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UPS as power condition

post #1 of 54
1/18/07 at 8:01pm
Thread Starter 
An electrician friend of mine whose been doing it for 30 odd years said that the products sold as power conditioners do the same job as a UPS does. He said if I want to experiment with it's effects on audio I'd be best off buying a UPS and seeing if that has any effect.

His reasoning was:
A conditioner filters out the bad stuff (he used the right terms but i forgot them promptly.. spikes and stuff i guess) from AC and you get the result.

He said an uninterruptible power supply does it's job by getting AC from the wall, converting it to DC (and storing some amount of that DC for when power is lost and to give you a warning you've got X minutes left to finish up before losing power). It then coverts that DC back into AC which he said will be about the most pure AC signal you could get.

What do you guys think? Especially interested in the opinon of other electricians or electrical engineers.
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post #2 of 54
1/18/07 at 8:10pm
He's absolutely right.
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showth...&highlight=ups
I get better performance with this $50 UPS then any conditioner I've ever used.
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post #3 of 54
1/18/07 at 8:50pm
Thread Starter 
The reason I ask is because I get strange random static hisses from my Gilmore Lite headphone amp when in my bedroom, but not in the kitchen. It happens with no source plugged in. I have the dedicated power supply but it's the same whether it's through the DPS or the wallwart (which I also bought). I unplugged and turned off everything else in the room from that outlet but I forgot to try plugging the amp straight into the wall (oops). I'll try another power board and see what that does first, but I'm still curious since you say it makes such a big difference. I can't find the model you rave about, and wouldn't want to order from where you bought it (wrong wall voltage etc, I'm in Australia), but do you think this would perform similarly?

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=327456

For 50USD, yours must only be entry level in their line, as this is the cheapest I can find and it's 75AUD (about 50USD). If it has 4 outlets that would be enough to do all my hifi gear on one strip (not counting the PC: CDP, DAC, speaker amp, headphone amp).
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post #4 of 54
1/18/07 at 8:54pm
When I tried an APC UPS I heard a loud buzzing sound through my headphones when it was running on battery.
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post #5 of 54
1/18/07 at 9:08pm
Ditto, Thing is.. you don't want to run off the battery.

Quote:
Originally Posted by rincewind View Post
The reason I ask is because I get strange random static hisses from my Gilmore Lite headphone amp when in my bedroom, but not in the kitchen. It happens with no source plugged in. I have the dedicated power supply but it's the same whether it's through the DPS or the wallwart (which I also bought). I unplugged and turned off everything else in the room from that outlet but I forgot to try plugging the amp straight into the wall (oops). I'll try another power board and see what that does first, but I'm still curious since you say it makes such a big difference. I can't find the model you rave about, and wouldn't want to order from where you bought it (wrong wall voltage etc, I'm in Australia), but do you think this would perform similarly?

http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=327456

For 50USD, yours must only be entry level in their line, as this is the cheapest I can find and it's 75AUD (about 50USD). If it has 4 outlets that would be enough to do all my hifi gear on one strip (not counting the PC: CDP, DAC, speaker amp, headphone amp).
It's more along the lines of this.
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=137904
But think this is the old version.
You aussies got it so bad, it's just sad... That $50 UPS here would probably be ~ $500AUD... literally.


This is it here,
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=171926

Also I say screw UPS's that go and dirty up the wave by converting it from square to sine. Square sounds awesome!! Clean, stable, sharp... perfect for hi-fi.
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post #6 of 54
1/18/07 at 9:28pm
They always say "don't use computer UPS for audio". I don't have all the arguments against it at my fingertips, but its considered a truism almost on the level of "Bose sucks".
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post #7 of 54
1/18/07 at 9:28pm
most uninterruptable power supplies when running off its batteries (DC) to supply emergency AC power to connected devices do so with crude approximations of sine curves, not necessarily a square wave but then not usually a true sine curve due to the added costs of producing such a curve, so it isn't that ideal. the ones you want are the true sine-wave generators, which are often not within the range of the entry-level devices....

also, I don't think most UPS devices do the AC->DC->AC conversion all the time when running and only filter the incoming power by other methods while running normally. those that do AC->DC->AC conversion to produce the usual normal output typically are of higher end models with larger capacities and of course higher price tags.
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post #8 of 54
1/18/07 at 9:46pm
huh... I should take a perfect wave from my signal generator, that'd probably do it. If I cared I supose.
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post #9 of 54
1/18/07 at 10:06pm
Thread Starter 
OK. Well for my current problem I can't see the point of buying a UPS because I have the Gilmore's dedicated PSU which I would expect to do the very job we're talking about here. That's why I bought an external PSU right?? I assume power conditioners do the same thing and there's no point having both in the power supply chain to one piece of gear. If I don't have any luck I'll contact Justin.

