Plixir

Plixir Power Supplies

Plixir Power was founded by James Soh in Singapore in 2014, although his experience within the audio industry back dates way further that with experience at Philips, Cirrus Logic and Behringer. He is also a graduate of the University of Singapore reading Electronics. James is an avid music lover, and an accomplished tuba player, a difficult instrument which he started learning at the age of nine. He has represented Singapore in many overseas wind band competitions and was a founding member of The Philharmonic Winds, the premier Wind Band in Singapore. James’ real interest though lies in the realm of digital audio systems, where he marvels at how digital systems translate digital signals into sound. He started dabbling in DIY audio electronics in his teens, and throughout his university days.

James designed the extensive range of AC and DC Plixir products and the remit of these is quite simple – to provide effective and obvious improvements to whatever devices you use them with essentially!

Audio products that are powered by external DC power supplies are becoming quite commonplace and invariably the included power supply simply has to work and not too much thought will have gone into its design and execution. Replace that power supply with something that has been correctly engineered using high quality components and the results more often than not are fairly instant and obvious and you will get a lot more performance from your system as a result.

DC power supplies are traditionally SMPS based (switched mode power supply) due to the fact they are very inexpensive to manufacture, they don’t weigh very much so they don’t cost a lot to transport around the world and typically they will accept a wide range of incoming voltages so they are flexible. The downside to them is they are noisy and they frequently pollute AC mains so they actually effect other components in your system and the signal ground will also get heavily polluted due to excessive noise injection which is typically given no consideration at all in low cost SMPS supplies. The higher the current delivered by the DC power supply means more noise will be injected as well.

All Plixir DC supplies are designed with the above flaws taken into account, plus they have superb noise specification and safety aspects as well. With the Elite Balanced DC power supplies there is no signal ground noise injection and no ground loop problems, however the downside to this design is the transformer needs to be doubled in size to deliver the same power hence the larger size and weight. There is 2 stage voltage regulation, the first stage removes the majority of the noise and also removes the heat from the second stage voltage regulator. This 2 stage design effectively acts as a barrier to prevent pollution upstream to AC mains and Plixir refer to it as the ‘brain and brawn method’. The pre-regulation stage (the brawn) handles most of the issue mentioned above and isolates the actual regulator stage (the brain) from these ill artefacts. Free from negative influence this allows the voltage regulator to be able to perform optimally in terms of noise, slew rate and output impedance.

Elite and Statement Balanced DC Power Supplies

There’s an extensive range of BDC supplies available, I have not listed them all below just the key models, but I have access to the full range.

The Statement BDC is the flagship Plixir Power Supply, there are 2 versions of this model available, 12V or 19V (both models are 6 amp)

Both models have dual outputs so are incredibly flexible, the 12V version is suitable for a variety of applications including the Taiko Extreme Switch and Router, Melco N100, S100/2  and D100, E100, the 19V version is for using on a Roon Core.

Elite BDC 5V 2 amp – single output (£595) suitable for the ADOT Fibre Optic Media Converters plus several Silent Angel products

Elite BDC 12V 2 amp – single output (£595), suitable for Melco N100, S100, D100, etherRegen, SOTM plus many others

Elite BDC 12V 4 amp – dual output (£849) power 2 devices simultaneously

Elite BDC NUC 19V 4 amp – single output (£895) designed specifically for the Intel NUC / Roon Nucleus

Elite BDC Chord MScaler 15V 4 amp – single output (£895) designed specifically for the Chord MScaler

If you have a Melco S100/2 or N100 the single output 12V, 2 amp model at £595 is a great choice, it really does offer a meaningful uplift in performance.

The 12v 4 amp dual output version is ideal if you are running 2 devices, there is also a 6 amp version available as well (£950) which offers greater headroom and as increased performance as a result. I’ve several customers using this model even though they only require a single output, but the jump in performance is worth having.

I’ve spent times with several different power supplies, both Elite and Statement power devices such as a router, ADOT Media Converters, Melco S100/2, Melco N100, a Roon Nucleus and Taiko’s Extreme Switch and in every case the inclusion of a power supply improves the performance of the system.

Streaming Qobuz to the Vitus RI-101 mk2 DAC module with an S100/2 Switch always sounds excellent, but with the S100 powered by a BDC the presentation had a really nice uplift in clarity, there was more detail and resolution but it was never forced in the way it was presented. Running with this BDC in place for a few days and switching back to the S100’s standard supply and the differences were quite obvious. A Vitus RI-101 and an S100 never sounds poor to be fair, but it was certainly much more enjoyable and engaging with the Elite BDC in play.

A power supply on a Roon Nucleus One is a great upgrade as well, Roon is a brilliant interface, but it is a very processor intensive piece of software and this does have a detrimental effect on performance, but with a 19V supply installed on the Roon Core there is an obvious increase in clarity and resolution and switching back to the stock power supply is quite telling.

If you have use a piece of equipment that operates on a basic DC power supply there is certainly scope to take the performance up a level or two with a Plixir power supply of whatever form it may take.

The Elite range offers excellent performance, but, if you have the budget the Statement model (£1750 for 12V 6amp, 2 outputs) is a considerable jump over all of the Elite options, even if you only require 1 output.

Connected to an S100/2 the jump from the Elite to the Statement is sonically much greater than the jump from the stock PSU to the Elite. It is a superb power supply and it really does elevate performance to a new level.