Good Power Conditioners

[zooce]

Hey everyone,

So I did some searching through GS on power conditioners, and most of the threads I found are from a while ago so I thought I'd start a new.

I'm getting a pretty noticeable buzz or hum coming from my speakers and I think I've narrowed it down to the power being supplied to them. So I figure I need to try a new power conditioner. Right now I have the cheapest Furman I could find, the M-8x2. Can anyone recommend a decent solution?

Thanks for the help,

Dana

[GZsound]

A typical "power conditioner" is nothing more than a fancy surge protector.

You need to spend several hundred dollars or more to buy a true power conditioner. You might also try getting an Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) making sure you get one that outputs a sine wave.

A true power "conditioner" will offer voltage stability, filtering and adequate grounding.

[Psykiatrizt]

monster power has some decent ones

[adamboon]

The Furman ones (not the cheapest "Consumer" Furmans) are outstanding!

We have heaps of them. I have seen them completely destroy line noises.

all the UPS's i've seen/used are junk! there "Conditioning" is useless and the power they "create" is TERRIBLE! (seen them blow stuff up).

I haveto admit, I havn't had expreience with the really expensive UPS' (just middle of the road APC's).

[Fizzyhair]

Some of those "glorified surge protectors" actually do a great job of cleaning up noise. I have a couple of hifi grade Russ Andrews ones at £200 each and they are great at the job.
Then there's my £40 'lindy 6 way' that is just as good and internally almost identical. Plus I had three of them delivered for the cost of one of the Russ Andrews ones.

Of course a UPS is the way but even some of these don't really help ground hum. It's finding something that works at the end of the day.

[Bill@WelcomeHome]

I don't know that this is the solution to your problem, but there ARE actual power conditioners. The typical $100 rack mount power strip is usually nothing more on the technical side than what you find in a $5 Walmart power strip. Possibly with the addition of some cool lights and maybe a meter, but no more real power treatment occurs.

But all of the major companies in that field make power conditioners. Furman (the 1220 product line, though that is an old number), Surgex, ETA, Monster, Equi=tech... there is no shortage of suppliers of power conditioning. A base unit for a small home studio (15 or 20 amps) runs somewhere around $600 +/-. I've been using a Furman AR117 for probably 20 years. I've found them on ebay as cheap as $175. The toroidal transformer and other guts cleans up and keeps the output voltage at a constant 117 volts (+/- a coupler of volts) from an input voltage of anything from about 90 volts to about 140 volts. Definitely is nicer to your gear than line voltage.

Be careful fo the much touted UPS, as few are designed for reactive loads, they are mostly built for computers. You can starve your gear and, if you read the fine print, the guarantees are worthless. Lightning hit a pole across the street from my studio and took out a computer, so I pulled out the guarantee and read it... I would have had to have sent the computer to them at my expense and THEY get to decide if a failure of their UPS was responsible, how responsible they are, and how much if anything they are going to pay. Would they decide that a Sound Blaster was a good replacement for our high dollar audio card? And they may take 30 days from receiving your computer to decide this. How much business would we have lost in four to six weeks? Did we have deadlines to reach? I tore the computer apart, determined the damage, ordered the parts, and was back in business in three days. Oh, and I threw away the UPS.. Worthless POS.

[zooce]

Thanks for all of the replies.

I'm going to be saving up for something like the Furman AR-1215. Hopefully it will help!

Thanks again!

[Aeolian]

The Furman AR is about the cheapest way to go. You might find an older AR-15 on ebay. You might also find a used Variac which will isolate and correct voltage although it won't dynamically correct like the Furmans. Note that either of these won't run a ton of stuff, but should manage one power amp and some low draw rack gear. You couldn't run a large PA off it though.

Hum (other than stray induced fields from things next to each other) is almost always a ground problem. Multiple ground paths with different resistances creating current flow.

[stafs]

The only UPS that can help, are ON-LINE UPS. On-line UPS's are miles ahead of any Furman's superbox', imho. And from my experience they do excellent job in studios, where electricity isn't top notch. But... they cost much more than average Furman boxes. Sometimes those can Furman's do the job, but from what You are saying, sounds like it can be a grounding problem. If it is grounding - 'magic' boxes won't help.

[TurboJets]

I've used APC ups boxes for at least 7 years now in 3 different locations and there's an audible difference with/without the box in the chain. The original APC I bought 7 years ago is still working and protects my main DAW equipment, mixer and rack. The cheap Furman and Juice Goose boxes I use for power distribution are simply that...as the others have said..."glorified power strips". They are obviously in the chain after the UPS box.

[fastlanestoner]

I use that same Furman and have no problems. Have you tried relocating your gear to another part of the room if possible?

[zooce]

Hey all,

So I found a UPS that seems like it would work, plus it's cheaper than the Furman I mentioned earlier.

What do you think?

APC BR1000G

[zooce]

BTW,

I'm powering an iMac (M-Audio ProFire 610 powered via usb), a Glyph 050Q hard drive, a midi keyboard, a second monitor (small and old), a pair of Dynaudio BM5a MkII's, and a pair of JBL Control 2P's.

[zmainardi]

Read the site reviews and they say it's noisy...

[Quint]

Originally Posted by zooce

Hey all,

So I found a UPS that seems like it would work, plus it's cheaper than the Furman I mentioned earlier.

What do you think?

APC BR1000G

That's not a double online conversion unit though. Notice the "stepped approximation to a sine wave" part on the specs section.

Check out UPSforLESS - APC SmartUPS & Uninterruptible Power Supply Battery Backup Experts - Double Conversion UPS's

You can get a 1500va unit that runs of a stanard 15 amp circuit although you may not need that much juice.

[Quint]

Originally Posted by TurboJets

I've used APC ups boxes for at least 7 years now in 3 different locations and there's an audible difference with/without the box in the chain. The original APC I bought 7 years ago is still working and protects my main DAW equipment, mixer and rack. The cheap Furman and Juice Goose boxes I use for power distribution are simply that...as the others have said..."glorified power strips". They are obviously in the chain after the UPS box.

What model of APC are you using and is it double online conversion? Just curious?

I'm about to buy a double conversion unit myself to power my console, daw, rack, etc. Hopefully it will provide enough juice for everything.

[stafs]

From other thread:

Originally Posted by The Byre

1. An off-line UPS takes over when the power fails or drops below a certain value. These are considerably cheaper than on-line, but will do nothing for taking out mains-based interference (in the unlikely event that you are suffering this).

2. An on-line UPS replaces the in-coming power supply with a sine wave at the desired voltage at all times.

3. Any UPS has to have a capacity of at least 50% more than the equipment to be supplied, if it is not to create more problems than it solves. In an ideal World, it should have double the capacity of the equipment to be used.

Most power problems come from poor grounding. All too often, the introduction of a UPS is accompanied by no additional effort in grounding.

Check your grounding and supply, BEFORE you waste money on any kind of boxes! The magic box that somehow solves grounding (aka earthing) problems has not been invented and never will be.

On-line UPS is the same double conversion UPS.