Opinions on Tripp Lite products please

tripp and apc are the top quality products in power conditioning. as long as you stick with their industrial quality lines. they do make $25 surge strips that are at least safe compared to all others at that price.

i prefer to have my best gear on a ups. there are cheap ups's that do not put out a true sine wave on battery. those will destroy audio equipment in an instant. then there are line interactive units. at a minimum i would suggest those. next there are on line units. these are the absolute ultimate power conditioning. apc does not have a small affordable on line unit. tripp does.

your system will perform better,last much longer and be saved from instant death that can occur for a number of reasons.

if you are protecting over $5,000 of audio equipment http://www.tripplite.com/products/up...martonline.cfm
comes with my highest recommendation.

what size you need depends on what your load is. they have a calculator at their website. the idea is not to run your gear off of that for any period of time. it is to shut off your equipment "gracefully" in case of a power outage spike/sag or critical ac power fault.

if you are not protecting over $5,000 of audio equipment i think the two units you picked out are fine line conditioners. they are very limited compared to what i just proposed. it depends on what is at stake and how valuable it is to you.

i want to point out that either the units you are looking at or a full blown on line ups are far superior to the expensive audiophile solutions in this market.

the same basic technology used in those less than $1,000 ups's i just pointed to is used by apc in million dollar power quality grids. those protect some of the most important equipment in the world. such as the internic and google.

in case you were intrested, that technology is called infrastruxure by apc.

a $100 ups will power a cheap home pc fine. consumer pc psu's have decent "stay up" and operate only as a class b device. they do not need super fast response or a true sine wave. however that type of ups is not compatible with any audio equipment period. not even a $100 receiver. as soon as that went to battery the audio device would be smoke.

if the on line is too expensive look at apc smartups. it is much more capable than what you suggested. for one thing it has real avr implementation. a simple transformer can only stay up for a few seconds. just when serious damage is around the corner that the smartups will save your gear from.

the transformer based unit cannot boost for long periods or do so repeatedly.
what they do not tell you is the rise/fall,transient and refresh times on that unit. it is in the white paper.

anyways, i do realise the price of what you were looking at and what i mentioned. what you are looking at is still more affordable and better than the so called audiophile products for this task.

i figured i'd tell the whole story on this so when people see this in the future the answer is here.

edit: i forgot to mention never "daisy chain" off a power quality device! never ever! that means you find another use for that isobar if you get a line conditioner or ups. these devices rely strongly on ground presence. daisy chaining off of that seriously compromises the ground seen by these devices.

music_man

happy to be of help.

music_man

Dang, I guess I need to rethink my Line conditioner. Music Man, assuming my Monster HTS 3500 is garbage, if you were only going to power the CS, which Tripp Lite would your recommend? (I am probably going to look into one of the units you recommended above for my main system).

if i was only powering the cs i'd get one of the on line units about 500va.
a smartups from apc wiil be cheaper but the cs running off battery sounds the best.

on line units are always on battery never ac. battery is a far superior source to ac and does not require any conditioning. i think on battery the cs can beat almost any dac or premp out there.

there are better headphone amps still but be prepared to spend over $1,000usd just for a headamp then. so if you figure the cost of the tripp into getting the most of the cs it is still very reasonably priced for all you get. since mine will power phones and speakers it is very cost effective for reference grade sound.

music_man

Thanx MM

I've always wondered why so much was spent on power supplies when the obvious answer seemed (to me) to be some kind of battery to buffer the power.

BTW MusicMan.

Can I assume that you think the Monster is crap? (Ps I don't base my self image on my gear so I won't be offended by anything you say)

The Monster works as advertised. Problem is conditioning beyond a minimalist approach is a sure fire way to reduce performance.

There's a reason Hydra conditioners are well reviewed, they contain 1 filter cap, nothing more. And frankly that's all you need since even a crappy power supply will do the rest. Anything more is introducing unwanted resistance into the line.

By that token, I prefer my current Monster 1000 PRO to my Monster AVS2000/HTPS7000 combo. Pretty sad given the price gap

i think the absolute best "diet" for any electronics is batteries. i say get the on line ups. less money than a high end audiophile unit anyways. it has no filtering at all!

music_man

Informative thread, so far I like this one.
http://tripplite.com/products/produc...4#buyingpoints

I especially like how it convert AC to DC, and re-converts it to 120v at a perfect 60hz sine wave.

This will be perfect for my dream TV, receiver, CD player, PS3, headphone amp.

Battery life question?

I'm seriously considering the Tripp Lite SU750XL for my main hi fi rig which would include a Squeesebox2, Big Ben, Tact 2.0s, Central Station/Dac1 (whichever performs best). I would assume that the battery life is an issue. Anyone know how long one can expect to get out of a battery?
I don't see anything on the site about replacements. Does that mean one needs a whole new unit when the battery dies?

first of all, a $60 apc simulated sinewave unit is never to be used with audio! unless you want smoke. for inexpensive pc's it's fine.

as long as you treat the batteries properly you could get anywhere from 2 years(very unlucky) to 8+. average for small units is about maybe 5 years. multiple battery units on 3 phase current last a lot longer.

by the time your battery dies your warranty will be over. so buy a battery on the internet maybe from tiger direct. they are much cheaper.

the entire unit is good for 3-4 battery changes before the inverter takes a dump. so figure it lasts 15 years or more. now figure that the audiophile line conditioners work by using sacrificial components. see how a good deal this is?

music_man

It's a no brainer.

What I can' t figure out is why all the attention in the "audiopile" community to what amounts to half assed and, very very expensive, solutions like those offered by ByBee, PS Audio, Audio Prism etc etc etc. Like I said earlier, a battery solutioin seems obvious. In fact I'm surprised that more audio gear doesn't simply build in a battery power supply to begin with. Let's face it, that's probably why miniature portable headphone amps (like the Ray Samuels Hornet) can actually sound decent.

Ps The AKG K701s can be had for $260 these days (Beach Audio). Man oh man... what an incredible bargain. I know what my best friends are getting for Christmas.