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ifi Zen Blue V1 ( 5V power supply)

malakipaa

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Hello,

My first post here. Any help would be appreciated.

I have this DAC and I experimented to use an aftermarket switching 5V power supply (Not linear) but I added filter capacitors in the end cable output to stabilize the 5V.

Here's my question. Since this power supply is high current the output is actually 5.5V. Would this hurt or damage the zen blue dac?

The good part is that using this power supply with extra filter caps makes soundstage better and the bass notes having more bites that I really like

Thanks for any help.
 

Doodski

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Hello,

My first post here. Any help would be appreciated.

I have this DAC and I experimented to use an aftermarket switching 5V power supply (Not linear) but I added filter capacitors in the end cable output to stabilize the 5V.

Here's my question. Since this power supply is high current the output is actually 5.5V. Would this hurt or damage the zen blue dac?

The good part is that using this power supply with extra filter caps makes soundstage better and the bass notes having more bites that I really like

Thanks for any help.
Where exactly did you put these added filter caps? Generally speaking the final output smoothing caps in a pulse width modulation or switch mode power supply output are calculated for high frequency operation smoothing. High frequency in the order of maybe 50kHz to upwards of 100's of kHz. By adding extra caps you may modify the circuitry and cause the control IC to have to deal with circuitry parameters that are not good.
 

FrantzM

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Hello,

My first post here. Any help would be appreciated.

I have this DAC and I experimented to use an aftermarket switching 5V power supply (Not linear) but I added filter capacitors in the end cable output to stabilize the 5V.

Here's my question. Since this power supply is high current the output is actually 5.5V. Would this hurt or damage the zen blue dac?

The good part is that using this power supply with extra filter caps makes soundstage better and the bass notes having more bites that I really like

Thanks for any help.
@malakipaa

Welcome to ASR. If you stay you will enjoy more music, better, more accurate audio reproduction and spend waaay less.
Please take the time to visit the forum, the threads and read as many posts as you can. Digest these. Adding caps to a power supply doesn't "open up" the soundstage or add weight or more "bites" to the bass...It often does absolutely nothing.. Our mind however wants to find differences and eventually, we create these, we hear these, sort of ... Read a bit about the placebo effect. We are not bursting your bubble, many of us come with this kind of observations, only to realize that ...these ain't true.
Same with linear power supplies and so many, too many tweaks. There are however more clear, objective, repeatable, measurable ways to make your system better. You will learn those here.
Please stay if you're serious.

Peace
 

wwenze

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Ironically, the website that teaches you technical knowledge is also one that teaches you technical knowledge.

That being said, on the topic of caps, I believe in load-side capacitors because after all, computer motherboards have them, so why not. Heck, there are even in-cable capacitors and they work, altho IMO they are kind of redundant with capacitors on the load and to me only exist to cheat in measurement reviews altho the majority of the industry doesn't agree.

Back onto topic of 5.5V, +10% is usually within the design margin so I wouldn't be worried. The current of the power supply has nothing to do with the voltage tho, else those computer PSUs with 30A +5V would have caused a lot of things to explode. There is probably some other things to consider but the simple answer is, your power supply isn't putting out what it is supposed to, period.

As for whether that additional capacitance actually helps with bass, ultimately "lack of bass" is caused by unequal amount of voltage reaching the load vs varying frequency. This in turn depends on the impedances of the entire current path, from the AC socket to the load and to the ground and back to AC socket. The lower the impedance the less voltage lost. A parallel capacitor helps to reduce supply impedance seen at the frequencies at which the capacitor has low impedance. However at the same time, because your DAC/preamp/whatever is essentially an active device called a function generator or an op-amp, it will present a high load impedance as seen by the AC mains and a low output impedance as seen by the load.

Or in other words, that whole above paragraph is saying is, it doesn't matter and you can easily test that it doesn't matter.
 
