Puritan 156 review

The 5 year warranty in the UK is an extension of the standard 2 year warranty, and is offered to the original purchaser when they resister it with Naim. So for a second hand buyer you would get whatever remains of the regular 2 year warranty.

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I started quite a long thread about this on the old forum. It was called something like “Suffering from those transformer hum blues?”.
After trying several expensive and highly rated dc blockers (about £3k at the time), we found the BPS to be the only solution that worked for us. We had a 555PS, olive Supercap and 135s at the time, all of which hummed until the Airlink BPS went in. It blocked asymmetric waveforms (I.e. dc offset) and I used it to drop the input voltage from 242V to 229V, which stopped the last residual transformer hum.

It worked for us but may not for others.

It remains in our 10mm2 radial supply to this day.

Best regards, BF

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I’ve got the classic cable in athat moment which is soft. I look forward to hearing the ulimate cable. They do some other interesting products including ground unification system! And various other power strips.

And if you have lots of boxes the PSM1512. Maybe I should have got that. It takes 12 plugs!

I am playing my favourite test album War of the Worlds. The LP12 sounds so clear and very wide soundstage. Impressive! It’s really opening up now and sounds so different from a few days ago.

It’s brilliant that you’ve done all of that. I will remember it when I come to look at the mains in my listening room.

How do the Chord amps and Dac compare to your previous Naim system?

Hi Dan,
When we decided to switch to streaming from playing cds, we had a CDS3/555PSDR and this was the benchmark that any future streamer had to beat.

Turns out that this was a pretty high benchmark! Very few streamers bettered it to these cloth ears, even the NDS.

Here’s the thread that captured the journey:
Music streaming: it’s hard to find the right time

We found the Chord M Scaler & DAVE to be broadly equivalent to the ND555 with one supply but we preferred its strengths over the strengths of the ND555. Others have preferred the ND555 over the Chord pairing and we can appreciate why.

However, there was a colossal price difference in favour of the Chord pairing, even though we already had the 555PSDR.

Some have retorted that the ND555 with 2 power supplies is better and we don’t doubt this but that extra supply moves the ND555 squarely into MSB and DCS territory. We preferred both DCS and MSB at that price point. Others may hear it differently.

On amps, we adored the 52/135s for a number of years. It’s just a classic pairing. We didn’t want better sound but we did want fewer boxes, a trend that is now gathering serious pace.

We tried the Chord pairing and were shocked. With the then new Ultima range, Chord finally banished the boom & tizz for which it was known. The Ultima amps were faster, yes demonstrably faster, than our Naim pairing, had a much lower noise floor, substantially more grunt & grip when needed and didn’t possess a volume sweet spot. They just sound effortlessly the same regardless of volume.

To us, they sounded much more equivalent to a 552/500 pairing but without the volume sweet spot of the 552.

We still love the 52/135s though, as we do our DAC-V1 & NAP140 (returning tomorrow from Darran at Class A!) and our Mu-so Qb. We also have an all olive 72/hicap/140 and an all olive 82/SC/250 with NAT02 and CDX/XPS (all owned from new) in the family as well.

As for the S1 pre, well that really is something special, as Peter kindly demonstrated with his CD555, S1/500DR and PMC Fact12 system.

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Thanks for your reasons and experiences behind your wonderful system. Very interesting read.

Thanks BF – plenty of food for thought here for those of us who are hanging on to our CD555s by our finger nails, and have yet to entertain the S-word :grinning:

…and yes, Peter’s system is quite something.

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Hi Dan, out of curiosity did you establish that you had a DC offset problem? Did you get an electrician to test your mains or anything like that?
I get that trying gadgets like the Puritan, with the option to return them, is fair game, but I prefer to address known problems rather than undiagnosed problems.

Hi Chris,

No I didn’t get an electrician to test my electrics. The problem surfaced last week after my operation. So I ordered the Puritan 156. My power supplies always hummed but it became worse at certain points in the day. Being at home all day made me hear it more.

I have previously found that appliances such as fridges and washing machines have affected my system. My understanding is that LED lighting can also affect DC offset, as do dimmers.

Modern homes all have DC offset which is why our Naim toroidal transformers hum.

And now the fact that they are all quiet indicates a DC offset problem. You will find the source everywhere in the home.

So therefore there is no need for electrician to check my electrics.

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Have you tried turning off all the circuits at the consumer unit except for the HiFi circuit? That would show whether you have any issues caused by other appliances in your home. You may then be able to narrow it down to individual appliances, which may be electrically noisy due to poor design, or a fault.
Better in my view to correct any such problems at source, rather than (or as well as) attempting to apply fixes downstream and potentially much cheaper when you are not in the realms of exotic audiophile gear.
In my experience shutting down other appliances has tended to have little or no effect on humming Naim boxes, leading me to suspect that they are just noisy by design, or possibly that the incoming mains supply to your property could be the problem rather than any of your own electrical appliances.

At my place I have confirmed most noise come from outside my house and in. Industries, machines, factories etc. I’ve also noted charging my EV car affects products in my house. VW will send an update to reduce this but there are so much things that can create noise from outside your house today that is difficult protecting against except with products like Puritan 156.

Prior to getting the 156 I had best sound in the weekends. My conclusion is it was due to the above. My 156 has made the performance level much more even now so I no longer feel it sounds better or worse at a given time or day.

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The Puritan 156 is very good. I’ve heard it in several systems and it’s always been a nice improvement with no downsides. It’s even better with the Ultimate power cord and better still with the ground master. The difference is obvious. Then you can experiment with ground cables from the block to the ground master. Big difference. Good luck.

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Thanks, my issue almost certainly is that I live close to a large sub-station and so my input voltage is in the high 240s. I am pretty sure this would work as it would allow me to lower the voltage. I am not in the position to do this right now as lots of other more important work needed on the house; but I will at some point in the future I am sure. Thanks again.

I thought the ground master required a dedicated earth rod? Can it simply be plugged into the 156 then with cables then going to each device?

You can use a ground wire with the ground master city which you plug in an electrical outlet. It’s for chassis ground IIUC. For signal ground they have the route master and ground master.

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Vertical mounting kit and Ultimate cable just arrived. Mounting kit installed. Cable installed. Cable needs to burn in now. Hopefully @Blackbird is right and cable yields improvements.

Very happy with Puritan 156. Great kit, no transformer hum. Problem solved as it were!

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Glad it has worked out for you, and very informative review. Looked at a few reviews, and the product gets good reviews, internals look well built.
I do not need at present, but well worth knowing about.

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It’s worked very well and I am not missing the Musicworks block, which is excellent.

If you don’t need it, then don’t get it. As soon as my power supplies were humming a few weeks ago this was my go to solution from gaining knowledge from those on this forum.

Let’s see how good the ultimate cable is!

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Whenever I glance at this thread title, I always think, ‘Oh, there’s a new Alfa.’ :wink:

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