Want a dead quiet signal path?

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sickstring69

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I'm a newbie with you guys but I have been recording for better than 2 years now and made a $70 discovery that has really paid off. I went from a basement studio to a garage studio and noticed especially in the garage my mics and inherently noisy ARTV3 preamps were extra noisy. I searched the net - suspecting AC noise - and bought a "Tripplite" isolation transformer. This probably is not news to most of you and I think PC recording systems may already benefit from this isolation. Anyway, this thing is incredible. It's a 300 watt model and my whole studio runs off of it - including my AW16G. Absolutely nice and quiet! And it also serves as a surge protector. Hey, if you decide you don't like it-use it as a doorstop-it weighs about 40 LBS!
 
How do you run the entire studio on 300 watts? My mixer is 450 watts all by itself.
 
perhaps he is running a cassete recorder or a fostex mr-8, thats all you need.....................ya right, thats what i though when i bought the thing
 
sickstring69 said:
And it also serves as a surge protector.
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Sorry - no... balanced isolation transformers do nothing to stop varying voltage, they simply provide a stable common ground for all your gear to run to.

You still would need surge protector or voltage regulator on your mains to protect the gear from fluctuating voltages/brown-outs.

I use 3 Furman Isolation xFormers myself.
 
Farview said:
How do you run the entire studio on 300 watts? My mixer is 450 watts all by itself.
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That sounds like a lot of watts for a mixer. What kind do you have?

Ed
 
Ed Dixon said:
That sounds like a lot of watts for a mixer. What kind do you have?

Ed
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I'm guessing Kitchen Aide... heavy duty. With the potato beater attachment. :p
 
Ed Dixon said:
That sounds like a lot of watts for a mixer. What kind do you have?

Ed
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Soundcraft Ghost 32 channel. It's a full sized analog recording desk. What do you use? look at the wattage on your power suppy and see what it says.
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
...voltage regulator on your mains...
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By chance does anyone know where one might look to purchase sophisticated 'whole house' electric protection technology. We lost the neutral (never tightened down by the prior owner on the panel) and we had 220 through the entire house. Nuked all kinds of stuff. Still only partially recovered.

Right now I am conversant with 'ARC fault' breakers (which would have helped a LOT had we had them), and whole house UPS (which is, in fact, nothing more than an inverter (such as the SunnyBoy) and some deep cycle batteries. The whole house UPS is EXPENSIVE by the way. But I am always looking to learn more.

Hope you can help.
 
Farview said:
Soundcraft Ghost 32 channel. It's a full sized analog recording desk. What do you use? look at the wattage on your power suppy and see what it says.
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Each week I use a 32 channel Machie board. The specs by Machie show 60W as the power need (page 57 of the owners manual under specifications).

Most boards deal with low level signals and produce no powered output. As a result, little power is needed to run them. The biggest use of power in most boards is for the lights on the front.

Ed
 
Ed Dixon said:
The biggest use of power in most boards is for the lights on the front.

Ed
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That is an SR32X4. Their 8-bus consoles use an outboard p/s, 400W power consumption. Better consoles use outboards. The power supply to provide enough headroom for all the mic pres, phantom power, and output stages just would not practically fit in a console frame. The power supply is overdesigned so that it never bogs down, even under full board usage, and provides more stability for the 18,12,5, and 48 volt supplies the board needs.
Wanna see your SR board freak out? Plug in 10-15 condenser mics, fill the rest of the channels with dynamics, get a decent level on them, assign them all to the L/R mix bus, and try to drive a PA more than about 75 feet away. (Don't forget to have the fire extinguisher close at hand.) I have an SR24X4, use it all the time, but it has pretty severe power supply limitations.
The biggest power drain is the +/- 18 volt rails, though you are right, compared the rest of the board, those damn lights suck a lot of juice.
 
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Hell, yea! The power supply for my Sountracs is the size of the old Peavey CS800's And weighs almost as much. Not certain what the wattage is.
 
Most external power supplies are rated higher than required by the attached gear to avoid problems near max load. What they pull in normal operation may be considerably less than the printed rating.

External supplies also usually supports a range of different gear, and the manufacturer usually picks the supply most near what the device in question needs. If the board requres only 50 W and the smallest external they have is 200W, then that will be used and just run cool.

Ed
 
The Mackie 8-buss power supply provides 220 watts of power to the 8-buss consoles.... however, to acheive this, it consumes 400 watts (so you don't wanna leave that thing running all the time!)
 
The Machie specs for the 8 bus boards show a power requiorement of 400 Watts.

http://www.mackie.com/products/8Bus/8Busspecs.html

Unless everything is running at once, it would generally use considrably less than that, on average.

The supply generally consumes somewhat more than is needed by the device in question, as the supply itself wastes some power. However when the board is turned off or unplugged, the power supply would probably use much less than the rated 400 W.

Ed
 
Sorry Ed...

I got my info straight from my manuals -- the power supply provides 220 watts to the console, not 400. It does, however, consume 400 watts...... and the board itself can't be powered off independently of the power supply.
 
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I neither have the board or the manual and defer to whatever data you have there. It may be that their web site is in error on this point, or perhaps is stating the requirements for the supply unit rather than the actual power requires of the board itself.

220 W sounds more reasonable for board use, and the average use is probably much less.

Ed
 
But even though the board doesn't use it all the time, there would be no point in having the big honkin' power supply and starve it for power.
 
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