Plixir Elite BAC 3000 MkII power conditioner
BAC stands for balanced alternating current and the Plixir Elite BAC 3000 MkII is the largest example of the breed that I have encountered. It’s about the size of a decent power amplifier at 14cm (5.5 inches) high but weighs 45kg (99lbs), making it the densest piece of equipment to have graced my system in many a moon. Plixir is run by James Soh who is the Melco distributor in Singapore which explains why his products are brought into the UK by his British counterpart, ADMM, and why the only Plixir products seen on these shores have been relatively compact power supplies that can be used with Melco products among others. The BAC 3000 is however the best conditioner that Plixir make and the benefits it brought to my system have frankly been dramatic.
Kevin Fiske explained balanced mains very well in his review of the Russ Andrews BMU 3000VA a couple of years ago: “The normal UK mains supply is single-ended; nominally 230 Volts on the live wire and theoretically 0 Volts on the neutral wire. In a balanced mains unit a specially constructed 1:1 isolation transformer is fed a conventional 230 Volts, but outputs 115 Volts from each of two live taps on the secondary coil (the audio system side) with the centre-tap going to earth. The conductors that go from the mains unit to the audio system are therefore both live, 180 degrees out of phase with each other in respect to the earth. Noise on one phase is cancelled by the counter-phase noise on the other, and is drained to earth. This is essentially the same law of electro-physics exploited by balanced interconnects.”
The mass of the BAC 3000 is a result of it containing a mahoosive transformer made by Noratel in the UK. This is a toroidal design that uses an interwinding screen to prevent noise on incoming the mains getting through to the taps that feed the outlets for the audio system. Plixir have had this transformer custom made with their proprietary XQ tech for maximum common mode noise rejection. The balanced approach also provides a ground that is totally separate from earth, as many who have addressed the problem of noise on the incoming power have pointed out, having a noise free ground is the most significant factor if our systems are to reach their full potential.
The BAC 3000 has a 20 Amp IEC inlet rather than the familiar 15A types found on audio components, thus a suitable power cable is included in the box, however for this review the distributor supplied a Plixir Supreme balanced AC power cable. This is considerably more chunky than most at around 20mm in diameter with Furutech plugs at both ends. The seven outlets on this conditioner are arranged in a slightly odd way with the top set oriented at 180 degrees to the bottom ones, an approach that makes one wonder whether it was designed for mains plugs like the Furutech that have the cable coming straight out of the back (like Schuko types). As it is using both sets of outlets results in cables sticking both up and down with a conventional UK mains plug, which could be a challenge when it comes to placement in the system.
I got around this by using an extension block, two in fact because I ran out of outlets with just one, and put the BAC 3000 out to the side of the system. This had the added bonus of not having to pick it up to put it into the rack. I still don’t have a mini forklift!
The Plixir BAC 3000 is very nicely built and finished with rigid aluminium casework built out of machined plates with the base being 8mm thick, it sits on German Bfly Master Pro isolation feet that look well made and are designed to keep vibration out of the unit.
Sound quality
The Plixir was delivered at the same time as a Melco S1 network switch and I must admit to ignoring it for the first two weeks; the mega switch was too exciting a prospect to leave alone. When I got round to hooking it up using the aforementioned distribution block and Russ Andrews power cables I kicked myself more not doing it sooner. The effect was not subtle, it was like a soothing balm had been applied to the whole system, as if all the noise had been eliminated and all that was coming through was pure unadulterated signal. I was gobsmacked at how much impact the BAC 3000 had on a system that was already quite well equipped with noise abating technologies, ground cleaning systems and the like.
Essentially the backgrounds became blacker, the noise floor had perceptibly dropped across the board and as a result the music was more relaxed, better defined and listening became entrancing. This was true with both analogue and digital sources, I am used to trying devices that reduce noise on my streaming system but not so often with the turntable and phono stage, but this allowed the vinyl to be played at higher levels without grain, glare or fatigue and for imaging, timing and detail resolution to be enhanced.
Gary Burton’s version of Open Your Eyes You Can Fly (The New Quartet) was more involving and cohesive, the hash that can so easily attach to the trailing edges of his vibraphone seemingly gone so that all you hear are the pure harmonics of the instrument and the brilliance of the band’s playing. The benefits to the analogue system weren’t as obvious to begin with but the longer I listened the more concrete they became, somehow there was more life and vitality in the music and that in an already excellent system is quite an achievement.
I was playing Shakti on the digital system when I first plugged in the BAC 3000, this has a lot of tabla playing on it which tends to blur because the late Zakir Hussein’s hands are so fast, the change of power source didn’t remove that blur but made its variations clearer, made the different ways in which he played the drums easier to follow and made the sound come alive. The high violin notes were obviously cleaner and John McLaughlin’s thousand mile an hour guitar playing also made more sense, it’s not just speed for its own sake but works with the rest of what’s going on.
More recent is Bill Frisell’s East West and this reveals that recording quality has gone up in the digital age, the dimensionality of sound on Pipe Down is something else when you have truly clean power, that and the torque, dynamics and immediacy, it all adds up to a very real live experience with maximum thrill power.
I got a similar result with Gillian Welch’s latest release Woodland Studios, here the imaging really pops out of the speakers, giving the sounds of voices and guitars a really palpable sense of presence in the room. The high notes are exquisite and the low notes, admittedly not on this particular album, are something else. The bass that the BAC 3000 allows my system to produce is to die for, again its cleaner but it also seems to be deeper and more powerful on a whole raft of different tracks.If you like bass the Plixir’s capabilities at this end of the scale alone would be enough to warrant its place in your system.
I mentioned that it allows higher volume levels without discomfort and this was brought into focus when I had to connect a network switch straight to the wall as I had run out of space on the distribution block. I could not believe how ‘loud’ in an uncomfortable sense this made the system sound, I mean this shouldn’t be and yet it was obviously so. Network switches are a weak point in streaming systems it seems and they need as much help as possible. This really brought the point home and I soon found a way to get it hooked up to the BAC 3000 so that I could forget about the system and get into the detail, variety and colours of the music.
At a concert recently I pondered the benefits that a conditioner like the BAC 3000 could bring to the sound in the live situation, I suspect they would be considerable, especially if the electric instruments were fed from the same supply. It then occurred to me that the better studios must use these things and that perhaps the immaculate, inky black backgrounds on ECM recordings could be attributed to having balanced power eliminating noise and providing clean grounding. This is not a subtle upgrade to the replay system so its effects on the recording process would be even more substantial.
Conclusion
I am going to have to find a way to get the Elite BAC 3000 MkII or something very similar to it into my system because it’s going to be painful living without it, that’s how dramatic an influence it had on my system. I realise now why Chris Frankland got such a good result with the Connected Fidelity AC-2K and Kevin Fiske bought the Russ Andrews balanced power conditioner, these things leave very little room to go back.
As Kevin points out you may be fortunate enough to have very clean mains power in the first place, but both he and I live in rural areas where there is theoretically nothing that could be screwing up the grid. Yet in truth every household is full of cheap switched mode power supplies and all of them inject noise onto the mains grid to which we are all connected. The Plixir BAC 3000 MkII does a mighty good job of keeping that noise away from whatever you connect to it but don’t try one if it’s beyond your budget, it will be a painful experience to let it go.