OP
M

malakipaa

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Where exactly did you put these added filter caps? Generally speaking the final output smoothing caps in a pulse width modulation or switch mode power supply output are calculated for high frequency operation smoothing. High frequency in the order of maybe 50kHz to upwards of 100's of kHz. By adding extra caps you may modify the circuitry and cause the control IC to have to deal with circuitry parameters that are not good.
Doodski,

Thank you for this info. This is good
 
OP
M

malakipaa

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Joined
Jul 16, 2022
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@malakipaa

Welcome to ASR. If you stay you will enjoy more music, better, more accurate audio reproduction and spend waaay less.
Please take the time to visit the forum, the threads and read as many posts as you can. Digest these. Adding caps to a power supply doesn't "open up" the soundstage or add weight or more "bites" to the bass...It often does absolutely nothing.. Our mind however wants to find differences and eventually, we create these, we hear these, sort of ... Read a bit about the placebo effect. We are not bursting your bubble, many of us come with this kind of observations, only to realize that ...these ain't true.
Same with linear power supplies and so many, too many tweaks. There are however more clear, objective, repeatable, measurable ways to make your system better. You will learn those here.
Please stay if you're serious.

Peace
FrantzM,

This conclude my suspicion that what I was hearing wad just placebo.Ty
 
Last edited:

Doodski

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Doodski,

Thank you for this info. This is good
You may disregard that info. :D I was overdoing the analysis and misread that you, "Added filter capacitors in the end cable output" and so I made commentary that was not appropriate for the question. In the meanwhile I made coffee and am more alert...lol. But yeah, switching power supplies do operate at high frequencies above the hearing range. That's what makes them so great.
 
OP
M

malakipaa

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Joined
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Ironically, the website that teaches you technical knowledge is also one that teaches you technical knowledge.

That being said, on the topic of caps, I believe in load-side capacitors because after all, computer motherboards have them, so why not. Heck, there are even in-cable capacitors and they work, altho IMO they are kind of redundant with capacitors on the load and to me only exist to cheat in measurement reviews altho the majority of the industry doesn't agree.

Back onto topic of 5.5V, +10% is usually within the design margin so I wouldn't be worried. The current of the power supply has nothing to do with the voltage tho, else those computer PSUs with 30A +5V would have caused a lot of things to explode. There is probably some other things to consider but the simple answer is, your power supply isn't putting out what it is supposed to, period.

As for whether that additional capacitance actually helps with bass, ultimately "lack of bass" is caused by unequal amount of voltage reaching the load vs varying frequency. This in turn depends on the impedances of the entire current path, from the AC socket to the load and to the ground and back to AC socket. The lower the impedance the less voltage lost. A parallel capacitor helps to reduce supply impedance seen at the frequencies at which the capacitor has low impedance. However at the same time, because your DAC/preamp/whatever is essentially an active device called a function generator or an op-amp, it will present a high load impedance as seen by the AC mains and a low output impedance as seen by the load.

Or in other words, that whole above paragraph is saying is, it doesn't matter and you can easily test that it doesn't matter.
wwenze,

Didnt realize there's a lot to think about. Thank you for these info. I have so much more to learn.
 
OP
M

malakipaa

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You may disregard that info. :D I was overdoing the analysis and misread that you, "Added filter capacitors in the end cable output" and so I made commentary that was not appropriate for the question. In the meanwhile I made coffee and am more alert...lol. But yeah, switching power supplies do operate at high frequencies above the hearing range. That's what makes them so great.
Doodski,

:D the info I got from you guys cleared up the confusions I have.
 

DVDdoug

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The voltage should be (approximately) constant but I'm not worried about 10% over. The power supply just has to be capable of supplying the required current.

Current (Amps or milliamps) "flows' and it depends on the voltage and the resistance of the load. Resistance is "the resistance to current flow". (We don't know the "resistance" of the DAC but there's probably a current rating so we could calculate it.)

Here's something I just wrote in another thread in another context (wall power) -
f nothing is plugged-in the voltage is there but no current flows. In the U.S (120V "nominal") A 100W light bub takes a little less than 1A. A 1500W toaster is about 12.5A and if you plug-in two toasters you draw excess current, the circuit breaker blows and voltage drops to zero.

