UPS for mobile rig.

[LouD.]

ok people -

just about pulling my hair out over here trying to decide on a power source for my mobile rig. It will be a 10U or 12U rack with an API 500 rack, ad/da converter, hard drive, interface, rane cp52, and a few other odds & ends.

I'm reading a lot about balanced power & sine wave power, but it is important to keep this rig small and mobile.

SO....

Would this tripp lite be my answer?
http://www.tripplite.com/products/pr...productID=3053

"Maintains sine-wave 120V nominal output over an input range of 83 to 147V"

if not, i'm thinking of going with a surgex or brick wall surge protector as recommended in other threads.

Thanks in advance for any info

- Lou

[reflexon]

You mentioned balanced power. Be careful when hooking up a ups to a 3 phase balanced power distro. Usually it is a good idea to have a single phase distro in between the balanced power and the ups. Otherwise things can go very wrong. I don't think this is what you are talking about though, just a thought. If you are just looking for something to keep your power constant and a surge protector, then what you mentioned should be fine. I have always had good luck with furmans.

[LouD.]

Originally Posted by reflexon

You mentioned balanced power. Be careful when hooking up a ups to a 3 phase balanced power distro. Usually it is a good idea to have a single phase distro in between the balanced power and the ups.

well, i was just wondering if that "maintains sine wave nominal output" is the same as balanced power. hell - maybe i should look further into what balanced power actually is and if i do indeed need it.

thanks

[LouD.]

uhm..... bump?

[yrplace]

In my experience the thing you need to worry about is losing power not so much the "quality" of the power source.

This assumes you are recording in the US. I won't hazard a guess about the rest of the world. We did over a hundred gigs w/out a UPS and got along just fine.

My system runs on one 20 amp circuit and we most often simply plug into house power.

That said I once was given power from the PA company and during the show one of their engineers managed to trip over the cable and pulled out the plug. Luckily we only lost about two minutes of audio, but the next day I bought a large 20 amp UPS supply for the system. It weighs over 100 lbs and has yet to be needed , but I'm glad to have it.

Of course on the 2nd gig with the UPS a power strip that was feeding everything after the UPs failed and we lost a song. No more power strips after that.

So I'd suggest a good UPs unit and proper distro cables for your power if its a portable system. If its a truck then you want a proper distro box as well as the UPS.

Good luck.

Mark Linett

[fifthcircle]

I bring a small UPS for my computer- nothing else. I figure if power goes out, most DAWs will loose their recorded audio. Plus, discs and such don't like loosing power without a proper shutdown. Beyond that, if power goes out, it goes out. Not much that can be done. At least I don't loose data that has already been recorded.

--Ben

[foldback]

Cheap UPS units can put noise into your audio. I use an expensive "pure sine" system and run all my recording and monitoring gear off of it. Whatever you buy, be sure you can return it if it puts buzz into your system.

Have you checked to find out how many watts your remote recording rig consumes?

When you get your UPS test the setup completely before going on assignment. Pull the AC plug and force it to run on the UPS for half of its rated time capacity.

[cleantone]

Have you checked to find out how many watts your remote recording rig consumes?

What is the best way to go about that?

[Remoteness]

It's pretty simple. All you have to do is look at the back of your equipment usually near the power cord there's a label that states the Watts used. Some manufactures place it on the side of the gear. You can also find that information in the manual.

All you have to do is add up all the Wattage and multiply that by 25 to 50 (or more) %. So, let's say all your gear totals about 500 Watts and you want a redundancy of 50% the total Watts would be 750. 25% would be 625.

With that said, GO WITH THE LARGER NUMBERS! Go even higher -- IMO, 100% over what you really need is a very cool place to be.

[LouD.]

Thanks for the responses guys. I'm gonna hold off on the UPS for now, and just roll with a power strip. I'll upgrade as needed. No real high pressure clients here or anything like that.


- Lou


edit: Ah - I'm seeing that any little insignificant post to a thread "bumps" (imagine that) the thread back to the top o the list. Probably the scurge of 'thank you' posts. I can see how this would get annoying... so yeah - thanks for the advice - sorry for the useless bump. im gonna go find the faq and brush up on some slutiquette.

[foldback]

Originally Posted by cleantone

What is the best way to go about that?

Buy an inexpensive amp-clamp at Home Depot for around $40. I have a modified 6 foot extension cord for doing amp measurements.

I carefully removed some of the outer jacket to expose the inner three wires, white, black and green. Be sure you don't expose any copper conductor. You don't need to in order to measure amperage with a clamp-on.

Green is ground. White is neutral. Black is hot.

Plug your modified cord in and plug a power stip into that with all your hardware plugged into that. Crank up the remote system. If you're going to run your speakers on it be sure they are blasting so they're using amperage too. Once everything is up and running, clamp your amp-clamp around the Hot lead and read the meter, it should tell you how many amps you're using. Multiply the number of amps times the voltage and you'll know how many actual watts you're using.

Audio stuff is an inductive load. To be safe and have some headroom in your UPS. I never load a UPS to more than 80 percent of its rated wattage capacity. In UPS speak, that allows some room for "power factor".

Gadgets like power amplifiers may surge when you turn them on. You can check the surge amount with an amp-clamp too.

You may need to turn your powered monitors on one at a time to keep from exceeding the UPS capacity. The best thing to do is buy the biggest UPS you can afford (within reason).

As I said before, be sure you can return whatever you buy in case it makes your rig hum.

Also, 110VAC can kill you. Use caution and intelligence when messing with it.

[Remoteness]

Yeah, if reading and calculating the information off the equipment or gear manuals is a hassle (or too quick) definitely do what foldback suggested -- It's a lot more fun.

We have some very good suggestions in this thread. They are all valid but, I still recommend much more overhead... At least 50% if you want to hang with me.

If you go 100% over kill, I'll buy you lunch!