Power Conditioner - Opinions?

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Neelix

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I don't want to spend a fortune, but I am looking for a solid power conditioner, preferably with a short battery backup or buffer to hold voltage at a solid level during brownouts, etc. I know some of the mid to upper Furman stuff does that, as well as some of the Monster stuff, but would one of the 150.00 boxes from Best Buy or Staples also do the trick? They're not rack mount, but I don't mind since I'll usually be toating a tub of cables around anyway. My recording rig is portable, so I use it not only at home but at other houses, studios, clubs, etc, and I definitely need something better than the standard PL8 type stuff. I'd really like at least a short battery backup as I'm lugging a Powermac G4 and a laptop around with me.

I think the rack stuff is just way overpriced, so any comments about the standard office type stuff? Do they have the RF filtering and all that stuff that the Furmans (or is it Furmen?) and Monsters would have?

Thanks!
 
A lot of mythology over power conditioner features and functions.....

A basic power conditioner doesn't have any battery-backup/UPS style functions, the rack mount ones are basically a voltage splitter with spike protector with some varying degree of RF/EMI filtering.

And budget UPS units (under $250) do provide battery backup but really don't offer voltage regulation - only the higher priced ones do.

What it comes down to is that you have to decide what features/level of protection you want, then buy the appropriate unit.
 
Do the battery backup type units hold voltage up during a brown out? I would assume they do since they can sustain power during a complete power outage.
 
How about one of your standard Fuhrman power conditioners in conjunction with a $60 UPS back up? That should give you what you are after. Power conditioners can seem like a waste until the day it saves you. I had a rig once where the electrician in a house had miscoded the wiring. To make a long story short the power conditioner was seeing 210 when it should have been seeing 110. It got powered up and there was a really nice POP that came out of the back of an FOH rack quickly followed by 3 large plumes of smoke. End result? Power conditioner still worked, 6 or 7 thousand dollars of comps and FX units still worked (1 comp however did blow a fuse), and a $10,000 dollar console still worked. If the power conditioner had not been in line I have no doubt in my mind that everything plugged into it at the very least would have blown a fuse, but most likely I would have been sending several items in for repairs and there would have been problems on the show (since the shop was 90 minutes away to get replacements).
 
Neelix said:
Do the battery backup type units hold voltage up during a brown out? I would assume they do since they can sustain power during a complete power outage.
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I scored a used APC rackmount UPS with voltage regulation off of eBay for $150. Furman will tell you those aren't designed for audio, but you know what, it works, and it isn't any noisier than the Furman AR1215 voltage regulator I have in another rack.

I do keep the APC physically isolated from the rest of the rack just in case its transformer throws off interference, but I've never noticed any.
 
Kind of debating about a standalone APC (or rack if I can get that kind of deal!) going into maybe a PL Pro to feed everything. The PL Pro definitely has good RFI filtering (don't know if the APC does since they don't list that feature), and they both offer good surge protection. Since the APC would have both battery backup and be able to hold voltages up during a major sag, would there be any reason to get the more expensive Furman like the AR series?
 
If you approach it like a systems analyst would, you won't waste money on the wrong thing. Add up the current draw on everything at once - your sound rig, the amps, the recorder, all the stuff you'd plug in and assume everything's running at the max. That will give you a rough idea of the capacity the unit should have. You can figure it in watts - over or under a thousand? Commercial UPS units may be rated in KVA - Kilovolt-amperes. A rough equivalent is 1:1.4, so a unit delivering 1.4 KVA can handle a draw of 1,000 watts.

You can also figure on pushing the system a bit if you don't have everything drawing max current at once. But if it ever does, you need to be ready for it. That's one place a back up battery can be helpful. The other circumstance is noisy or brown power.

But its a good idea to figure your average and peak power needs first and then go shopping for hardware, not the other way around.

Finally, cruise the used or surplus computer places for used UPS units. You might find you could make a deal on four big units for a hundred bucks or less, then replace the batteries in them - another hundred or so. That's usually the only thing that's wrong with them. Plug 'em all into the same source and you have a series of protected outlets.
 
Neelix said:
Kind of debating about a standalone APC (or rack if I can get that kind of deal!) going into maybe a PL Pro to feed everything. The PL Pro definitely has good RFI filtering (don't know if the APC does since they don't list that feature), and they both offer good surge protection. Since the APC would have both battery backup and be able to hold voltages up during a major sag, would there be any reason to get the more expensive Furman like the AR series?
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The APC I have filters noise.

Anyway, I have both, and they both work. The Furman is theoretically better, it uses a toroidal transformer which isn't supposed to throw off noise like the PC-type UPS units. But practically, they both work for me.

The Furman is only 1U and 12 lbs, vs. 2U and 48 lbs for the APC. So I wouldn't put the APC in a portable rack :eek:

This is what Furman says:

What's the difference between a voltage regulator designed specifically for audio and the cheaper kind sold for use with computers?

There are several important differences. First, voltage regulators for audio (such as the Furman AR Series) use toroidal autoformers, which have much less leakage of magnetic flux than conventional transformers. This means you don't need as much physical separation between the regulator and your other equipment, although one rack space of separation from low-level equipment is recommended. Toroids, while expensive, are also more compact, allowing them to fit in a single or double rack space chassis, depending on the current handled. They are also more efficient, making significantly lighter weight possible. A second difference has to do with the way the taps are switched to match the incoming voltage. Most AR Series regulators have eight taps that are switched electronically only at the voltage zero-crossings. This makes a seamless, clickless transition. The AR-PRO has 25 taps for even more accurate regulation across a wider capture range. Conventional tap-switching regulators that use only three or five taps provide much cruder regulation across a narrower range, and usually switch them at random times with relays. If a switch occurs in the middle of a cycle, it will actually distort the AC waveform. This is not exactly "clean power!" Such distortion will most likely result in an audible click. Regulators that use ferroresonant transformers do not switch taps at all, but rely on bulky transformers with lots of flux leakage, and which depend critically on the line frequency being stable at exactly 60 Hz. That means you can forget about using them with most generators (which lack the frequency accuracy of utility power) or in countries where 50 Hz power is the norm. Unlike most non-audio regulators, AR Series regulators respond to accidental connection to 220V any wildly wrong voltage that could only occur through electrical miswiring with their Extreme Voltage Shutdown circuits. Most of us who work in audio have seen this happen in an unfamiliar concert hall, or knows someone who has. For example, if your rack is powered through an AR-1215, instead of everything getting fried, the AR-1215 simply shuts down harmlessly and resumes normal operation when the 220V current source is removed.
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Although the APC unit I have will switch to battery in extreme voltage conditions.
 
The potential APC noise - would that be stuff picked up in the audio lines, or stuff just not filtered out of the ac lines? I definitely want the filtration of the Furman, but I also want to have a few minutes to power stuff down in case of total power failure (computers, synths, etc), which the Furman would not provide. As long as I am using the Furman after the APC (all gear plugged into Furman), would any potential "noise" from the APC come into play (assumming it's physically away from audio lines)?

Thanks everyone!
 
I have RackRiders in my racks to power the gear. I don't seem to have a problem with AC noise. Is it there and I'm just too insensitive? I tend not to think so. Any AC that comes into your gear is immediately rectified into DC, in any case.

Another issue: I used to use a large UPC for my recording computer, and one day the UPC failed and fried the whole damn works. So much for protection. I think if you have data that MUST be backed up then UPCs are a necessity: a late friend had a business here that provided storage for digital medical records, and he had backups backing up the backups to his backups. For audio I think that's a bit obsessive.

Until someone convinces me differently, I'll stick with the RackRiders.
 
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