Intro
Contents
Plixir is now part of the establishment in the – sometimes quite conservative – audio industry. Plixir focuses solely on power products. Power supplies, power cables and … power conditioners. We take a look at and listen to the Plixir Elite BAC1000e. A filter that can peak up to 1000 watts!
Is a large, balanced toroidal transformer a filter? We can debate that. Plixir calls the Elite BAC a “balanced power conditioner. But is a “conditioner” a filter? Yes and no… but okay. We’ll talk about that later. First, a look at the BAC1000e.
Plixir Elite BAC1000e
Let’s start by reporting that the Elite BAC1000e is a heavy piece of equipment. We agree: it is a fairly compact box; but it is all metal AND under the hood lurks a particularly large toroidal transformer. This one is a fully balanced transformer, as it says in the description.
The BAC1000e can deliver 660 watts continuously and can handle peaks up to 1000 watts. Dutch Importer Audio Essence reports on its website that this filter can work with power amplifiers up to 50 watts class A and 150 watts class AB. On our Pass X150.8, we are pleasantly surprised, it still works fine. The Titan has a slightly different signature (slightly more open?), but we hear no compression. So that’s good news.
On the back of the BAC1000e we see four connections. These are not star-wired, but looped through from one socket to another. Keep that in mind, because potentially one device can thus contaminate the other again. We do find that a bit of an odd choice by Plixir to be honest.
Otherwise, the case looks very well cared for and the sockets have a tight grip on the plugs.
Balanced?
So what is a balanced transformer? We come to the following explanation.
“Balanced power transformers are designed with a center-tapped secondary winding consisting of two identical, mirrored secondary windings in series and an electrostatic shield. When the center branch is grounded, these two identical windings short-circuit the equal amplitude but the opposite noise current attenuates them to a high degree. Just like the low to mid frequency common mode noise. The amplitude of the grounding noise goes to zero.”
That’s basically what happens with a balanced XLR cable, too. It is an efficient way to eliminate noise. However, everything must therefore be made truly balanced. And just as with a symmetrical construction in an amplifier or input and output stage, a transformer must also be wound in a balanced way. And that often means twice the amount of wire.
Looks very similar to the old isotek Qube that use to have.
Well… Almost all filters are ‘cubes’. :-).