For owners – and aspiring owners – of a high-performance Clearaudio turntable, Andrew Harrison discovers that the addition of the brand’s Smart Power 24V PSU delivers “a seismic overhaul to the deck’s already mighty performance”.

“It shouldn’t be news that even small changes to audio power supplies can manifest a large changes in perceived sound quality,” writes Harrison in the November issue of Hi-Fi Plus. Which is why Clearaudio takes such things very seriously, offering a range of optional PSU solutions designed unleash more of the considerable potential of its top decks.

The Smart Power 24V is a battery-based DC power supply upgrade, designed to partner with Clearaudio’s high-performance Ovation, Innovation and Statement turntables. It pairs intelligent circuit technology with long-lasting NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) rechargeable batteries to deliver 24V of pure, clean, fluctuation-free power. The Smart Power 24V can be set to switch automatically from battery play mode into recharging mode if desired and, even when recharging, it continues to offer an improvement in sound quality as well as adding safety features such as protection against short circuits and overvoltage. Its elegant, low-key design, which includes a dimmable LCD display, is “superbly crafted from solid CNC-cut aluminium plates”.

The addition of the Smart Power 24V immediately enables “a more meaty, solid, effortless and unflappable sense of perception.” This, in turn, gives rise to “sublime clarity through the mid and top, and unheard-of resolution deep down below”.

“To my ears, the main transformation wrought by the Smart Power,” notes Harrison, “must be the way it brings a big magnifying glass to the entire bass region… revealing layer by layer the contributions of different instruments in the previously homogenised underworld of low bass.”

It even reveals, in the Slovak String Quartet’s playing of Shostakovich’s 7^th, “various ambient muted sounds from outside the studio in Bratislava, 1966 – including the low thrum of passing cars or lorries that are working through the gears.”

Find out more at clearaudio.de/en and to track down your nearest dealer contact UK distributor www.soundfowndations.co.uk

Read Andrew Harrison’s detailed review in full in the November issue of Hi-Fi Plus