SOtM SMS-200

[Antoine]

I strongly disagree with the notion that battery supplies outperform any LPS. There's good battery supplies and there's good LPSU's and there's "less good" in each category.

One has to ask oneselve what makes a good PSU and when one does it quickly becomes clear it's a very complex subject. What I have learned thus far is that a good PSU emits low levels of self noise, has a high PSRR (power supply rejection ratio=the ability to reject outside noise), has a low output impedance, is able to respond to and recover from quick transients quickly and stably. And all this over a wide frequency range especially when it is used to power digital circuits.

Someone who does a great job (much better than I can so I won't even try) at explaining these difficult matters is John Swenson over at computeraudiophile.com. I'd recommend looking up his posts if anyone's interested.

For now I will just say that I'd choose the Uptone LPS-1 over the SoTM battery for powering the SMS-200 or microRendu without any hesitation. The Uptone is a supercapacitor based design, always disconnected from AC/other components and has the advantages of the classic battery supply but not the common downsides. I myself have chosen a high quality linear power supply from Paul Hynes (SR7EHD-MR4) one of the best audiophile PSU's 'out there'. It's able to power four devices from four isolated rails. I believe it to be even better than the LPS-1.