Meridian Prime Power Supply

Overview

Meridian’s Prime Power Supply is a reference-quality, high-current design based on the new linear power supplies developed for Meridian’s 800 Reference Series and specifically built for audio applications.

Supercharged Power
Meridian Prime Power Supply can be used to power a range of Meridian products, including the Meridian Prime Headphone Amplifier, Audio Core 200, Meridian Director and Media Source 200. The addition of Prime Power Supply to these components provides an enhancement in their performance, much like supercharging your car’s engine. 

Design

Built into an elegant, compact metal case designed by Allen Boothroyd that echoes the G Series, with no visible screws, and is double-skinned for lower noise, the Meridian Prime Power Supply shares the same design and footprint as its partner the Prime Headphone Amplifier.

Prime Power Supply incorporates a special low-noise, highly regulated linear power supply to help deliver the highest possible audio performance, not only from Meridian components, but also other systems requiring 12V dc power at up to 500mA. In addition, a 5V USB supply is included with audio pass-through. This allows the USB DAC to get clean power from the Prime Power Supply and not the PC itself, resulting in more music and less noise.

The rear panel of the Prime Power Supply features a C3-type power input socket. The mains input is carefully filtered, while the output side includes five high-current 3-pin mini-DIN connectors, with a positive latching design to limit the chance of accidental disconnection.

By affording a single input connection, the unit can power several devices from a single wall connection, reducing clutter. More significantly, an outboard power supply keeps AC noise away from sensitive audio circuitry.

Technology

At the heart of the Prime Power Supply is a hand-assembled true toroidal transformer: a high-mass, low-profile, low magnetic field design. In addition to its integral magnetic shield, it’s mounted on a metal plate to shield electronics from noise.

Each output on the Prime Power Supply includes multi-stage regulation using a total of six extremely low noise linear regulators. Both the 12V and 5V USB outputs include pre-regulators prior to the output regulators. Even though the 12V outputs are rated at just 500mA, they utilise heavily over specified 5A linear regulators, selected by a rigorous evaluation process, including extensive listening tests.

Meanwhile, the USB supply features a new high-efficiency low-dropout (LDO) linear regulator design that features less than 5μVrms output noise in the range 10 – 100k Hz.