Intro
Contents
There it is… The Puritan PSM 156 power conditioner. We’ve had quite a few review requests for this conditioner. Audiobtq was kind enough to send us a unit. Along with the Ultimate power cord.
Puritan is a British audio company that focuses entirely on power conditioning. We do like specialized companies. There are already plenty of brands trying to offer a complete system: from amplifier to dac to cables. Only a handful manage to do that successfully. And that’s not surprising: they are all different disciplines. Designing a power conditioner is a completely different game than designing a d/a converter or loudspeaker.
Puritan PSM 156
The Puritan PSM 156 (1740 Euro) is a conditioner with six outputs. All incoming power is neatly handled (filtering common mode, differential mode ánd fixing DC offset) and all ground points of the six outputs also meet at one point. The ground is also filtered.
With that, Puritan offers a pretty complete package for 1740 Euro. Many conditioners in that class handle common mode and differential mode noise, but not DC offset. Puritan does it all. And that’s impressive.
The six outputs are also individually filtered. This is to prevent mutual contamination. How effective that is, you will see later in the measurements.
Puritan made everything in a neat, black, sturdy box. It is still quite compact for a filter with six outputs. That certainly makes it a convenient solution for people with less space.
Ultimate Power Cord
We also got an Ultimate Power Cord with the Puritan. This one costs 744 Euros for 2 meters. We don’t know very much about the power cord except what we can read in this PDF from Puritan. In summary: 12AWG copper conductors, silecon insulation. Each bundle is treated so there is minimal interference.
Slightly off topic, but has anyone had any burning in experience? After nearly 17 months my listening room is finally done. All my new products such as Furutech Rhodium forks, Rhodium plugs and Synergistic research are ca 60 hours on burn in. Everything sound shit, thin, and very bright. Also my system had been switched of for 17 months. I’ve heard the Rhodium burn in period can be very tough psychologically.
Honestly… Rhodium actually sucks. It can sound harsh and thin. If you can compare it to pure copper or silver….try that. And yes…. It needs a lot more. 200 hours at least.
Do you mean that Rhodium sucks even after burn in??
My opinion: in most cases it sounds less ‘organic’ and fluid than pure copper or silver. Yes.
Interesting! Rhodium is all the rage provided you can with stand the long burn in period. Guess i’ll have to waste money on buying gold and silver and find out what i like for myself. The down side of an audiohpile, it’s costs to try all the fun stuff.
It is.. 🙂
Was this a new unit or was it a show model/already used unit? I ask this because this puritan does need a lot of hours for it to be broken into. If you test a new unit vs a already used one you can clearly hear major changes on both. By this review it does look like this puritan can produce very mixed results depending on the setup. On my case, i’ve prefered the puritan to conditioners up to 6K, including two much more expensive isotek models.
This unit smokes my relatively expensive Furman.
Cool. Glad it works out good in your case!
Interesting review/measurements. I’ve had very good experiences with Puritan conditioners across the board. I’ve found they improve with an outboard ground—I use their CityGround since I live in a condo. The ground is inexpensive enough that I consider it a mandatory part of the system. It makes a difference—it would be interesting for you to use their ground and see if it resolves your issues.
Thanks for the addition!
Hello,
You say “reclocker / ref-clock are not useful, because they need to stabilise”.
Could you explain?
Thank you
Jacques
For testing purposed it is not useful. Clocks need to stabalize after they have been turned off. Some will stabalize quickly, others need 10 to 15 minutes to stabalize again. That is very inconvenient if you want to compare gear.