The extra capacitors shouldn't hurt but with a good power supply they won't change anything.

switching 5V power supply (Not linear)
A power supply simply has to put-out the necessary voltage(s) at adequate current. As long as it does its job, what's inside the power supply doesn't affect the sound...

There are "engineering advantages" to a switching supply -
It's more energy efficient which means less power is wasted as heat by the power supply itself. Lower internal power also means you can use cheaper lower-power transistors or MOSFETs* and sometimes you don't need a heatsink, so once you get over 1Amp or so, a switching power supply is usually cheaper to make.** The transformer operates at a much higher frequency than 50 or 60Hz power line frequency and that allows you to use a smaller, lighter, and cheaper transformer. The higher frequency is also easier to filter-out than 50/60Hz power line hum (you can use a lower uF filter capacitors) plus the switching frequency is normally above the audible range so you can't hear it if it does leak-into the audio..***

* A basic unregulated linear supply doesn't need transistors or MOSFETs and it can be efficient. (Unregulated means that it the AC voltage goes-up 10% the output voltage goes-up 10%, and the output voltage will drop with more load current.)

** Switching power supplies are super complicated but most of that complexity is built-into a relatively-cheap chip. It's the availability of these specialized chips that's made switching supplies more affordable than "older" linear power supplies.

*** The USB power from a computer usually contains lots of noise at all different frequencies from all of the signals inside the computer. Digital is immune to this but sometimes this noise does get into the analog part of an (USB powered) audio interface and it's heard as "whine". It's more often a problem with mic inputs (where the signal and noise are amplified) and more-rarely a problem with the line-level output.
 

LTig

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But yeah, switching power supplies do operate at high frequencies above the hearing range. That's what makes them so great.
... plus the fact that they don't need big caps as reservoirs in the first place since they can deliver tons of current exactly when needed. Only linear power supplies need big caps because they can refill them only every 10 ms (mains at 50 Hz).
 

Timstunes

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Looking for opinions about Digishuo psu for Aiyima 07.
Specifically:

 
OP
M

malakipaa

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The voltage should be (approximately) constant but I'm not worried about 10% over. The power supply just has to be capable of supplying the required current.

Current (Amps or milliamps) "flows' and it depends on the voltage and the resistance of the load. Resistance is "the resistance to current flow". (We don't know the "resistance" of the DAC but there's probably a current rating so we could calculate it.)

Here's something I just wrote in another thread in another context (wall power) -


The extra capacitors shouldn't hurt but with a good power supply they won't change anything.


A power supply simply has to put-out the necessary voltage(s) at adequate current. As long as it does its job, what's inside the power supply doesn't affect the sound...

There are "engineering advantages" to a switching supply -
It's more energy efficient which means less power is wasted as heat by the power supply itself. Lower internal power also means you can use cheaper lower-power transistors or MOSFETs* and sometimes you don't need a heatsink, so once you get over 1Amp or so, a switching power supply is usually cheaper to make.** The transformer operates at a much higher frequency than 50 or 60Hz power line frequency and that allows you to use a smaller, lighter, and cheaper transformer. The higher frequency is also easier to filter-out than 50/60Hz power line hum (you can use a lower uF filter capacitors) plus the switching frequency is normally above the audible range so you can't hear it if it does leak-into the audio..***

* A basic unregulated linear supply doesn't need transistors or MOSFETs and it can be efficient. (Unregulated means that it the AC voltage goes-up 10% the output voltage goes-up 10%, and the output voltage will drop with more load current.)

** Switching power supplies are super complicated but most of that complexity is built-into a relatively-cheap chip. It's the availability of these specialized chips that's made switching supplies more affordable than "older" linear power supplies.

*** The USB power from a computer usually contains lots of noise at all different frequencies from all of the signals inside the computer. Digital is immune to this but sometimes this noise does get into the analog part of an (USB powered) audio interface and it's heard as "whine". It's more often a problem with mic inputs (where the signal and noise are amplified) and more-rarely a problem with the line-level output.

My reply is late but this is awesome!
 
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