Announcing the next generation: UltraCap LPS-1.2 (Now 5/7/9/12V! ; Now with parallel LT3045 regulators!)

[Blake]

Thanks for the update Alex.  No worries on the delay, these things happen, and as you say, glad you caught the issue before they shipped to customers.  Cheers, Blake

 

P.S. I am one of the sorry sods still waiting for my LH Labs Vi Dac. Frankly, I've lost track of how many years of delay its been.  So a 1 or 2 week delay is a walk in the park.

 

[Superdad]

45 minutes ago, Blake said:

Thanks for the update Alex.  No worries on the delay, these things happen, and as you say, glad you caught the issue before they shipped to customers.  Cheers, Blake

 

P.S. I am one of the sorry sods still waiting for my LH Labs Vi Dac. Frankly, I've lost track of how many years of delay its been.  So a 1 or 2 week delay is a walk in the park.

 

Thanks Blake.  Holding other people's money for much more than 2-3 weeks always gives me a pit in my stomach, and I HATE missing promised ship dates.  It is just part of my personal/professional ethics. 

 

This was a truly stressful week for John and I--at least until we solved the mystery of the wrong resistors!  Will still be a brutal couple of weeks getting the corrected boards through flashing/testing/assembly/shipping.  But I'm happy to put that work in so we can get caught up quickly.  Now if I can just shake this nasty cold/cough picked up from my son...

 

Oh, here is a snapshot of one of John's test setups this week during the hunt for what the heck was wrong:

 

Four differential scope probes going on at once!

[jdoleys]

I read many messages and I have LPS-1, USPCB, I've had Regen. I recently switched speakers and DAC so I regain purchasing power to get LPS 1.2.
a question for those who already own the LPS-1.2: If they can plug the SMPS into dedicated AC different from the audio devices perceive improvement in quality or not? Tks and congratulations Uptone for new model!

[kennyb123]

22 hours ago, Superdad said:

The 60 people with the earliest orders (#7043 and below, originally promised March 28th, then April 12th) can expect to receive notice of shipment this coming week—by April 19th.

 

We do feel confident enough to promise that the rest of your orders (#7044 and above, originally promised for shipment April 17th) will ship to you not later than April 26th.

 

I’m order 7044, so I just missed out on the earlier batch.   Not a big deal to me though about the slip.  I appreciate the great communication Alex.

[Superdad]

20 minutes ago, kennyb123 said:

I’m order 7044, so I just missed out on the earlier batch.

 

We will try to get as many our as possible this coming week.  Maybe you will be surprised...

[R1200CL]

I was afraid it’s getting sold again. My number is 7182 ?

 

I couldn’t risk waiting for the next 250....

 

Alex

 

Isn’t time to do 1000 batches ? ?

[jjraffin]

On 13/04/2018 at 11:54 AM, Blake said:

Thanks for the update Alex.  No worries on the delay, these things happen, and as you say, glad you caught the issue before they shipped to customers.  Cheers, Blake

 

P.S. I am one of the sorry sods still waiting for my LH Labs Vi Dac. Frankly, I've lost track of how many years of delay its been.  So a 1 or 2 week delay is a walk in the park.

 

I hear ya Blake! Same for me.

[malarz]

Hi there,

 

Just a quick (probably silly) question, is there a way to use the LPS as symmetrical PSU (+5V/-5V) ?

[Superdad]

11 hours ago, malarz said:

Just a quick (probably silly) question, is there a way to use the LPS as symmetrical PSU (+5V/-5V) ?

 

Not a silly question at all!  Since our UltraCap supplies are fully floating (not AC mains connected), they can indeed be wired together--battery-like--in series. +/-/+/-  either for combining voltages (pick up the sum of their settings at each end of string), or center-tapped to obtain a perfectly symmetrical bi-polar (positive and negative) supply.  Here is a diagram showing how to wire them for bi-polar (+/-) operation:

 

[malarz]

Thank you very much Superdad, greatly appreciated

[rickca]

@JohnSwenson or @Superdad can you please comment on the following Q&A from Farad Power Supplies designed by Mattijs de Vries from Pink Faun.  I'm not asking you to critique his product.  I just want your feedback on his comments about the downside of bank switching.

 

Why are you using the super capacitor power bank as smoothing capacitors and do you not switch between one bank while loading the other?

 

There are several reasons why we do not do this. First it means extra switching electronics in the supply lines, second it means that you are using only half of capacity of the super caps at a time. Third and maybe most important, it means that the final regulator does not get a constant voltage at its input, meaning different voltage drop, and therefore slowly varying power dissipation and temperatures all the time. This influences the output characteristics of the regulator, and the output power quality. Because in our supplies we use a choke smoothing and pre-regulation before the supercapacitor banks, noise residue will be minimal and also the necessity for switching.

