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Author Topic: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?  (Read 17195 times)

tom eaton

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #30 on: December 22, 2010, 10:17:04 AM »

My Furmans hum and I would not want them in the control room.  I have a 15amp unit and a 30amp unit, the smaller one is quite a bit quieter, but still easily audible.

tom

Podgorny

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #31 on: December 22, 2010, 10:32:32 AM »

My Furman 1220 hums VERY slightly.  It's quieter than most hard drives.
You do hear it switch taps though, which can be irritating in summer when voltage is down.
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"Nobody cares what the impedance is; all they care about is when you can walk into the room, set up a mic, turn the knobs, hit record, and make everybody go 'wow.'"

bigaudioblowhard

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #32 on: December 22, 2010, 01:06:15 PM »

MASSIVE Mastering wrote on Mon, 20 December 2010 22:19

Q for the Furman people -- Are they reasonably SILENT?  

I had a few different regulators in here and I couldn't stand the noise they made.  Pretty much have to keep it close unfortunately...  

Lately, my power has been pretty freaky and I think it's time to go back to a regulator.  But not if it's going to be buzzing and humming all the time...  


The Furman AR15 seems very quiet, it sits next to gear racks on the floor, probably 6 feet from my head. If you're only plugging in your mastering gear, more than enough current, around $600 USD.

bab

tom eaton

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #33 on: December 22, 2010, 04:02:48 PM »

Mark-
Do you mean the AR1215?

Mine is not dead silent... but I've always been asking a lot from mine (like a constant 10 amp load).  If you're pulling 5 or 6 amps through the thing and it is not working hard it would probably be pretty quiet.  Honestly the fan in my Tascam 402 cd player in the control room bothers me... so I try to keep everything with any kind of fan or hum out of the control room!

The AR Pro I have is NOT silent under any load.  And makes noises when it is "correcting."  

The 1215 should be well under $600.  In fact, it's $400 at B&H.

t

Greg Youngman

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #34 on: December 22, 2010, 04:12:00 PM »

A friend of mine who lives in (Somis) Ventura County, CA, had voltage issues a few years ago.  He's a sharp electronic tech guy.  He measured his voltage for quite some time with a recording AC voltmeter to document it.  The 120v average was way beyond the 5% limit and spiking all over the map.  He contacted his AC supplier (either PG&E or SC Edison) and complained numerous times.  He got nowhere, until he contacted the CA PUC and filed a complaint with all his documentation.  A new local transformer was installed and he no longer had the fluctuating voltage or spikes.  I don't know if this happens in other states, but it might be worth looking into before sinking gobs of $ into regulator/filtering.  I check mine occasionally and it is rock solid (no pun intended)unless there's a major lightning storm.
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bigaudioblowhard

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #35 on: December 23, 2010, 04:47:08 PM »

tom eaton wrote on Wed, 22 December 2010 14:02

Mark-
Do you mean the AR1215?...




I did mean AR15, which they've discontinued and now only have the 1215.

bab

dcollins

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #36 on: December 23, 2010, 05:56:22 PM »

Greg Youngman wrote on Wed, 22 December 2010 13:12

A friend of mine who lives in (Somis) Ventura County, CA, had voltage issues a few years ago.  He's a sharp electronic tech guy.  He measured his voltage for quite some time with a recording AC voltmeter to document it.  The 120v average was way beyond the 5% limit and spiking all over the map.


High mains voltage is good for business as it makes your electric meter run faster.


DC

Greg Youngman

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #37 on: December 27, 2010, 10:33:22 PM »

dcollins wrote on Thu, 23 December 2010 14:56

Greg Youngman wrote on Wed, 22 December 2010 13:12

A friend of mine who lives in (Somis) Ventura County, CA, had voltage issues a few years ago.  He's a sharp electronic tech guy.  He measured his voltage for quite some time with a recording AC voltmeter to document it.  The 120v average was way beyond the 5% limit and spiking all over the map.


High mains voltage is good for business as it makes your electric meter run faster.


