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iFi ipower wall wart.

F

Fudgemaster

pfm Member
I've just found this device on another forum, and wondered if anyone's got experience of it, please? I was thinking of trying one on my CA640P phono amp, and also wondered whether it might benefit my RP3, which is also fed DC from a wall wart. Presumably the only benefit would be with my phono amp? At around £40 it's not going to break the bank, but I could buy two LPs for that.
 
I tried one on a Pi/Digi+ combo I could hear no difference compared to the £6 wall wart I was using so I sent it back and got a refund.
 
I also tried one on my Netgear switch but couldn't hear any difference compared with the original Netgear one so sent it back for a refund. No harm in trying though and it may be an improvement if you've got noisy mains.
 
I had an ifi ican se which came with one. There was a buzzing through the headphones that got louder as the volume was turned up. I put that down to the ifi wall wart, as I found a review on line that had the same issue. They got a new ifi wall wart that cured it, and the article said ifi told them it was a faulty unit.
Hope that helps you decide.
Mand
 
Rana said:
Isn't the 640P AC? If so, then the iFi will be incompatible.
Click to expand...

Yup the CA640P is 12vAC so the iPower is incompatible

Re the iPower, its a fine unit, it cleaned up my LAN with a Netgear GS switch, its subtle & its maybe a bit clearer what it does when you swap back to the original wart. The most impressive thing for me was the voltage stability, rock steady unchanging on all loads measured to 0.01vDC & it only dropped 0.2vDC between no load & full load, the original Netgear was constantly changing voltage +/-0.5v & dropped a whole 1.1vDC between no load & full load.
 
I stand humbly corrected, gentlemen. I assumed that, as both my CA640P and RP3 are powered by wallwarts, they were both DC powered, but a quick check confirms that they're both AC, so forget the iPower. As the RP3 is new, and the 640P transformer original, I'll keep things as they are, and buy a couple or three LPs, to add to my growing collection.
Thanks for invaluable guidance.
 
I just sent one back for a refund yesterday as it goes. It was injecting more noise into my dac than my homebrew linear psu, which was the opposite of what I expected given its low noise claims. There was audible psu noise with no music playing from about 12 o'clock onwards on the vol pot.

Edit: actually, sounds like potentially the same issue mand had above, so could have been a faulty unit.
 
Mine arrived this morning. 12V version to use with Dynavector P-75 mkII.
I was thinking of getting a new wall wart anyway, because I bought the phono stage from UK and had to use UK-schuko adapter, which did the job but connection wasn't very firm.

So I thought, I may just as well try one of these.

I did a very quick A-B comparison, literary just a couple of bars of "When the Levee Breaks" and I'd say that straight out of the box there was notable improvement over the stock wall wart.

I do have one issue I didn't have before: hum when I touch tonearm lift. If I touch the the preamp at the same time hum goes away. BTW I had to connect earth wire to preamp no to DV P-75 with stock power supply.

Another concern is that the connectors of iFi are a bit too loose - I do have to use polarity inverting adapter (P-75 mkI and mkII have negative central pin).

And of course, quick search on the internet shows that they seem to be dropping like flies.

So, more sound testing to follow and I hope I can find a way around hum issue.
 
So, now I had it for some time.

It significantly improved the sound of my phono stage, from SQ point of view this must be best spent GBP40 for a hi-fi item. Ever. The difference is much bigger than adding a HiCap for example.

But I'm having a very weird issue with it:
From the start I had buzzing type of hum when I touched the head-shell fingerlift. There was also same kind f buzz/hum for a few seconds when I switched the amp on or off (NAP140/NAC72).

I've changed the cartridge yesterday (from Ortofon Cadenza Red to AT95E) and the issue is even bigger - I expected it would go away, because AT95 has plastic body, so touching fingerlift should have no effect.
But now there is same buzz/hum all the time, very slight though, so it doesn't affect listening to music, but, superweird, it gets very loud when I come close to the cart with my hand, not even touching anything!

Probably a faulty unit, one of so many. I've contacted the seller and we'll see how this gets solved (or not).
 
And iFi is not very helpful in my case.

After describing the issue and then confirming that it's only with iPower that I have the problems they now replied

We had to confirm with our Technical Department on your case, here are their comments:

"This is not a fault of the iPower itself, it is a "missing earth", due to the (mandated) "Y-Capacitor" that allows some small amount noise to coupled from the mains into the power supply ground."

Therefore can you introduce an earth into the system?

Past that, we may have a solution for customers with missing earth but this will be around 3 months from now.
Click to expand...

Whatever that means. I've replied that my tonearm is earthed to the preamp and phono stage is also earthed to the preamp earth.
 
Instead of writing a diary on here I'd be demanding my money back as goods are clearly unfit for purpose.
 
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