[pl_svn]

looks to me it translates to: “as we are not able doing it properly we do it this way” ?

[JohnSwenson]

6 minutes ago, rickca said:

@JohnSwenson or @Superdad can you please comment on the following Q&A from Farad Power Supplies designed by Mattijs de Vries from Pink Faun.  I'm not asking you to critique his product.  I just want your feedback on his comments about the downside of bank switching.

 

Why are you using the super capacitor power bank as smoothing capacitors and do you not switch between one bank while loading the other?

 

There are several reasons why we do not do this. First it means extra switching electronics in the supply lines, second it means that you are using only half of capacity of the super caps at a time. Third and maybe most important, it means that the final regulator does not get a constant voltage at its input, meaning different voltage drop, and therefore slowly varying power dissipation and temperatures all the time. This influences the output characteristics of the regulator, and the output power quality. Because in our supplies we use a choke smoothing and pre-regulation before the supercapacitor banks, noise residue will be minimal and also the necessity for switching.

I'll take the last part first, we don't just have one regulator, each bank contains its own output regulator, the output of THAT regulator is switched. The result is the final regulator DOES have a constant input voltage.

 

In my design the  primary reason for the bank switching is to block leakage current, this it does very well. Of course it also has extremely low output noise, and extremely low output impedance.

 

And yep, the bank switching makes it WAY WAY WAY more complicated!!!!!

 

Any design which is "just" using the supercaps as filter elements does nothing to attenuate leakage currents, they go right on through.

 

John S.

 

 

[auricgoldfinger]

19 hours ago, JohnSwenson said:

Any design which is "just" using the supercaps as filter elements does nothing to attenuate leakage currents, they go right on through.

 

If the Farad power supply does not use an SMPS, then are leakage currents really a concern?

[Superdad]

47 minutes ago, auricgoldfinger said:

 

If the Farad power supply does not use an SMPS, then are leakage currents really a concern?

 

Yes, very much so.  First off, all AC-connected power supplies have leakage—that includes every LPS, external or in a DAC, preamp, poweramp, etc.  If it has a power transformer connected to the AC mains then there will be some amount of AC leakage—over a broad range of frequencies—due to coupling from natural interwinding capacitance.

 

Equioment whose “grounds” are connected together via analog or digital cables, and which are powered by AC-connected supplies, will form “leakage loops,” (John wrote about this at length elsewhere on CA, but I am traveling and don’t have time to cite the posts.)

 

The purpose of using a non-AC-connected power supply—such as a battery or our isolated, bank alternating UltraCap unit—is to interrupt the leakage loops.  So if you power a component, such as a streamer or DAC (or an isolator such as our ISO REGEN) with a floated/isolated, not-AC-attached supply, then you are eliminating the leakage loop interaction of the components on either side of that analog or digital chain.

 

Hope that makes sense.  I’m super-pressed for time as my wife is waiting on me to go ice skating on Lake Louise here in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

 

At a later time I’ll address the misstatements and misunderstandings related to forthcoming the Farad supply from Netherlands.

[auricgoldfinger]

11 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 I’m super-pressed for time as my wife is waiting on me to go ice skating on Lake Louise here in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

 

At a later time I’ll address the misstatements and misunderstandings related to forthcoming the Farad supply from Netherlands.

 

I apologize for interrupting your vacation!  It was certainly not my intent to do so.  I look forward to your future discussion of the misstatements and misunderstandings.

 

Happy holidays. 

[Superdad]

On 12/19/2018 at 1:15 PM, rickca said:

 @Superdad can you please comment on the following Q&A from Farad Power Supplies designed by Mattijs de Vries from Pink Faun.

 

Why are you using the super capacitor power bank as smoothing capacitors and do you not switch between one bank while loading the other?

There are several reasons why we do not do this. First it means extra switching electronics in the supply lines, second it means that you are using only half of capacity of the super caps at a time. Third and maybe most important, it means that the final regulator does not get a constant voltage at its input, meaning different voltage drop, and therefore slowly varying power dissipation and temperatures all the time. This influences the output characteristics of the regulator, and the output power quality. 

 

John already addressed the fact that Mattijs statement that the final regulator—in our bank-alternating design—does not get a constant voltage at its input is incorrect.

 

But I also want to address something implied above and specifically in another section of their FAQ, wherein they incorrectly state:

Why do your supplies only have one fixed output voltage?

The power dissipation of a linear regulator is dependent on the ingoing and outgoing voltage and current. Therefore the only way to make the output flexible is to make the input voltage flexible or by using switching power regulators, as many other brands do. Both of these ways are very sub-optimal designs. 

=============

 

UpTone Audio's UltraCap units do not use any switching regulators in the isolated sides!  What we do, and this is part of the genius of John’s design--is to vary the voltage that each bank gets charged up to, then disconnect the charging (optoisolaters, etc., remember we have multiple, galvanically isolated power domains).  