DC


Let's see... faster meter... speeds up the sampling rate... better high frequency response?  I'll think I'll run everything on 240!
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tom eaton

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #38 on: December 28, 2010, 07:22:48 AM »

I simply can't compete.  We're stuck at 208VAC here. I bet 240 sounds awesome.

Viitalahde

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #39 on: January 26, 2011, 11:21:35 AM »

Well, this has been the first week at my new room, and I've done two albums already.

Smart as I am, I didn't get the IEC male/female connectors for my Furman P-1400-AR-E yet, so I'm connected the mains naked. And of course no UPS yet, since I just didn't form an opinion on which to get at a decent time.

Suddenly, it's the worst time of year for power delivery. There's a load of heavy, frozen snow hanging on trees, and it makes the trees bend and fall over the aerial wires. I've had a few short breaks in power delivery (quickly fixed as I'm pretty close to town centre), but there are areas in Finland right now that could stay for weeks without electricity. Very difficult conditions.

I ordered an APC Smart series UPS for the DAW yesterday, as well a bunch of cables. I'll try that first.

The thing that pisses me off right now is how the short brownouts make my amplifier disconnect the load now and then (the protection circuit disconnects at an instant when the power is lost ). The conditions are a little special right now, so I'll just bite it until the situation is fixed, but for the future:

Should I just buy a huge UPS for the whole chain+amplifier? Are online UPS'es capable of delivering the transient current for the amps as needed? The power supply of the amp is stiff, so the real juice should come from there, though.

I calculate I should be fine with a 5000VA UPS, but I'd probably scale up a little bit, depending on the price.
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Jaakko Viitalähde
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Peter Beckmann

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #40 on: January 26, 2011, 12:23:22 PM »

The smart UPS stuff seems pretty good to me Jaako.

I run my main Mac rig, with PT HD3, the interfaces, monitors and drives, plus the PC for Plextools off a smart UPS 1500. When it's all running I'm looking at close to 75% capacity, which is as far as I want to push it.
I don't have a UPS for the analogue processors or amps though, I'm not sure how big of a one I'd need but BIIIG, and that would be expensive.

Are you hoping to keep working through an outage using the UPS or just protect the speakers and amps from tripping?


Peter
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Peter Beckmann
Technologyworks
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bblackwood

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #41 on: January 26, 2011, 12:40:54 PM »

Jaakko, I'm running 6kva of APC Smart UPS's here - everything but the amplifiers is on 'battery power'. Works GREAT, zero complaints. If the power is ever flaky here (it is occasionally) I still have solid, clean power.
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Brad Blackwood
euphonic masters

Peter Beckmann

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #42 on: January 26, 2011, 12:59:09 PM »

Interesting, Brad.

Is it all on one monster UPS or smaller local units?
Have you had to replace the batteries often?

Peter


p.s.

When do we officially switch over to the 'other' place?
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Peter Beckmann
Technologyworks
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bblackwood

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #43 on: January 26, 2011, 01:11:25 PM »

Peter Beckmann wrote on Wed, 26 January 2011 11:59

Is it all on one monster UPS or smaller local units?

Five different units - (3) 1kva and (2) 1.5kva.

Quote:

Have you had to replace the batteries often?

You know, they say about every two years, but I generally wait until the begin to fail, so it varies. That said, I had to replace all of them in 2010 (about $750 worth).

Quote:

When do we officially switch over to the 'other' place?

That hasn't been made clear to me yet, but my plan is to stay here until we have to switch over to keep things from getting disjointed...
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Brad Blackwood
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Peter Beckmann

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Re: Mains regulation, what's the good stuff?
« Reply #44 on: January 26, 2011, 05:36:03 PM »

bblackwood wrote on Wed, 26 January 2011 18:11


You know, they say about every two years, but I generally wait until the begin to fail, so it varies. That said, I had to replace all of them in 2010 (about $750 worth).



Yes, about 2 years is my experience too. I also find when they go they can go quite quickly.

Peter

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Peter Beckmann
Technologyworks
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