Let's talk about power equipment for your audio gear

Knocks on wood I guess I’ll just have to hope I never have an event mid-listening session.

Welp there goes my thunderstorm listening plans

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Do it with a bad E-Stat for that extra thrill :upside_down_face:

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We fixed and changed all the wall power cables, outlet’s and main power board / fuse board to modern grounded power standard’s in this apartment before moving in.
Zero issues with interference or noises etc.
Unless there is major power down so half of the city is down.

Start from the basics is the only way to go.

Or you can listen to all the marketing in the world and tube videos. lol

I need another power surge so i was thinking of getting this:

Since i need one anyway and this isnt that expensive i thought what could it hurt? maybe it will improve sound? My house was built in the 1960’s and theres a lot of neighborhood thats gone up around it. its a suburb of los angeles. I had to upgrade the power in my home. so i’m not sure how this may be affecting the audio devices im plugging into the surge.

but judging from @M0N’s comments it seems those items will not have as big an effect on my sound as i think they might? maybe i should just forget it and just buy another 20$ power surge.

People really should do more research on subject and (shit) gear they buy. Lot’s of pictures inside of many of the units, search the info.
Like these.


That ain’t even the worst… there are really bad ones.
Some of them… they really should be left alone and not ever be used.

Audiorocks have more purpose and use.

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FYI:

I wrote to APC customer service and asked if their products was sending the current through the battery, during normal usage when there is no power surge.

As I understand their reply they don’t, the current is not going through the battery and you don’t get that benefit of more clean power due to the battery in the UPS.

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I have also had good experience with rechargeable batteries.
Especially with phono preamplifiers it is common to use them isolated from the rest of the system and powered only by one battery. This helps to minimize noise, hum and other interferences and optimal DC voltage seems to make the sound much more defined.
I made my comparisons with Trigons batterymodul and a Trigon Vanguard II and III Preamp.
I suspect this effect is especially noticeable in phono modules because of the high gain and the susceptibility of cartidges to interference.

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The small (and cheap) Furman stuff is cheap for the reason of it doing minor filtering and mostly being a surge protector and dsitribution box.

On the other hand you can be sure it will not burn your house down.

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It never does that to begin with. If a UPS were to do that, it would produce hydrogen and blow up.

From ABB’s UPS catalog:


Online UPS means the battery is directly (except for charging circuitry) on the internal DC bus. As all power passing the UPS is passed over that DC bus, you get the benefits eventhough the battery is not directly involved.

APC has Online UPS for “home use”:

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hahaha…home use, yet selection is for network / server, LoL!

any UPS can be used at home…with the exception of anything higher than 1500VA. well, not even then…you just need to have 20A 120v or 30A 230v circuits installed.

online double conversion suffer from being noisy due to the need of 24x7 active cooling, so their usefulness for audio is limited unfortunately.

You could get away with stuffing them into the basement.

My thinking.
In Germany you have 3 Phase at home (mostly in the kitchen for stove and such). Getting another 3 Phase elsewhere isn’t a big deal.

The active cooling part is a hurdle, not a project killer, I’d say.

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well, if you have the ability to wire up a circuit in the basement or a utility room that lets you run power to your gear in your audio / entertainment area, yeah…not a deal killer, but pretty significant hurdle.

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As I am not an engineer, I had to receive the same description from APC and talk to them on the phone. But also understand that it is possible to get more clean power from an UPS, but I don’t want to live with the noice it produces.

Does not seem that bad, to be honest.
Bad example as the 1U server in the rack drowns out all other noise (timestamped to 11:11), at 11:33 you can hear the fan kick on as it actually has do to work.


Gigabyte RZ282-Z90 bad?

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believe me…it can be bad. I lost a customer after selling them these for work PC’s. the howl bugged their client a lot but because it was what they wanted, no returns.

and a buddy of mine bought one from CyberPower…it was so bad he modded it with quiet / efficient fans from Noctua.

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bad enuff that it drowned out his listening through is Woo DAC / Amp n LCD-3’s.

The interesting part is, that the local agent for APC whom I talked to on the phone, said that he would not recomend any of their Online UPS solutions for audiophiles, if it was to be located in the same room as the speakers or where you use your headphones.
The noice (40db) was over time too much.

absolutely right, SMM…online double conversion are not meant to be put somewhere meant to be quiet.

this may actually be a good reason for why the PSA power station costs…having to develop a system that works similarly to an online double conversion but w/o the noise and other inconveniences they come with.

you may want to look at some of the solutions out there that create a pure sinewave. they cost a bit more, but are still quite affordable ($250ish for 1500VA). most UPS use an artificial stepped sinewave and that may not play nicely with sensitive audio gear.

  • I use the CP1500PFCLCD

I cannot say I hear anything bad from my Vali 2 and Mac MIni it’s plugged into that are both being fed by the generic power bar I have plugged into the battery back up sockets. once I have my ENOG2 Pro in hand, I think I will plug them all directly into 3 of the 4 sockets and use the 4th with the power bar to continue working with my other computer gear (Tiny, networking, monitors, etc) and see if I can hear a difference.

I’d say get one of those and if it doesn’t work out, reuse it on some other PC / electronics gear that will benefit from the back up power it provides. :slight_smile:

Closed loop oil cooling would work, brings the difficulty of running two hoses and power to an external cooling unit.

Passive cooling is a bitch.

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