monster power?surge protectors

[antman]

i got a monster power pro 2000 but i thought these things were suppose to keep 120 volts going through all the time......cause i notice my speakers get real hissy when it drops to like 114 volts...whats the deal?

 

[dementedchord]

i've been a tech for a long time and.... i dont know of anything that would account for this.... the truth is while a stabile 120V is cool to have.... most of us experience little or no change over our somewhat stable 110-120 averaging power IMO where those things can make a diff is in other areas... like tying all the grnds togeter and supressing spurious noises... are ya sure you're not wanting to hear it somehow???

 

[jpmorris]

I may be wrong, but from the specs it looks like that thing is designed to protect against surges, not dips or brown-outs. For that you'd need a UPS, I would have thought.

 

[punkin]

Exactly, two completely different ideas. Surge suppressors usually have a SAD and/or MOV device to shunt the surge to ground. Some sytems self sacrifice to protec the load from transients. Power regulation is a completely different concept.

 

[antman]

oh so if i had a ups that would not happen.........hmm maybe i look into one

 

[petermiller]

No you would want voltage stabilizer like the furman AR-15, UPS is different as well although some do both UPS is uninterruptable power supply and works like a battery so that you do not loose power, if you are getting a hissing noise over change in voltage it would more often than not be a result of any digital pieces being in the signal path like fx and so on as they are not as tollerant to low voltage situations. The Monster has power filtering and surge suppression only. Also relatively stable voltage still varies some so anywhere from 110-124 is normal to see. If its dropping down you may be drawing too much current from the circuit to begin with.

 

[dgatwood]

oh so if i had a ups that would not happen.........hmm maybe i look into one

No, with very few exceptions, most UPSes don't provide power regulation, either beyond very coarse adjustments to correct for power that is out of spec. The spec allows a wide tolerance, though, and your equipment is failing well within the allowable voltage tolerances, so no UPS is going to do any good for you except for a continuous UPS (rare and expensive).

BTW, contrary to what Wikipedia says, I'm pretty sure the U.S. standard is 117VAC, not 120VAC. As an absolute minimum, equipment is expected to operate correctly within a range of approximately 105-130VAC. In any case, any piece of gear that keels over at 114 (a mere three volts under ideal) is, IMHO, fundamentally flawed by design, as that's well within spec for line voltage.

A high-end UPS will typically correct an additional 10% or so beyond the spec, turning voltage that falls between about 90-105VAC or between 130-145VAC into voltage that falls between 105VAC and 130VAC. These numbers are all approximate, of course.

Bottom line is that unless you want to spring for a true line conditioner, you should fix the power supply in your amplifier (or powered speakers). Heck, even some line conditioners won't help you, as the first one I checked listed its output as +6 to -12%. That translates to 102-124VAC. YIKES! Even that Furman listed above would barely do it, and only then if their 120 means 120 and not 117....

Fix the speakers. That shouldn't happen.

 

[dementedchord]

if you are getting a hissing noise over change in voltage it would more often than not be a result of any digital pieces being in the signal path like fx and so on as they are not as tollerant to low voltage situations.

i dont find this to be true.... remember that we for the most part are dealing with dc voltages around 18v for most analog and of course 3-5v for digital circuits... when the ac hits the input tranny its steped down to around 25v and the rectified... the result is a rippling@+/-25vdc which then passes to voltage regulators that bring it down to our +/-18v dc... so variation of say 10v at the input tranny would have no effect since it would only affect that 25v ac and the rppling before the regulators.... make sense?????

 

[petermiller]

I agree, but usually it would be a current situation that would be causing the drop in voltage on the meter that would most likely leave any uints with a higher draw like 1 amp and 1.5 amp like most effects units, starving but yeah on second thought they would most likely crash or freak out rather than hiss.

 

[dementedchord]

understood pete... and i suposse your scenario is possible unfortunately i doubt either one of us has the where eith all to test it... i suspect though that a drop in line voltage as experienced by the whole system in the grossist sense.... probably would still put out adequate current to the relitive microcosm of the individual circuit...maybe not...

 

[antman]

its only when someone uses the microwave

 

[dgatwood]

Bottom line is that unless you want to spring for a true line conditioner, you should fix the power supply in your amplifier (or powered speakers). Heck, even some line conditioners won't help you, as the first one I checked listed its output as +6 to -12%. That translates to 102-124VAC. YIKES! Even that Furman listed above would barely do it, and only then if their 120 means 120 and not 117....

Fix the speakers. That shouldn't happen.

I should add one more thing. Devices with wall warts are much more likely to malfunction than devices with real power supplies. Wall warts are about the worst possible way to get DC because they usually consist of a transformer and a capacitor, using the capacitor as a half-assed rectifier. That's hard on the cap and even harder on whatever the power supply is plugged into, since the device must then clean it up from there.

If you have to deal with a wall wart, you might consider a regulated power supply for the device in question. Make sure you get the voltage right and make sure that you know whether the center is positive (typical) or ground/negative (rare).