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  Power Products > P500 Power Plant P500 More Info Starting at just $2,195.00!  In the late 1990’s power conditioning and surge protection was in its infancy with a smattering of products attempting to address the issues of clean AC power.Not until PS Audio introduced the Power Plant, the world’s first and only AC regenerator for audio and video, did this market begin to bloom. And bloom it has, with many different companies vying for people’s attention. To date, no other company has tried building a true AC regenerator like the Power Plant and PS remains the only company committed to actually rebuilding the AC power from the ground up. Fortunately for our collective industry, and thanks to the thousands of Power Plants successfully powering the world’s finest audio and video systems, the AV community now recognizes the real advantages of clean, regulated and regenerated power for their systems. We’ve learned a lot In the years following the release of the P300 Power Plant, PS engineering has learned a lot about the art of building a high end AC regenerator. And, we’ve listened intently to our customer’s requests for a more user friendly package with more power and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to power an entire AV system with just one piece of equipment.  Important too would be the ability to customize the product for individual system requirements, thus making each Power Plant able to “figure out” the specific power requirements for a group of products and provide the appropriate power solution for the system. Oh, and it also has to be rack or shelf mountable to boot. Introducing the P500 Two years of design and engineering effort have been lavished on our new generation of Power Plants. The P500, followed soon by the new P1000, represents our latest thinking in the art of AC power regeneration and system performance. The P500 Power Plant is capable of producing between 250 and 300 watts of pure regulated AC power all day long, and up to 500 watts of power for medium durations (music power), allowing many power amplifiers and some smaller projectors, CRT’s and plasmas to be connected and play. In addition to the 500 watt AC regenerator, the P500 comes equipped with a built in High Current Ultimate Outlet capable of providing up to 1800 watts of clean power for larger applications. The P500 is housed in our elegant and rack mountable “Frame Chassis” which utilizes our innovative and quiet internal forced air tunnel heat sink arrangement. One of the most interesting features of the new P500 is its choice of 5 new MultiWave II™ patterns, single Hertz frequency selection, TubeWave™ and most revolutionary of all, AutoWave which automatically adjust the P500’s output AC waveform to match the specific load – in real time! A brief explanation of regenerated power What comes out of your home’s AC wall socket is supposed to be a steady, pure sinewave voltage, free of noise and harmonics. Unfortunately, no one in any country actually receives this.  In fact, what you get out of the wall is noisy power, full of unwanted harmonics and varying in voltage from as low as 105 to as high as 130 depending on where you live and the time of day.In any case, you can be certain that what comes out of the wall is neither clean, regulated, nor pure. How does this affect your audio video system? Noise and harmonics will increase the noise floor of an audio system and cause the setup to have a bright and hard glare associated with each musical note. With video, the noise can reduce three dimensionality of the picture and lower apparent color saturation. Low and fluctuating voltage levels out of the wall will reduce a power amplifiers total output capability and decrease the brightness of projectors, CRT’s and plasmas in a video setup. For those technically inclined, there’s a great article by Lynn Olson on why audio systems sound different and the effects of power on sound as well http://www.aloha-audio.com/library/FindingCG.html. Perhaps worse is the lack of regulation in your home. Even if your power company could provide rock solid voltages to your home (which they typically don't) your relatively small gauge house wiring alone will cause voltage swings of up to 10% when your power amplifier or video system draws high power, thus reducing the unit’s performance. A true AC regenerator takes the AC power out of the wall, converts it to DC voltage (like a battery), then re-manufactures perfectly clean, harmonic and noise free AC that you can then use to power your equipment. PS Audio’s Power Plants are the only true AC regenerators in the world and are designed specifically for the AV industry to provide some of the lowest noise, cleanest power on the planet. If you’re interested in “the real deal” this is it. Other schemes such as motorized variacs and LC filtering can neither respond to dynamic changes such as those presented by music or video, or are limited in what they can produce in terms of alternate waveforms. The P500 is a labor of love  Building a beautiful new Power Plant that is small in size, is cooler to the touch even with heavy loads, provides enough power and protection for an entire system and is smart enough to produce instantaneous custom waveforms - perfect for your system’s unique needs - was a bit of a challenge, to say the least! To meet these design requirements, PS engineering redesigned this new Power Plant from the ground up. New to this model:
