[matta]

Hey Guys,

What is your take on on the rackable studio power conditioner ala Furman etc?

From what I gather it is just a 1U rackable box with a couple of power outlets with some AC filtering, a surge protector and some lights.

Do you feel one benefits from using a unit like this in the studio as opposed to just using power adaptors (power strips) off the same circuit to power your gear?

Cheers

Matt

[SSLtech]

I hate them. They get noisy over time if the MOVs get leaky.

The BIG ones with the tap-switching area different affair, but I still have reservations... the little ones are a gimmick, and consume 1 GASSL's worth of rackspace.

The only useful ones are the ones with pull-out lights in them... and NO power filtering.

Keith

[peterc]

We have 5 Meissner online UPS's that are excellent. Cant remember the model but they are about 3kVa units.   http://www.meissner.co.za/

Always buy an online unit that has the battery online at all times. These have a decent output shape to the sine wave.

We looked at a number of offline units where the battery only gets switched in  when the mains power fails & the output waveshape was shocking in most cases & bad at best. One of them had a square wave output....

Very much a case of you gets whats yer paid for, the online units are 2-3 times the price on an offline unit.

Peter

[SSLtech]

Yes indeed... Sine-out UPS's are a different matter altogether. You should however check ouput-sag-under-load whan you try those out... I've seen a couple that dipped a lot under load and surged under low-load, which would have a marked effect on things like LA-2a's...

But the one-rack, much-hyped "power conditioners" I stay the hell away from.

Keith

[peterc]

All our suites run on YoTools (no consoles) so the idea behind them is to have enough time to tell the client that it is time to shut down & be able to do so gracefully. With a G5, 21" monitor, Control 24 amps & a few other small bits, we have about 12 mins of power available.

Their "conditioning" function seems to be quite good as well, very rarely have any surge issues. Never done any low load or overload testing though.

Peter

[ciminosound]

I have a furman AR-117 unit, with the tapped torroidal transformer. It's saved gigs for me.

The band I do live sound for, 57 Heavy, does some Hyannis Harbor "Booze Cruises", so out on a boat with what ever their generator is can be a pain. The furman helps level thing out and stabilize the power.

I did a gig once where the entire building only had 85 volts on every outlet! The wallwarts for the Lexicon LXP stuff would NOT function. The furman brought up the voltage enough to get them to work. Did I mention the bands were outside so I kinda needed some reverb.

[matta]

Thanks for the comments guys, yeah I think the cheaper ones are not much more than a glorified power strip, and 5 times the price... but what do I know :?

I think a more fitting title would be power distributor, not conditioner....

Pete I'd love to find out the model of the UPS, maybe next time you are in the Lab you can take a peek for me, also interested as to how you hook it up.

Unless I misunderstand it you go from the wall AC to the UPS and then everything is powered off the UPS? Do you have a separate UPS for the outboard gear, control 24 etc and one for the workstations and Digi interfaces or all they all running on the same UPS?

Do you just use Power strips/adapters off the UPS then?

Cheers

Matt

How much can a LM317 take?

Started by bluebird The Lab

While we are talking about power conditioners...

Started by nacho459 The Lab

question regarding so-called "power conditioners"

Started by Ptownkid The Lab

power conditioners

Started by mrphotodude The Lab