The PS Audio Power Port Premier is their very best high-end AV grade receptacle that will make a significant contribution to your system’s performance. Superior to our classic Power Port, the Premier is a major step forward in both performance and technical achievement.

It is intended as an upgrade to the classic Power Ports that may be installed in your home, or as a replacement for the cheap brass receptacles found in nearly every home in North America.

Home builders tend to place the lowest cost AC receptacles in the homes they build.
Sure they meet minimum safety requirements and are fine for toasters, hair dryers and washing machines but less than optimal when it comes to getting clean well connected AC to our high-end audio and video systems.

It takes only a few minutes to replace your home’s receptacles with these long lasting, gold plated and hand-polished high-end outlets and the improvements they bring are both audible and visible.

Why we need a better receptacle
At the heart of everything we do with AC power is the interface between our equipment and our power sources; the AC receptacle. Most every home in the US and Canada has a 15 amp duplex NEMA socket in the wall. Some have 20 amp versions, most have 15 amp varieties, but all are basically the same.

The quality of home receptacles is pretty grim.
These receptacles are constructed out of low-grade brass with very little care as evidenced in their purchase price of under $1.00. They are very poorly built, have poor grip, lower surface area and tend to build up oxidation “barnacles” on the untreated brass, which hampers connectivity. What this means to a high-end audio or video system isn’t good. Poor connectivity and loss of surface area from the contacts interacting with airborne pollution spells audible degradation for audio systems and increased visible noise for video systems.

Consider what your system is being powered with
You spent a great deal of time, money and personal effort building a great sounding music or home theater setup and in all likelihood, you’re feeding it less than great power. Does that make sense? Perhaps an even better question is why do AC receptacles matter? Why do you need to consider the importance of this single connection that provides 100% of the power that your system consumes? Everything we see and hear in our AV systems starts out as raw AC power. The unrestricted quality of that power has a great deal to do with the performance quality of our systems. Garbage in, garbage out. So it is important for us to build a solid AC foundation from which everything else feeds off of. At the heart of this AC power foundation is the interface between our equipment and our power sources; the AC receptacle.

What makes this a Power Port Premier?
To build a Power Port Premier we start with the most important element in any receptacle: the contacts. To build a high performance AC receptacle there are multiple requirements for contacts including, a solid grip, high purity base materials, superior conducting surface materials and a smooth polished surface.

Solid grip
Many AC receptacles have a loose and flimsy grip when you insert the male plug. This grip can get worse over time because the type of materials cheap receptacles use can develop micro-fractures at the hinge point. A Power Port Premier’s contacts have a strong grip that holds up over time because of the high purity amalgam of copper and spring tension metals plus the fact the contact itself is cast rather than stamped.

High purity base materials
Off-the-shelf AC receptacles are made from either low grade brass or stamped steel. Brass is a combination of low grade copper and zinc and steel comes in many grades, but the type used in these receptacles is the lowest possible. Copper is expensive and zinc is inexpensive. The tendency over the years is to increase the amount of zinc and lower the amount of copper in AC receptacles. From a conductivity standpoint the reduced copper content coupled with the increased zinc is not a good idea. The Power Port Premier’s contacts are cast from the highest purity non-ferrous material available: pure OFC copper and beryllium to maintain excellent grip. By keeping the pure copper content as high as possible, the base materials found in a Power Port are the finest made.

Superior conducting surface materials
The cast OFC beryllium contacts of the Power Port Premier are plated with pure gold through an electroless process. Electroless gold plating is the preferred method for coating an electrical conducting surface because it is free from flux-density and surface irregularities. Typically, gold plating is done through an electrolytic method where a current is passed through the part to be plated. Electrolytic plating creates deposits that have thickness variations resulting primarily from the shape of the electrical field between the electrically charged surfaces and the connecting cable. These deposits are thicker on corners and edges and surfaces where the distance to the cable is shortest. They are also thinner in the middle of surfaces, inside of holes and on surfaces facing away from the cable. Electroless gold plating completely eliminates this source of variation. Electroless gold plated deposits are uniform in thickness around corners, on both sides of a part, even on the inside walls of small holes that may be very deep. The Power Port Premier has been engineered to be the finest possible product made today.

Polishing is the final step
Once the electroless gold plating has been added to the OFC byrillium connectors, each Power Port Premier goes through a final step before insertion into the body of the receptacle. Each contact is hand polished to improve the surface smoothness and hence an increase in surface area and better conductivity.

The Power Port Premier’s body
The body of the premier is cast out of a state-of-the art dielectric material known as PBT rather than the standard plastic or Nylon. PBT (Polybutylene Terephthalate) is an amazing semi-crystalline material that has one of the best dielectric characteristics for moldable material and is superior to even the standard Power Port’s glass filled high temperature nylon material. For example, the perfect dielectric constant (a measure of how well an insulator works) is 1, which is given only to a perfect vacuum. The lower the number, the better. A standard nylon or plastic used in the body of a typical AC receptacle has a dielectric constant of 4 to 5 but PBT is an extremely low 3 and is rated to insulate from spikes of over 20 thousand volts. Expensive X-ray equipment uses PBT to help maintain proper electrical conditions.

To help your understanding of why this is important, think about a receptacle as two key parts: the conducting elements that pass the power and the non-conducting elements that isolate it from the outside world. Both are critical components in the perfect transmission of power to your equipment and in the Premier, both are addressed to perfection.

Installing the Power Port Premier
So what’s involved in outfitting your room with Power Port Premiers? Not much. They are incredibly easy to install, and come with complete instructions. They can accept wiring as large as 10 gauge and as small as 24 gauge. The top and bottom receptacles can be separated to run dedicated lines to each if desired.

To install a Power Port Premier takes about 10 minutes. Turn off the power to the outlet. Remove the cover plate. Remove the two screws affixing the existing receptacle and pull the receptacle out from the box. Using a Phillips screwdriver, simply disconnect the wires from the existing plug and place them on the Power Port Premier. Reverse the removal procedure and you are done.

Not only will the Power Port Premier ensure that your system will always be provided with as much power as your listening habits require, but it will also give you peace of mind that your AC wall plug is no longer the weak-link in your power chain.

The AC foundation
Starting with a good AC foundation is one of the hallmarks of a well built system. Nothing today will outperform the Power Port Premier with respect to what’s important to your system, proper long term power delivery. The benefits are both audible and visible depending on where in the AV system you place the Power Port Premier. Make sure that whatever you do in your system you do not skimp on the basics and starve your system. Good power delivery should be starting point in any high-end system.