An accurate power meter Creating an accurate power meter is no simple task! In the original Power Plant series the watt meter  on the front panel represented the simplest expression of power we were able to calculate at the time of their design. Basically, we measured the current and the voltage and then multiplied the two together to give you a close approximation of the wattage produced by the Power Plant. This method is accurate only for very simple loads like a light bulb. More complex loads like power amplifiers and preamplifiers were not accurately measured. To accurately measure the true power required by a group of equipment, you need to perform a lot of very complex math operations using double delta sigma processors and a whole bunch of computations. The new power meter in the P500 leaps forward with a better than 10% accurate metering circuit that continually measures power and then displays either in watts, or the percentage of power the P500 has left to provide. You can also read and adjust the output voltage of the P500 from the meter and front panel control systems. Balanced power All Power Plants have balanced power on their outputs. Balanced power is essential to achieving the very best of sonics and visuals. What comes out of your home's wall socket is unbalanced power. This means there is a hot and a nuetral: where the 'hot' side of the AC plug has the 120 volts and the 'nuetral' side of the plug is the return with no voltage. In a balanced power system, both legs are 'hot' and each leg out of phase with the other. The advantages of balanced power are many and include lower noise, less hum, lower harmonic distortion. At the end of the day, much better performance. Don't be fooled: no power conmditioner on the market today produces balanced AC. There are some line isolation transformers that produce balanced power put they are not regulated and they do not correct for waveform distortion like a true regenerator. There are some correction devices but they do not produce balanced power either. Onl  y a true power regenerator like the Power Plant can produce pure, regulated and balanced AC power, with your choice of any waveform or frequency.Built in Ultimate Outlet and improved surge protection If we’ve been asked once, we’ve been asked 100 times to put an Ultimate Outlet inside a Power Plant and make it available to folks so they can power their entire system, should the Power Plant not have enough power. Well, we did it. The P500 sports a heavy duty High Current UO capable of easily delivering a couple thousand watts of power. The Ultimate outlet’s cleaned power is available on a separate Power Port mounted on the P500’s rear panel. You can use the UO’s output to power virtually any sized amplifier or projector and be assured of clean well protected power going to your equipment. While no surge or transient is able to get through the “brick wall” of the Power Plant AC regenerator, we needed to provide absolutely bulletproof protection for both the regenerator itself and the Ultimate Outlet and anything connected to the Ultimate Outlet. Featured inside the P500 is a new level of surge protection currently found on all of our Ultimate Outlets of late. The first stage of surge and spike protection is provided by six 1.5kv Tranzorbers that together provide up to 9000kv of surge protection. As a secondary measure, we also use four 10,000 amp MOV’s! In the unlikely event that a surge comes along that’s big enough to overpower the Tranzorbers, a small protection fuse opens up and a power relay disconnects both the P500 and everything connected to any of the outputs on the back of the P500. Replace the small fuse and you’re back in business, your equipment is safe. The P500 and everything connected to it will be 100% protected from any transient or surge event possible. Twice the output devices and power supply To produce the 500 watts available in the AC regenerator section of the P500 it was necessary to double  the number of output devices found in the P300 and more than double the power supply reserves.Inside the P500 is a huge toroidal transformer that cleanly and quietly produces the 1000 watts needed to efficiently power the P500. Increased energy storage was also required to provide enough power to the internal regeneration power amplifiers and maintain the low output impedance and exceptional voltage regulation provided by the P500. The PS Audio P500 will regulate the output voltage to within 1/10th of a volt from idle to full output current. Try that with a power conditioner! Isn’t going to happen. Unique forced air computer controlled heat reduction system Another challenge the engineering folks at PS Audio faced was our desire to have no external heatsinks, convenient and practical to rack mount or shelf-mount the P500 and to keep the unit from ever getting too hot to the touch, a problem sometimes found on a P300 Power Plant if pushed too hard. Power Plants are basically high powered class AB power amplifiers, just like the one you probably have powering your stereo system. Producing all this power generates a lot of heat and heat management is an issue with any modern Class AB power amplifier To accomplish this task we built an internal tunnel heatsink. A tunnel heat sink is simply an enclosed set of aluminum heat fins and a fan to blow air over them. The trick is to keep the tunnel air movement adjustable and in synch with the temperature of the heatsink. Our engineers placed thermal sensing devices along the heatsink and connected them to a microprocessor that precisely controls a whisper fan located inside the P500. The fan speed is controlled by the processor to keep an even temperature