 At the end of last year, I received a request. If I was interested to review a $7400 linear power supply for the Core Dave, let me think. Yes. How realistic is it to add a $7400 power supply to a $12600 DAC? Well that depends on what the sound improvement is and how you value your money. Both parameters are largely personal. To what degree the sound improvement is valued depends on the stereo setup used and the ears of the person. And whether that justifies the price depends on the personal finance situation and of course other DACs that are available at $20.000. I have not yet reviewed $20.000 DACs and don't intend to do so in the near future. I see this review primarily as a research into what very expensive power supply can improve sound quality wise. Since this power supply is solely for the Core Dave DAC, you need to have this DAC connected to an amplifier and loudspeakers. But Shawn also uses the same tech for other power supplies, for instance for the Aurelic LSG2 and name products. For the Dave it's likely you use a network player or other digital source that is connected to your network and thus to the internet and your computer and NAS if that stores music. The Shawn Jacobs ARC6 DC4 power supply, which from here on I will call the Jacobs PSU, is connected to the Core Dave over a special pair of cables that are internally connected. If you think I exaggerated the dimensions of the Jacobs PSU in this drawing, think again. It is, for instance, taller than my air amplifier and weighs almost the same. It's 450 mm wide, 290 mm deep and 155 mm tall and weighs approximately 19 kg, 44 lbs. The front has no nubs, buttons or lights, only the Shawn Jacobs shield. Remarkable are the four ISO acoustics feed that keep vibrations away from the cabinet. A cost no object approach that seems to be the standard for this product. On the rear we see the Furotek gold-plated IEC inlet. A mains cable is not supplied and has to be bought separately. Above it the power switch and to the right a ground binding post. On the right the two DC outputs on GX16 aviation connectors. The top 3 pin 1 carries plus and minus 15 volts, the bottom 2 pin 1 plus 5 volts. When we look inside the first thing that draws the attention is the ginormous 600VA custom made to Reudel transformer, fully enclosed in a stainless steel shell and mounted on a heavy metal plate to kill vibrations. It has three secondary windings that feed the three DC4 rectification and capacitor circuit boards. One for plus 15 volts, one for minus 15 volts and one for plus 5 volts. These circuit boards are 2.4 mm thick, are gold-plated and are mounted so vibrations are isolated. Each holds 6 33000 micro-fired Mundov AMLITIC audio-grade capacitors, each one of them costing around 27 Euros retail, XVAT. On the left side the rectifier circuit boards are mounted vertically. To the right three identical boards that hold regulator circuits, one for each voltage. Again they are gold-plated and again hold top components like fisheye Z-foil naked resistors for the regulator section and extremely low noise resistors for the non-critical section. We further find fisheye capacitors for decoupling and audio-node gasec capacitors for the critical parts of the regulators. These are designed by the team that did the legendary black gate capacitors. All the DC wiring is made using Neotec OCC wiring with PTFE insulation. The inside of the housing is treated with damping materials to further reduce vibrations. The Jacobs PSU itself is extremely simple to use, just switch it on. But before you do the first time, you have to open your core DAVE, push out the power input socket, remove the simple switch mode power supply, plug in the supplied umbilical and fix covers where the power input socket was mounted. It's really simple to do, just follow the instructions that are mailed separately. But I have to clearly state that opening the DAVE will officially void your warranty, so if you do something wrong, don't count on warranty. On the other hand, in the unlikely event the DAVE will break down after that, you can simply screw back the original power supply and the cord will be non-divisional. So I warned you and I accept no responsibility for anything that goes wrong. And now we got that out of the way, let's see how I reviewed the Jacobs PSU. I of course used my reference setup 1A that uses the air acoustics AX520 amp to drive the audio physics copier loudspeakers. Added to the Amp is the core DAVE DAC that receives its signal coming from the Grim Audio Mew One. It talks to the network over a network acoustic Eno system and the SOtM SNH 10G switch. Added to that are the subscriptions of both Tidal and Coboost. Roon is controlled from an Apple iPad Pro. Sean Jacobs made clear that a burning period of three months has to be taken into account so I played for three months using the Jacobs PSU, sometimes switching to the original power supply that I had built into a separate housing using the same GX16 Aviation Connector. There is a large difference between the original power supply and the Jacobs PSU. It changes the character of the DAVE quite a lot, leaving the sublime timing intact. It improves on the low end offering more texture. In the mid-range and highs open up further which is quite noticeable when playing tracks with glockenspiel, like on 3Dances, Brentzel Gay, La Rotta, The Earl of Salisbury on the Pentangle Album Sweet Child. By the way not the best sounding album but the glockenspiel can sound without the gritty roughness less perfect equipment produces. The most noticeable difference is dynamic behaviour. It gives a sense of being present in a natural, comfortable way. As with the Grimm player, the sound gets warmer without adding coloration. It sucks you into the music, lets you be a part of it. You might now have the impression that the chord DAVE is far from perfect. This is not the case. Solo the DAVE is already extremely good sounding. Playing it with the chord M-scaler further improves that and when combined with the Grimm Audio Mew One, as I do, brings that a step further again. Watch my reviews of the M-scaler and the Grimm Audio Mew One. Links are in the usual places. The Jacobs PSU again takes it one step further. I've seen comments on the web that it is a shame that an expensive DAVE like the DAVE uses a 45 dollar switch mode power supply. But of course that power supply is only a part of the power household inside the DAVE. Its designer Rob Watts also made a comment about that. But that doesn't mean that a cost no object power supply can't improve the DAVE. It seriously does and the flip side of the coin is of course the price. Which brings us to the end of this video. There will be a new video next Friday at 5pm CET. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or link to this video in the social media. It is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. This keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.