Simplified, it works like this:

1) The bank of caps not in use at any given instant gets charged to 5V above whatever the LPS-1.2's output switch is set to (e.g. if the user sets to 12V, then the bank is charged to 17V);

 

2) The charging circuits are then 100% disconnected from this bank (the ultracaps are then a pure "battery" at this point, discharging only--which BTW makes their ESR essentially irrelevant as opposed to caps that are charging while discharging, but that's a more technical discussion which I'll leave to John at some point);

 

3) This isolated "pure bank" then feeds a TI TPS7A4700 regulator with--in the 12V output setting example 17V, and the TI reg is set to regulate to 13V--to input 1V above to the final regulators.

 

4) Thus the paralleled pair of high PSRR, ultra-low-noise, ultra-low-output impedance, Linear Technology LT3045 regulators is always fed with a pure voltage that is 1V above whatever the output setting is.

 

5) The ultracap bank is only allowed to drop by 3V before we alternate to the other bank (which has been charging while the active bank was being used).  So in our 12V setting example, the "battery" bank is allowed to discharge from 17V down to 14V (and that 14V is 1V above the 13V being fed to the final regs.)  Thus the intermediary linear regulators are only ever asked to dissipate the wattage of between a 1-4V drop.

 

Unfortunately, this new firm is not the first to misunderstand our sophisticated design.  There is another company whose website FAQ speciously states that our product (well he does not name us but there are no other bank-alternating ultracap supplies on the market) outputs a "saw-tooth pattern with sharp peaks and valleys."  Seriously?! 

 

Hope this clears things up a bit.  

 

Oh, and here is a pic from the Banff, Alberta, Canada ski vacation my wife and I just returned from (celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary!).  It was spectacular.  We got exercise, ate like royalty, and I managed not to gain pounds. Now that's what I call a successful (though expensive) vacation!  

 

Happy holidays everyone!

 

--Alex C.

 

[rickca]

@Superdad and @JohnSwenson lovely passing shot for game, set and match!

 

When I questioned Farad's characterization of bank switching supplies, I kind of figured you guys would have a good comeback.

[R1200CL]

@Superdad

I couldn’t find the user guide on your home page. 
I need to understand how the light sequence ought to be, and what blinking means. 
 

Mine goes amber a while, then green a second, then blinking red. 
 

If I turn of and on again it goes steady red. If I wait some time, I think it performs the start up sequence. 

[Superdad]

45 minutes ago, R1200CL said:

I couldn’t find the user guide on your home page. 
I need to understand how the light sequence ought to be, and what blinking means. 

Hi Andreas:

The User Guides for both the original UltraCap LPS-1 and the UltraCap LPS-1.2 can be found on the Q&A page for those models, here:

https://uptoneaudio.com/pages/ultracap-lps-1-q-a

 

Removing and reapplying "energizing"/charging power to a UltraCap unit results in a much longer turn-on cycle than if the unit had been sitting unpowered for a while.  That is because it has to fully discharge--so it knows where it is at when it recharges.

 

As far as LED meaning--after full red>amber>green boot cycle is completed (and for test you should do with nothing attached to the output):

--With load attached, 5 red flashes, then one green flash, then 5 red again--repeating, means that the load exceeds the UltraCap units 1.15A maximum.  

 

[The green flash in the middle is the unit checking to see if load has reduced. So with a device (perhaps a Rendu) where new application of power begins its own boot-cycle that might not over-draw until partway through, the green LED of the UltraCap might stay on a bit longer--until the device does actually draw more than can be delivered. Such is sometimes confusing for some.]

[acousticmood]

Hello. I posted this in another topic maybe it is best to post it here.

 

My LPS1.2 died last week. I would like to see if I am eligible for and how to pursue the warranty..

 

Can you help?

Thank you

[Superdad]

29 minutes ago, acousticmood said:

Can you help?

Happy to assist. Please contact us directly via the Contact Us page on our website. Be sure to include your last name so that we can locate your order in our system.

If by chance you already sent a message in the past 24 hours then you sure to hear back from me shortly. I was out of the office yesterday so playing catch-up with e-Mail today.

Thanks,

—Alex C.

[acousticmood]

Thanks Alex I left a message on the website and also gave you a call.

 

have a good weekend - we’ll follow up week

George

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, acousticmood said:

Thanks Alex I left a message on the website and also gave you a call.

 

have a good weekend - we’ll follow up week

 

 

Hi George:

I am a bit concerned since I replied to your e-mail about 5-6 hours prior to your above message.  Please check your SPAM folder.  (Got your voice mail as well, but my e-mail reply was fuller concerning your 4.5 year old unit.) 

You are welcome to telephone again after the weekend--especially if you have not been able to find my e-mail.

Thanks,

ALEX