and, by selecting the right fan, we have been able to build a Power Plant that is significantly quieter than any fan cooled equipment we are familiar with. A new servo system! Perhaps one of the most important and beneficial features of the P500 is its built in servo system. This servo system is added to any Power Plant as soon as you upgrade to MW II and is a standard feature of the P500 Power Plant. The new servo system offers a major improvement in distortion generated within your equipment’s power transformer and even plugging the equipment directly into the wall socket. This is accomplished through a new servo control circuit that provides a super-symetrical balance between the two phases of power coming out of your Power Plant. Even your home's AC can, and frequently does, upset the symmetry of your equipment's power supply resulting in mechanical hum you can hear inside the equipment as well as increased distortion products. This unbalancing of the AC is caused by a small amount of DC voltage present on the line. Most of our home’s AC has this small component of DC on the AC. This small amount of DC can  cause your equipment’s transformer to hum and generate unwanted distortion products, even clipping if the DC component is large enough. Any level of DC causes the transformer to produce an asymmetrical charging current which can “clip” the transformer, much like a power amplifier putting out too much wattage, causing increased harmonic distortion and mechanical vibrations in the transformer, which you hear as hum. Power Plants have been used successfully to eliminate these common DC problems on your homes AC line, but in some cases, even Power Plants themselves have contributed a bit of unbalanced AC as well. To solve this problem, the P500 includes a new servo controlled circuit that virtually eliminates the imbalance and reduces the DC to less than 0.01 volts! Your wall socket can easily have 10 to 20 times this amount. This is a major improvement over both your home’s wall socket as well as the original Power Plants with or without MultiWave installed. New MultiWave II™ patterns Perhaps the second most exciting aspect of the P500 is the introduction of MultiWave II, TubeWave and AutoWave. MutliWave II and TubeWave are now available as an upgrade for all Power Plant owners. AutoWave is a feature exclusive to both the P500 and P1000 Power Plants. MultiWave II is the next generation of power delivery waveforms. What comes out of your wall socket AC  receptacle is a sinewave. A sinewave moves from plus to minus and back again once every 60th of a second in North America and once every 50th of a second in many parts of the world.This alternating current is what powers virtually every home in the world and while it does a good job of keeping our equipment running, there is a better way available to us if we can generate our own power. Every Power Plant owner in the world has the ability to generate their own power and MultiWave is, in many cases, better than the standard “missionary positioned” sinewaves. MultiWave II is a significant improvement over even the original MultiWave patterns that so changed the AV world’s thinking on power. Based on the same principals of increased peak charging times, the new MultiWave II improves dramatically on the quasi random nature of MultiWave I. MultiWave II, designed by our VP of engineering Bob Stadtherr, is a significant advance in the art of power delivery. In Bob’s words: “The new MultiWave patterns use a random sequence of frequencies. This can have the effect of spreading out any artifacts caused by the power line frequencies. IM (intermodulation) products related to the power line should be spread over a wider range, thus reduced in amplitude. The partial square waveforms have a “softer” top, which delivers current to filter capacitors over a longer time period, thus reducing the peak current. Lower peak current means less noise coupling, more efficiency, and a higher power factor.”  Random is the key. What Bob discovered in his research is that MultiWave I patterns were too predictable in their sequence and by randomizing the patterns, we were able to create 4 new MultiWave II patterns that just annihilate the old MultiWave I performance benefits. MultiWave II ,TubeWave and AutoWave are major performance increases over both sinewaves as well as MultiWave I. TubeWave™ is a special waveform that is specifically designed for any tube circuit or solid state equipment you want to take on a tubelike sound. In the past, we have cautioned folks about the use of some MultiWaves with tube circuits. This is because some tube circuits have fans which need a relatively constant frequency sinewave to operate properly. Further, other tube circuits had to have their bias reset when run on some MultiWaves. With PS Audio's unique TubeWave, you can use it to power any tube circuit from tubed D to A processors, to tube preamplifiers, power amplifers and so on. Even those with fans are fine as well. TubeWave uses a pure low distortion sinewave and selects up to 10 different frequencies that it 'dithers' around in a random fashion, with frequencies varying in a narrow band between 60Hz and 70Hz. Unique is the limited bandwidth of the frequency movement and the way it moves from frequency to frequency. Completely safe for all tube circuits, now you can use a MultiWave on your tube equipment with no worries, even those with fans. Even solid state equipment can benefit from TubeWave. TubeWave will add a roundness to solid state equipment, with a big open soundstage that you probably have