PPP - MultiWave & CleanWave

[Ryan Conway]

Originally Posted by jdandy

[B]Neither the MultiWave, or the CleanWave are explained to my satisfaction in the owner's manual. Why would my connected components benefit from extended peak charge time of the sine wave? It is suppose to be a perfect sine wave output, right? Why would I want to alter that?

Let’s start with Multiwave.

If you were to send back all of your amps, preamps, cd player, etc. we could improve the performance by reworking the power supply. One key ingredient to top performing power supplies are insane amounts of capacitance. So the first thing we would do is to add bigger and better capacitors to your power supplies in each device. Now, we know it is rather unlikely that you would be willing to send back all of your components and pay us to rework the power supply, so we have come up with a different solution.

We can improve the performance of the capacitors, power supply and ultimately each device by altering the charging characteristics. We do this by recreating a new AC sine like waveform with longer peak periods. This is accomplished by reshaping the waveform so that the frequency and voltage do not change. Here’s an image that illustrated the difference between a standard sinewave in blue vs. Multiwave in red:

I can go into a great deal more information on how this works with the capacitors, but here you have the basics.

[Ryan Conway]

Originally Posted by jdandy

The CleanWave funtion creates more confusion for me. What benefit will my components achieve from degaussing? Inductance in the power supply transformers immediately remagnitize the core, so what exactly is the point.

In any AC system, slight amounts of DC present on the line, as well as constant exposure to magnetic fields can slightly polarize or magnetize iron and steel based components in the power supply. Degaussing, or reducing the magnetic field in any device typically requires a changing magnetic field moving up and down in strength. Degaussing an AC power system requires a unique AC waveform to accomplish this. We’ve created a special waveform that is a pure sine wave with small amplitude 'bubbles' - changes in amplitude along the very sine wave itself - on a per cycle basis.

These slight changes in amplitude have a demagnetizing effect on any power equipment connected.

The changes provided by degaussing your system with Cleanwave are easily audible. The next time you have a long listening (or watching) session give it a try near the end and you should easily be able to discern the improvements from degaussing the power supplies and associated cables. Oh and a little trick for you guys – press the Cleanwave button twice and you will get a 60 second cleaning cycle instead of the 5 second one. Do this and let me know what you think.

Yes over time the magnet build up will likely return, but you can easily perform another cleanwave cycle.

[Ryan Conway]

Originally Posted by jdandy

One of my concerns with the MultiWave term, "extends peak charging time", is when this is done the sine wave takes on more of a square wave shape from the extended time at peak RMS. This causes me to be concerned about possible negative effects like heat generation in power supply transformer windings. Heat is the number one enemy of the dielectric properties of the coating on transformer windings. There is a safe operating temperature, but when exceeded the dielectric properties begin to lose insulation value. Simply cooling it down does not restore the lost value. I am worried that extended peak charge time of a sine wave may accelerate a power supply transformer failure. There is no audible benefit worth that to me.

We've tested Multiwave extensively and there is no additional heat created as a result of the increased peak charging time. We also have thousands upon thousands of customers using Multiwave with their Premier or their older Power Plants to absolutely no ill effect. Trust me, if we were to damage associated equipment we wouldn't be so highly regarded within the audio world.

[jdandy]

Ryan.......I appreciate your time and the MultiWave explanation. I understand the concept of lengthening the time at peak voltage while still maintaining an accurate 60 cycle swing, and can see how this may help lesser, or poorly designed power supplies deliver better performace. In the case of equipment with well designed power supplies that exceed the current or voltage demands of a circuit design, how does extending the peak charge time of a sine wave benefit this equipment? I realize I can simply choose not to use the MultiWave feature if I deem it unnecessary, but I am trying to understand why I would want to use it, especially with equipment that already incorporates well designed power supplies that far exceed circuit demands.

Also, thank you for the CleanWave explanation. I will give that feature a trial run to see if there are any audible improvements to be had from its function. Does PS Audio have a recommended time interval as a suggestion for how often CleanWave should be employed?

[j3brow]

Thanks Ryan, very informative. I too have been reluctant to play around with the Multiwave and cleanwave functions.

I am correct that it is OK to have a turntable motor (VPI) plugged into the PPP while running CleanWave as long as the motor is not actively spinning?

Thanks,


Jason

[PHC1]

I tried the 60 sec CleanWave feature, it does seem to remove a very thin veil, most prominent with the leading edge transients. A few tracks later, I would go back and listen and the effect seems to have vanished. I am not about to get obsessive with this.... A quick 5 sec CleanWave burst before each CD may be doable.

[Masterlu]

Myself, I'm a fan of MultiWave.

[PHC1]

MultiWave may actually be great for McIntosh amps. They don't have the huge capacitive storage of other amps. I can't seem to hear any difference in my system with MultiWave.

[Masterlu]

+1 for Mac amps.

[cougit25]

Originally Posted by cougit25

Funny, that's the way I feel about high end power cords, interconnects and speaker wire.

Just seeing if you guys were paying attention. I am a skeptic, but I'll be trying some cable swaps as soon as I can get a day off. I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go.