Power conditioner recommendations for audio setup?

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Fryguy8

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 26, 2001
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Anybody have any recommendations for a power filter/conditioner? Must have DC-triggered outlets. Preferably either a passive or battery-based unit. Price range is < $1000, although I can be encouraged to move up.

Will be filtering for:

TV (DLP)
preamp/processor
4 amps
squeezebox

and potentially (based on availability of plugs etc)
popcornhour
cablebox
xbox
dvd player
 
Well if you are willing to spend that kind of cash, maybe look at a nice Surge X unit like the SEQ. Right about a grand for that particular unit.

What they get you over something like say a Tripplite power bar is that they are series mode protectors, rather than shunt mode. Basically a normal surge protector operates by shunting spikes to ground. Works fine for the most part, however it isn't instant so there is voltage let through, and they are sacrificial, in that the process of shunting damages them. Also if the ground wire is broken or something, they don't do anything.

Series mode protectors are basically a bigass inductor with some bigass caps. The net effect is they are very resistant to fast voltage/current changes. So they get hit with a spike, and it just gets stopped and dissipated.

Should do the trick, and is way overkill over all.

Something else you could look at is getting a single suppressor and putting it in front of all you gear, then buying a cheaper DC-triggered power bar for the amps and such that don't respond to remote control. Get something like a Zero Surge 2R15T and plug that in to the wall. In to it then plug one regular power strip for devices with remotes. The other plug you put a triggered strip. One cheap option would be this. More or less it has a sense port that sees when a device on that port is drawing current. It then switches on the other ports. So you hook your receiver in to the sense port and it'll flip on the others which you have the amps on.

As for any sort of significant conditioning, I wouldn't worry about it unless there's a reason. Noise on the powerlines shouldn't be a problem for your gear if it is well designed. Any amp worth it's shit should filter power. Now if you have an area that has lots of fluctuations, brown outs and such, then maybe something that can cope with that would be a good idea. Might have to spend more money though. You can get some from Furman that try to do auto voltage regulation, but the only way to really deal with extreme swings is to go with something like a AC-DC converter to some batteries, to a good inverter. However you need to get a quality one, the PWM ones don't work well for audio, and a large capacity quality inverter can be a ton of money.
 
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Look into PI Audio Group's Majik Buss.

I'm considering buying one myself.

The price seems right too.

ndixd.jpg


http://www.piaudiogroup.com/prod_filtration_majik.aspx

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=67931.0
 
Whenever I see "audiophile" stuff posted like that it immediately sets my BS meter off unless there's a circuit diagram or picture of the guts. From the description it sounds like some heavy gauge copper wire and a few bypass caps in a cheap metal box.

*edit: my bad, a painted wooden box.
 
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I'd say go for a nice Furman or Panamax setup. It would probably be much cheaper than what your budget allows for, so I think you'll end up being very happy in the end.
 
Yah I've been looking at the furman elites and panamax.

There's also the belkin pf60, which, feature wise has everything I want, but I'm not sure of the quality. It seems to get pretty good reviews. It's also cheap (relatively speaking, <$200). Since I'm willing to spend, probably safer to just get a furman of panamax over it.

My main question is whether I should look into things that do any sort of AC regeneration, or that feed power from a battery and then keep the battery charged as a way of cleaning.

Or should I possibly look into a fully passive solution like richard gray.
 
Yoda4561 said:
Whenever I see "audiophile" stuff posted like that it immediately sets my BS meter off unless there's a circuit diagram or picture of the guts. From the description it sounds like some heavy gauge copper wire and a few bypass caps in a cheap metal box.

*edit: my bad, a painted wooden box.
Click to expand...

Ideally, you use an isolating transformer followed by a bunch of filtering stuff to generate a fairly good sine approximation. It can get a bit hefty.

Me...I figure there are often quite a lot of things to spend $1000 on that would give a more substantial improvement. I would make dead sure that there are no such things before getting something more pricey than a cheapish UPS.
 
ashmedai, I'm pretty confident in the rest of the system, which is why I'm now looking for this component.

I appreciate the warning, but I know what type of component I would like to purchase next.
 
Figured you might be at $1000. :D

My first thought would be battery-based under the idea that the further you can get your DC stuff from the AC stuff, the better.
 
any recommendations for battery based units? I haven't really come across much.
 