never heard your equipment produce before. AutoWave  A dream of ours sine the inception of the Power Plant has been to precisely measure the load presented by a person’s equipment and then generate a new set of waveforms that exactly match the requirements of the load. Almost “Buck Rogers” in concept, the execution of this amazing new technology required a lot of fancy footwork along with the development of the new PS power meter to make it a reality. The problem in power systems is their static nature. Sure, you can select a frequency or a particular MultiWave pattern that best suits the system configuration. But, what happens when you start playing music or video? Everything changes as the power demands go up and down. So, the dream has been to design a dynamic system that measures the changing load in real time, creates the appropriate waveforms that best suit the instantaneous needs of your equipment and thereby dramatically improve the performance of your audio or video system “on the fly”. This is heady and revolutionary stuff that basically leaves all the competitors that have sprung to life after the introduction of the Power Plant in the proverbial dust. Why? Because only a true AC regenerator has the ability to produce any waveform our wild eyed designers dream up, and the Power Plants are the only AV regenerators in the world. Now that AutoWave has  been released, PS Audio once again sets the power market on its ear (to make a pun) and leaves the pack to figure out how they are going to respond.AutoWave chooses its own waveform AutoWave will select one of the 4 new MultiWave II patterns that best suit the instantaneous needs of your equipment. When your system is at rest, the AutoWave computer will produce a pure random sinewave pattern based on the power factor it reads. When you start to play a movie or an audio track the AutoWave calculator figures out the phase angle of the power being consumed thus calculating the cumulative power factor of the load, the amount of current and then instantly selects the best pattern to supply the energy. You can hear and see the improvements immediately. Click the front panel of the P500 to “Auto” and let the fun begin! We doubt you’ve ever heard or seen anything like this before. System Clean Our newest feature in Power Plants is System Clean. System Clean sweeps the system clean and renews the audio system for peak performance every time you press the button. System Clean has two modes: a 30 second thorough cleaning mode and a short burst mode. The two modes sweep a set of frequency modulated sinewaves through the entire range of 50Hz to 120Hz and then back again in a gentle cleansing routine for anything connected to it. Before you begin listening to your system, press System Clean (one of the modes) and let the Power Plant cleanse your system. If you're doing serious listening, use the short burst mode between CD's or vinyl to referesh the system between plays. You will notice fuller midbass, less harshness and an ease of presentation that can only happen once the system is 'purged' of its AC problems. System Clean is available as standard on all Power Plants produced after March 2005. If you have an older Power Plant, you can upgrade to include the System Clean feature by purchasing the Plus upgrade of MultiWave II. Click here for further details. Finer adjustments of the sinewave We haven’t left out the original sinewaves, first introduced to the world in the original Power Plants. Every Power Plant has always had the ability for the user to choose a frequency that best suits his systems needs, or perhaps used as a motor controller for an AC synchronous turntable. Why would you want to change the frequency from the traditional 50 or 60Hz every person on the planet is stuck with? Simple: 60Hz may be a convenient frequency for your power company to deliver power to your home, but 60 or 50 Hz definitely is not the optimal frequency to run most equipment if we place performance foremost in our mind set. In fact, most power transformers have lower levels of radiated magnetic fields at higher frequencies. Power supply capacitors make smoother voltages when operated at higher frequencies and so forth. The new P500 Power Plant offers its owners an increased level of fine adjustment of these frequencies. Now, Power Plant owners can adjust the frequency of the Power Plant in 0.0625 Hz steps from 50 Hz all the way to 120 Hz.  Finer control offers the user a greater possibility of maximizing his individual system’s performance. The complete system We are very excited and very proud to offer the P500, the first in a new line of Power Plants from PS. With 500 watts of pure, clean, regulated, safe power available to your equipment – an 1800 watt High Current Ultimate Outlet included, plus MW II, TubeWave and AutoWave, the P500 is perhaps the best power device in the world today, certainly the cleanest and most sophisticated. Does it replace the P300? Certainly not! The venerable P300 remains in the product lineup as one of the most loved power products on the planet. But, the big news is the P500 Easy to use, rack or shelf mountable, the P500 handles everything you throw at it and simply leaves those that don’t have one scratching their heads to figure out a way to get one. Finally a pure Power Plant that handles the entire system. If you're running anything else, you're losing out. Contact your local PS dealer or PS Audio for an audition. PS, setting the pace for the power industry with apologies to our fellow manufacturers.
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