SMc Audio Virtual Reality Engine Preamplifier VRE-1 - Manual (Page 8)

7
The Power Supply
The VRE-1’s companion power supply provides carefully tailored DC power for
the proper operation of your preamp. The “Power 1” connection provides +/- 24
VDC of choke-filtered, unregulated power, while the “Power 2” connection
provides +/- 24 VDC of fully regulated power for the relays, LEDs, and Monitor
Out buffer amplifier.
Power supply design is critical to superior performance. In a very real sense, it is
the power supply we are hearing when we listen to music. One of the keys to the
VRE-1’s superiority is that its JFET buffer circuitry does not require a regulated
supply, so this source of signal degradation was eliminated. Voltage regulators
are very much like amplifiers, and all of the same rules of sound quality apply to
them. Eliminating this regulator stage allows the VRE-1 to get that much closer
to being a true “window on the performance.”
The VRE-1 supply uses the finest quality parts I have found through careful study
and experimentation: a superb toroidal power transformer, soft-recovery diodes,
outstanding chokes from Lundahl, superior capacitors, resistors, and wire, and
selected damping feet. The critical analog power-link cable is custom-made for
the VRE-1 by Stealth Audio Cables, and uses their proprietary molybdenum -
carbon conductor technology. This was chosen after lengthy listening
evaluations with a wide variety of cable options. Even the AC inlet is chosen for
superior clarity and transparency. Each power supply is “voiced” by ear before
delivery, which involves listening to the various permutations of transformer
secondary wiring. Its design and construction is an exercise in total “overkill” - its
current capability vastly exceeds the requirements of the VRE-1, but I feel this
translates into superior performance and reliability. Literally, only the best will do.
Chassis and Feet
Every aspect of an audiophile component’s design affects its performance to one
degree or another, and this is true of chassis materials as well. I discovered long
ago that different metals (aluminum, steel, stainless-steel, copper, brass, etc.)
produced different sonic results with a given circuit, and this led to my use of
aluminum and copper-plated steel as preferred chassis materials. However,
various experiments I did in the course of developing new designs began to
suggest that eliminating metal altogether might produce even better results. This
led to experiments with Nylon, Delrin, different types of wood, and finally to solid-
surface synthetic materials. These materials are more difficult to work with than
traditional metals, but I consider the results to well worth the effort. The VRE-1’s
chassis is much more inert mechanically than traditional designs, and the
elimination of metal does away with certain colorations that get in the way of true
transparency.