Daisychaining Power Conditioners=Good or Bad?

turnitdown

turnitdown

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Are there any electrical engineering types out there that can provide input on the following....

I need some additional outlets in and near my rack.... I currently have 2 Furman PL-8 units daisy chained together.

Should I :
a.) Daisychain another PL-8 unit (and possibly get 'more conditioned' power)
or
b.) Go with a generic rack mounted outler strip that provides no protection/conditioning (but will already be plugged into a Furman PL-8 Conditioner)

I guess my question is, is there a benefit to conditioning power multiple times, or does it/could it cause anomalies in the waveform?

Money is not the issue here... I just want to make sure I am not "degrading" my power by "over-conditioning" it....

Other than this, I think my studio is done for a while... just got an MCU and Big Knob (which works great in my install... no cabling visible!), and the Lexicon MX200... now if only I could buy some more 'time' to use all this stuff!! :D
 
In the first place, that Furman PL8 is not really a power conditioner. I know they advertise it as such, but all it basically has is a surge protector, some filtering, and a circuit breaker. It's basically a power strip in a rack.

True power conditioning is when the unit takes the incoming power and reconditions the waveform to be a clean sine wave. Those kinds of units are *much* more expensive due to the large, heavy and expensive transformer they have inside.

An example of that is the Furman AR-15:

http://www.furmansound.com/products/pro/reg/reg6.php?req=pc

That's the long answer. The short answer is that daisy chaining those PL-8's should be fine. I have several rack power strips daisy chained myself and haven't had any problems. A couple of those are Furman PL-Plus units. The units later in the chain are simply getting the benefits of the RFI filtering and surge suppression that is occuring in the preceding units. So theoretically at least, any power strip following the Furmans will be taking advantage of the Furman's capabilities.
 
You are correct Albert.... on all counts... thanks.

I'm aware of the Furman units claims, and the reason why even their true conditioners are several hundred dollars.. I was being generic.

Now, why doesn't someone make a conditioning strip w/ 30 outlets?? That would be great!!! ;)
 
My favorite rack power strip is the Tripp-Lite ISOBAR-12, which has ten outlets on the back and two in front. It has some filtering, surge protection, and the circuit breaker switch is on the front, not in the rear. If you do a google search for them you might turn some up.

I don't know if that exact model is still made anymore, but there are other similar models. The last time I bought them I got three brand new ones on eBay for $75. Normally they sell for over a $100 each from a retailer, around the same price as the Furman units.
 
I just did a search.... there's a bunch available ao the eBay stores... $81 was the best price...
 
There really isn't much of a benefit to chaining them together, but I can't see what it could possibly hurt either. The biggest thing I see is that chaining another Fuhrman in line is an expensive way of getting more plugs. Have you considered running one from a different circuit just to insure that the load never gets to high and to keep less draw on the single circuit? Then again most all audio rack gear is pretty low draw as far as amperage goes unless you start getting into big power amps and large format consoles.
 
The way I have my studio organized is I have two 6 foot long floor power strips running along the wall. These are connected to separate outlets on my EquiTech balanced power unit, which serves as the master power distributor in my studio. The EquiTech is plugged into the wall outlet, it's a 15 AMP unit.

Each rack has a Furman or Tripplite chained off the 6 foot power strip running along the walls. If the rack needs more than 8-10 outlets, there is a second Furman or Tripplite mounted in the rack chained off the first one. All I want coming out of the rack is *one power cord* and whatever audio, midi, and computer cables are necessary.
 
turnitdown said:
I just did a search.... there's a bunch available ao the eBay stores... $81 was the best price...
Click to expand...

I got lucky with a blowout that one time, as I normally paid over $100 each for the ISOBAR-12's.

This is the unit that I have a bunch of:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Tripp-Lite-Isob...goryZ294QQssPageNameZWD1VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I also have several of this model:

http://cgi.ebay.com/2-TRIPP-LITE-IS...ryZ64061QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Do a search using the following term and I think you'll come up with more results. Be sure to include the paranthesis:

(tripplite isobar, tripp-lite isobar)

Anything under $100 including shipping for these things is really a pretty good price. I've paid a lot more than that at times.
 
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