

Anyway ignore me. I am still rambling about PC PSU for the Qutest.

 

[Zzt231gr]

FYI,I started reading the dedicated thread for Allo Shanti at diyaudio.Here is the link and seems very interesting and technical.

https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/vendor-s-bazaar/337859-shanti-dual-lps-5v-3a-5v-1-5a.html

 

[HumanMedia]

PC power supplies are the worst for audio, they are RFI furnaces, that’s why high end audio servers replace them with extremely expensive linear supplies. Extremely expensive because they have to supply multiple Voltages at the same time. Switching PC power supplies are perhaps the biggest reason why PCs are so problematic as audio sources.

 

[uzi2]

The Pc power supply requires many outputs. By contrast the requirement for the Qutest is very simple - clean 5V 1A

 

[Zzt231gr]

My Shanti arrived today and I have given it a good work out and I am very pleased with the results. I t has a double benefit for me as it replaces the switching power supplies of the Pi4 and the Qutest. The Pi4 is connected to the 3A output and Qutest to the 1A. All traces of harshness in the treble are gone and I am more inclined to turn the volume up rather than down. It has a full bass, delightful mids and very clear highs
For those looking to replace only the Qutest power supply, I tested with an alternate source and found similar improvements.
For those looking at a Pi setup, I am running a very much underclocked beta version of DietPi running NAA.
The Shanti appears to have quite thin DC cables, in contrast to those that would have been supplied by Ciunas Audio and they are hardwired, but does come equipped with power lead and a full selection of adapters.

Hey friend,your afterthought after living a few days with Shanti?Did it came to stay?I read Allo stating that their Supercaps need at least 2 days to burn in,showing a slight measurable decrease in harmonic distortion.

Thanks!

 

[uzi2]

Definitely staying put. Can't say I've noticed any further improvements - just continuing to enjoy the music.

 

[Jon L]

Placed the Qutest stock power supply back in after large overall system SQ improvement with 18650 battery supply (no regulation) for my SOtM USB card and spdif converter.
To my surprise, the stock PS sounds pretty darn good now. Once again, more upstream improvements seem to matter more. Perhaps Rob Watts is right than stock PS is good enough..

0703201007 by drjlo2, on Flickr