I’m not sure this is the right forum but here goes I want to upgrade the power supply for my Hugo TT2… My choices are Sbooster, Teddy Pardo, MCRU . Does any one have experience or an educated opinion on these?
I have an MCRU on my Mscaler and on my TT2. Noticeable improvement on the tt2 but less do on mscaler
MCRU power supplies are very good and somewhat impossible to beat for the money. I’ve not paired them with a Chord product but as you ask for experience, the MCRU I put on my Ifi Zen Stream and another on my turntable were very worthwhile. Doesn’t hurt that you can select the colour and trim to match your existing gear.
i used MCRU on a qutest with good results and an sbooster on an innuos and now roon nucleus with good results too, so either of them get my recommendation.
About to travel this route myself. For the headphone set up.
Dealer had the Plixir range on display at Suffolk Audio Show.
There is a double header for tt2 and scaler.
Use the doubleheader for Uptone etheregen and the Melco D100 ripper
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Anyone have any experience with a Teddy Pardo power supply with Chord ?
Deleted, please remove.
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So I’ve read but it still sounds better with a proper power supply
I’ve used Teddy Pardo on several phono stage preamps with very good results, don’t see why it would be any different with Chord products. I have a Stack Audio Volt on my Qutest and another one on my HQPlayer and both do a very good job. I would recommend taking a look at the Stack Audio Volt 15V-4A for TT/MScaler, the build quality alone is amazing for the price point, maybe at any price.
The question I ask myself when considering power supplies from other manufacturers is if a product could be improved by adding a power supply (as Naim have marketed for many years), why would chord not make said power supply and make some more money?
I can only ever come up with one answer to this question.
.sjb
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Some manufacturers do, some don’t, there are way too many variables to that question and no single answer IMO. End of the day it’s what you hear that really matters, design philosophies are just that.
Be it English Electric by Chord, Uptone Etheregen, Chord TT2…they all discourage using linear ps on their products, saying their products will not be bettered. But a lot of people have tried and discovered how effective it was.
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You should definitely look at sean jacobs power supplies. I have one on TT2 and I would recommend
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Indeed. There are a couple things at play here.
The rectification stage invariably leaves some 50/60Hz ripple on the DC, even if minor, after the first stage capacitors. I believe Chord use their “super capacitors” like batteries but they still connect to an AC power source. Not second guessing engineers that know their priduct better than we do, I’ll assume noise ripple is non existent in their implementation, as unlikely as it seems.
The second factor is noise introduced to the unit as a whole, not just in the DC feed post super caps. Having measured the output of some lower cost power supplies with an oscillascope, there is significant switching noise and irregular spikes well below the RF band. Then there’s whatever RF noise might be present too. If the super cap/battery eliminates that, that is after that noise has entered the chassis. It might not be on the DC feed any longer but it will likely be polluting the ground plane or being picked up by analogue stages.
The latter issue is harder to mitigate without a quality power supply. That doesn’t necessarily mean linear. There are high performance SMPS out there. Chord and Linn both use such things in their high end products. At the high end, a top quality SMPS has as much chance of performing as good as a high end LPS. Where LPS perform far far better is generally at the low end. A cheap LPS will tend to outperform a cheap SMPS by a very wide margin.
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Most testified how much a Sean Jacobs linear ps improved the Chord dacs, be it Hugo tt or Dave. I never found someone saying it was worth than the stock SMPS. Even if Chord SMPS are already well performing.
@frenchrooster The Sean Jacobs PS are ridiculously expensive, at least in the USA. More expensive than my TT2 ! I’ve narrowed it down to MCRU, W4S (wired for sound) Teddy Pardo
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In all honesty, I’d forget aftermarket power supplies on a TT2 .
You may be much better off to either trade your TT2 for DAVE or buy an M Scaler. Personally, I’d buy the M Scaler first.
Hope this helps, BF
Sean Jacobs makes upgrades for the Dave, with a top notch linear ps. Some have commented at how better it sounds after……
But as you and we know all, there’s never an end. We have to stop somewhere.
I agree. I have a TT2 and an MScaler with the standard power supplies. I could never bring myself to spend more on a different power supply, but that doesn’t mean I am not curious to try them.
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