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I upgraded several things and now find that the power supply for my intel NUC is the weak point, although not by a lot. My best sound has been with a 55 year old HP linear bench supply which is going to need some work.
My first question is how much better, if any, are current $500 to $1000 linear power supplies compared to my vintage unit? I need 12 to 19 Volts of DC power to the NUC with at least 4 amps.
My second question is does anybody have any experience with either a very high quality SMPS or a SMPS with LDO regulation? I might try something like that but I would need to find it first.
Follow Ups:
Switching supplies can be very quiet with some effort (I've made the output noise and ripple better than 110dB down). Often the most bothersome noise problems from switchers is "Common Mode" (the hot and cold bouncing up and down in phase.) Just adding a common mode choke can help at RF frequencies, BUT at the LC resonant point, the choke makes the noise issues much worse.
What is the LC? The "C" is the "Y" capacitance in the switcher added to the switcher's transformer's primary to secondary capacitance. The "L" is the inductance of the choke. The way around this resonance is to use a damped common mode choke with the damping loosely coupled to the choke.
Standard off the shelf common mode chokes with 1/2 the turns on one side of the core and the other 1/2 on the other side of the core can make things worse. I've seen it at work more than once. The split winding chokes need to be used with ultra careful layout and/or shielding.
Many switchers do not "like" to run into less than 10-20% of full load. Into light loads, the switchers hop switching cycles and do other things to make noise. If your switcher is running with less than 10% load, add a resistor to get it above 10 to 20% of rated output current (on all outputs).
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Play safe and play longer! Don't be an "OUCH!" casualty.
Unplug it, discharge it and measure it (twice) before you touch it.
. . .Oh!. . .Remember: Modifying things voids their warranty.
nt
I have the strong impression a common mode choke helps to 'cleanup' the sound considerably. Or so I noticed after I recently built a single ended solid state Class A headphone amplifier with such a filter.The use of an 'auxiliary dampening resistor' (I think it is called) is new to me but I will try that, thanks!
Edits: 11/10/24
I have a NUC also and replaced the wall wart with a 19 volt regulated power supply as well. The power supply plus one of my spare audiophile type power cords and dc umbilical made a very positive improvement.
I have a HP bench power supply on my solid state phono, I was very happy with the sound. After replacing all tired lytic caps, the result is even better. so fix your HP power supply first is my suggestion.
Maybe, but a benchtop DC power supply was never meant for audio use, on the assumption that for audio use one ideally wants better filtering. If you have a 'scope, take a look at what comes out of the HP. If it's perfect DC even at a high sensitivity setting on the 'scope, I would be surprised.
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