Passive solutions should be all you need unless you have some really sensitive equipment and very dirty power/frequent blackouts. Power regeneration is very inefficient, and expensive. Unless you have an apartment with some really nasty power that can't be fixed or money burning a hole in your armani suit I don't recommend it. Battery backups are indispensable in areas where frequent blackouts and brownouts occur, but the vast majority make electrical and audible noise of their own, even APC's home theater UPS isn't true sine wave, I'd be hesitant to fork over cash for one without a trial period. Double online conversion UPS's would be ideal except they all are made for workstations and server rooms, where having some noisy fans running all the time to keep the UPS cool isn't an issue.

edit: Basically grab whatever distribution unit has the features you need for now. If you run into issues then you'll need to look into an isolation transformer/battery backup unit or something to plug the distribution unit into. For Battery backup the only one I can think of is the minuteman CPE-1000. It's a double online conversion 1000va ups, that also runs on household 120v/15A circuits. I'm almost certain it will make enough fan noise to make itself unwelcome though. They also have some larger units but they'll require a new outlet at the very least, and maybe a new circuit to the room.
 
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Furman? I don't know if they do battery stuff, but it's supposed to be good for this.
 
I am not using mine for the specific purpose of audio but my equipment is going through a Minuteman E1100 UPS. It has pure sinewave output and has emi / rfi noise filters and power conditioning. They have normal destop ups form factor versions too I believe.
 
Yoda, thanks for the advice.

I know that things like Richard Gray are passive. What about the furman/panamax offerings? Are their circuits passive, or are they active inline filters?

Assuming they are active: for future upgradabliity, say I bought a mid-hundreds of dollars panamax right now. Could I buy a richard gray down the line to put in front of it?

Also, any thought on the PS Audio noise harvesters (in conjunction with another device)
 
magnetik said:
I am not using mine for the specific purpose of audio but my equipment is going through a Minuteman E1100 UPS. It has pure sinewave output and has emi / rfi noise filters and power conditioning. They have normal destop ups form factor versions too I believe.
Click to expand...

How is it for noise (offline and online?) my APC back-UPS makes a bit of noise that gets coupled to my audio system even when it's not on battery.
 
Furman appears to have a range of options including passive.

For Richard Gray, I've seen comments at AVSForum to the effect that they like to catch things on fire. I have no personal experience with this, but I'd look into it before getting one...

APC is known for running the fan all the bloody time. Good for a computer room, not so fun for audio.
 
Fryguy8 said:
Yoda, thanks for the advice.

I know that things like Richard Gray are passive. What about the furman/panamax offerings? Are their circuits passive, or are they active inline filters?

Assuming they are active: for future upgradabliity, say I bought a mid-hundreds of dollars panamax right now. Could I buy a richard gray down the line to put in front of it?

Also, any thought on the PS Audio noise harvesters (in conjunction with another device)
Click to expand...

I suppose that depends on what you mean by active. To me, unless the product in question is consuming power to do something, like an online/boost+buck UPS, or a power regenerator ala PS-audio, it's a passive unit. That would make the furman/panamax units that I'm aware of passive. I don't believe any of them do active voltage regulation. They do have some series/inline filtering chokes and perhaps transformers which block and reduce line noise but these are still passive components. Browsing Richard grey they do have ferroresonant transformer and UPS units, which would provide active power regulation. I don't see a problem with combining the two myself, but I would suggest asking richard grey for specific recommendations.

Edit: Was just browsing furman's website, they do have some units that do active regulation of the line voltage. Their distribution units though don't seem to incorporate this feature. Panamax also has some new standalone battery backup/voltage regulators, but once again these are seperate from their power distribution products. So basically, get whatever dc-trigger unit you like best, and get a nice voltage regulator/surge supressor to go in front of it. There's alot more options on the market now than there were when I was shopping for this stuff.
 
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Yoda4561 said:
How is it for noise (offline and online?) my APC back-UPS makes a bit of noise that gets coupled to my audio system even when it's not on battery.
Click to expand...

it's not a standard apc type ups. I don't feel like typing the differences.. their all in the link above. basically it's for supplying clean power to mission critical appliances. It also active w/ double buck/boost voltage regulators and pure sine ac output. I don't notice any noise though, i'm using my emu 1212m digital outs fwiw.
 
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APC's consumer level UPS's are real noisemakers. Mine makes lots of noise on-battery, and is easily heard across the room after a power blip during battery recharging. They have line interactive sinewave units too but I never really wanted to spend for one, unless they changed things recently the alarms can't be disabled.
 
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Use the APC software, you can adjust the voltage ranges that it will kick in for and also let you turn off the beeping alarms, but you'll still get the whirring fan when it's on battery power.
 
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