Sonos Port - Upgrade Power Supply

Unless I hear any cable difference in a controlled single variable listening DBT, I treat all cable claims as subjective opinions of those that have bought or are selling snake oil; in the field of home audio the entire domain of cables is notoriously rife with snake oil sellers for decades now. 

I have replaced kit like van den Hul interconnects/speaker cables with Amazon Basic RCA cables, and hardware store bought two core wire for speaker wiring and heard no difference. Ditto with some Chord cables so replaced. The replaced kit cost more than ten times the amount of what replaced it.

What matters especially for speaker wires is conductor thickness that corresponds to the cable length needed to minimise signal voltage attenuation. Electrons don't care what make of cable they flow through as long as they can flow as freely as they do in copper wire of adequate thickness for the cable length in use.

Back to the original question - does the BOTW P&P ECO 12-13V MKII Linear Power Supply work with the Sonos Port with the included adapters?  I was also looking into this, but want to confirm it works..

Hi David_367, I cannot understand why it wouldn’t work if the supplied adapters fit the Port power supply input. My only comment would be that if you use an adapter there are additional resistance points to take into account and if I am looking at the correct item it is very expensive. Have you looked at the Russ Andrew Powerpak 2. Seems much cheaper and with a 60 day return would appear to be a no risk option. I am looking at it myself after I have sorted out the interconnects. However the BOTW does have a toroidal transformer v a switched mode so apart from my reservations re adapters it does seem a better unit but at more than twice the price it needs to be.

Sorry for deviating from original post

I think key to the question, which I’ve wondered myself, is would switching the power supply one the port from a switched power supply to a linear power supply increase the sound quality.

I have no idea! If anyone tries it, please let us know. I suspect, however, that it may differ based on the quality of the power int he household, with less inprovment if the power is relatively clean...although some folks claim that switchers actually create noise that they pass to the streamer.

I tested out a “better”  power supply from ifi called an iPower. It is also a switcher power supply, but they claim to have done a lot of work to reduce the noise that switchers generate, and that some streamers and DACS are susceptible to. They claim they have reduced the noise levels below those generated by linear power supplies. I used the 12v 1.8A model. 

I think this type of thing only works for some devices, if the power handling does not handle electric switching noise as well as more expensive solutions (which tend not to use switchers to begin with). This is why audiophile level devices tend to put a lot of focus on power supplies. 

My experience was I did indeed experience better dynamic range, stronger base, and somewhat better imaging when I made the switch of the stock power supply to the iFi for the port. I was surprised. This was through the Idageo classical music app, which streams uncompressed CD quality files. 

I was willing to try the iPower because it is far cheaper than a true linear power supply ($49 vs $300+).  

Do you realize it is impossible for “noise” to affect a digital signal in these ways?  A digital signal cannot be made to have “better dynamic range, stronger base (sic), and somewhat better imaging” by cleaning up noise (whatever “noise” it is you are talking about).  A digital streaming signal is either cut off by interference, or it is not.  There are no subtle changes to the sound quality, you either get the signal, or you don’t. 

And even if this “noise” could subtly affect the data in the ways you claim, those changes would be caught by error correction, and dropped on the floor to be retransmitted by the source.  Sure CD’s had error correction which estimated the missing data, and audiophiles could hang their hat on the highly unlikely possibility that the estimate was coloring the sound.  However, streaming is not like CD’s at all.  Streaming is buffered enough that any faulty data can be resent, so what is played is 100% from the source, or it doesn’t play at all. 

What you are hearing is nothing but plain old confirmation bias, and would disappear under a properly conducted double blind comparison.