Power Conditioners

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Martin <langem@shaw.caSPAMPROTECTION> wrote:

> Has anyone had any experience with the Monster Pro 2500 or the Furman PL8
> power conditioners? I'm looking for a small power conditioner for my home
> studio. I'd like to run my PC, P3000, 1202, preamps,etc, through it to clean
> up the EMI and guard against surges and brownouts. Would either of these be
> good choices? Any other suggestions? Thanks.

I don't know the Monster unit but we have a couple of Furmans (Furmen?)
around here. They're nice solid units that do what they're supposed to
do. That is, they have a pretty solid chassis that mounts in a rack
with outlets on the back, switches and lights on the front, and some
filtering and a circuitbreaker inside. We have one PL8 which is okay
but I prefer the other units we have, including a "PL-Pro" which is a
20-amp unit with an outlet on the front panel and current metering.

If you're expecting one of these units to eliminate voltage
fluctuations (brownouts and surges), you're barking up the wrong tree.
They don't do that. If you're hoping they'll protect your gear from
voltage spikes from lightning and such, well, they might do that. It
pretty well depends on the quality of the ground connection. As others
frequently state in response to this frequently-asked question,
lightning protection is more effective when it's located at the
building service entry, and even then it's only as good as the ground
connection.

But these power conditioners do generally have some filtering that can
sometimes remove a bit of line noise injected by other appliances, and
most of them have a sacrificial component that attempts to clamp down
on voltage spikes, and hopefully popping the internal circuitbreaker to
prevent damage to your gear. Whether any of these sacrificial
components are anywhere near fast enough to do any good is a subject
that has been discussed here in the past at length. Google is your
friend.

ulysses

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

Martin wrote:

> Has anyone had any experience with the Monster Pro 2500 or the Furman PL8
> power conditioners? I'm looking for a small power conditioner for my home
> studio. I'd like to run my PC, P3000, 1202, preamps,etc, through it to clean
> up the EMI and guard against surges and brownouts. Would either of these be
> good choices? Any other suggestions? Thanks.

If you want to guard against brownouts you need an uninterruptible power supply
( UPS ). A filter and surge arrestor can't do that.


Graham

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

In article <MPG.1ba312a24971efb9896d9@news.individual.de> jackn2mpu@monmouth.com writes:

> Problem with an ups is the weight because of the internal
> battery. Not something to take lightly, but for a home or studio use,
> not a problem, just don't think you're going to move it to clean up too
> often. Second problem with an ups is power handling. I think the biggest
> single APC unit is only 1500 watts.

It all depends on why you want a UPS. If you intend to keep your
session going when the lights go out, sure, you'll need a large UPS.
But if you only want to prevent data loss of what you've recorded or
mixed so far, you can get away with far less capacity. I have a 350 VA
UPS that cost me about $30 at Best Buy or someplace like that which is
about the size of a cigar box and weighs less than a small roast. I
carry it with me when I take my Mackie hard disk recorder out on
location to take care of when someone trips over a power cord or
"helpfully" unplugs me when I'm in the midst a backup at the end of
the session while packing up other things.

For a computer-based studio, a modest UPS will work just fine. It
might be worth while to replace a CRT monitor with an LCD if it means
you can get away with a smaller UPS. While it won't pay for itself
immediately, it might pay for itself when you add in the saving of
electricity over a couple of years. I haven't researched this so the
difference might be insignificant, but intuitivey I'd think an LCD
monitor would take less power than an LCD of the equivalent size.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers (mrivers@d-and-d.com)
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me here: double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Archived from groups: rec.audio.pro (More info?)

> I have several furman's but have never personally needed them. On the
> other hand, I have a friend who furman saved him thousands. He was
> plugged into a power supply while playing live somewhere in san diego.
> The power surged and the furman blew out. His loss was the furman and
> nothing more. It was smoking so if it had not been in line everything
> would have been toast.

I'd say that was a good investment!