Regulated Linear Power Supply for UpTone Audio “UltraCap™ LPS-1

Our award winning fully regulated linear power supplies are in use globally and improve the sound of anything connected to them, proven by 100’s of existing customer feed backs. We have developed a new power supply to feed the up coming UpTone Audio “UltraCap™ LPS-1 which requires 7.5V DC input and 2.5 Amps. 

EVERY power supply we have sent for review in the UK hifi press has been awarded top marks, below are some of these reviews, all our designs are based on a 2 case supply with the smaller case housing the final regulation stages, see below for an explanation of the design from Nick Gorham the engineer responsible for these supplies.

When thinking of regulation, it’s worth remembering the Roman god Janus. Who was the god of gateways, and was a two faced god looking in both directions. Likewise a good voltage regulator is required to look in both directions at once. From one direction you have the mains supply, with the ever increasing noise, distortion and random variation that exists on our household mains supply. In the other direction you have the device you are supplying power to. The load will be asking constantly varying current, and the job of the regulator will be to ignore the varying load and to supply a rock steady voltage that ignores the changing load.

To ask a single regulator to perform both tasks means that it can not do either as well as it could. We don’t ask our regulators to be two faced, we split the two functions into two separate regulators and put them both where they can do the best job.

The first regulator is close to the mains supply, its job is to take the incoming mains and convert it into a low(ish) noise DC supply, and to isolate the mess that is our household power lines from what follows. In most power supplies on the market, the output of the first stage would be directly connected to the load device, and that would certainly be an improvement over the supplies that most manufactures provide. But we can do better by adding the other face of Janus to the system.

The second regulator is supplied with a clean low noise supply, and its job is to handle the changing demands of the load. To do that, it needs to be as close to the load as possible. So we remove the second regulator from the main box, and place it close to the load, both electrically and physically, that removes it from the noise and interference of the mains supply, and allows it to spend its time looking towards the load. Typical commercial voltage regulator chips are general purpose devices, but are not quiet enough for the task on hand, so the second regulator uses a bespoke regulator based on a low noise multi stage filtered voltage reference, a low noise error amplifier and a high current low resistance mosfet. To allow it to handle the changing load it also needs to supply current on demand, so all the remaining space in the second regulator is filled with low impedance capacitors to act as a local energy source.

Using the two stages of regulator, we achieve a noise floor equal or better than most battery supplies, and a effective source resistance of the order of 0.02 ohm (and the short cable run to the load avoids increasing this valve by adding copper where its not needed, and the use of a discrete regulator design allows that tiny value to be maintained way above frequency any audio device operates at.

Review 1

Review 2 

Some existing user comments….

Was sceptical about the effect of such power supply. But not any longer! It does make audible difference, especially with hi-res recordings. Tested it by listening to Band On The Run (official uncompressed WAV 24/96) and several Beatles records (copied from Apple USB stick: FLAC 24/44.1). All sound much better with the new power supply. Difference is less pronounced with CD quality recordings. Still, money well spent! Set up: Glyph Portagig 50 HDD to USB port of Squeezebox Touch using Wireworld Ultraviolet USB cable. Digital output from SBT to Cyrus DACX using Townshend digital interconnect. Analogue signal from DAC to NAD M3 with Townshend DCT 300 balanced XLR interconnects. With Townshend Isolda speaker cables to Monitor Audio GS60 speakers. DACX used with Cyrus PXR power supply. And of course MKII Linear Power Supply!

Mr Y. Andreev, UK.

Comment : I purchased one of these for my Beresford Bushmaster and have been consistently amazed at the sound the partnership of the DAC and this power supply makes through my system (Hornshoppe/Heil Horns; Hornshoppe Truth Pre-amp; Ampino Stereo Power Amp; BK XXLS400 Sub). The sounds are particularly filled with texture, non-fatiguing highs, tight lows and “present in the room” voices, both male and female. Highly recommended for anyone with a Bushmaster.

 REVIEWS