As for other gear, if you're not running it in some form of AC>DC>AC mode then it completely circumvents the reason my friend said they are worth getting it WRT audio! I though power is sin wave in type, I don't know what all the square wave talk is about.
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post #10 of 54
1/18/07 at 10:12pm
Justin makes some of the best PSU's I've ever heard. I wouldn’t fuss to much. But I will mention I did hear a difference when plugging my GS-1 into the PF60.
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post #11 of 54
1/18/07 at 10:16pm
UPS are fine unless they run completely on batteries, the quality of the AC that they produce, and the wave shape, is not the adequate for audio use, it is a gross approximation of a sine wave, and usually very noisy...Don't forget that it is just an emergency solution to avoid any damage to the PCs and gear connected to it...This concept may change overtime while they get better and better approximations to the sine waves, but for now do not run any audio from an AC of any UPS running from batteries...

But the filtering while they are running of the wall, is very similar if not better to any of those called power conditioners...Same stuff inside...
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post #12 of 54
1/18/07 at 10:18pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah, I reckon he makes good stuff too. This is why I really wanna find out what's going on, and as long as I'm getting junk static through my left channel with no source plugged in, I will fuss over it :P I have more testing to do this arvo before jumping to conclusions.

Sovkiller: well the electrician said it was the AC>DC>AC bit which is the really important thing. I'll ask him again, but then I doubt he could comment cos it would depend entirely on the which UPS your looking at and their filtering quality.
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post #13 of 54
1/18/07 at 10:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sovkiller View Post
UPS are fine unless they run completely on batteries, the quality of the AC that they produce, and the wave shape, is not the adequate for audio use, it is a gross approximation of a sine wave, and usually very noisy...Don't forget that it is just an emergency solution to avoid any damage to the PCs and gear connected to it...This concept may change overtime while they get better and better approximations to the sine waves, but for now do not run any audio from an AC of any UPS running from batteries...

But the filtering while they are running of the wall, is very similar if not better to any of those called power conditioners...Same stuff inside...

UPS’s are not dirty at all, when run off the battery yes. But otherwise; as clean and sterile as can be. I don't like sine, it's dirty and never completely stable. Square's consistent and stable.
Exactly, a $50 UPS can stomp all over any conditioner out there.

Quote:
Originally Posted by rincewind View Post
Yeah, I reckon he makes good stuff too. This is why I really wanna find out what's going on, and as long as I'm getting junk static through my left channel with no source plugged in, I will fuss over it :P I have more testing to do this arvo before jumping to conclusions.

Sovkiller: well the electrician said it was the AC>DC>AC bit which is the really important thing. I'll ask him again, but then I doubt he could comment cos it would depend entirely on the which UPS your looking at and their filtering quality.
I use to get static now and then with my GS-1. But as soon as it came; I quickly drained the amp and repowered…. then.... gone.
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post #14 of 54
1/18/07 at 11:37pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ayt999 View Post
most uninterruptable power supplies when running off its batteries (DC) to supply emergency AC power to connected devices do so with crude approximations of sine curves, not necessarily a square wave but then not usually a true sine curve due to the added costs of producing such a curve, so it isn't that ideal. the ones you want are the true sine-wave generators, which are often not within the range of the entry-level devices....

also, I don't think most UPS devices do the AC->DC->AC conversion all the time when running and only filter the incoming power by other methods while running normally. those that do AC->DC->AC conversion to produce the usual normal output typically are of higher end models with larger capacities and of course higher price tags.
you are correct. most only 'intervene' when there are irregularities in the power supplied, and those are commonly referred to as 'line interactive'. The better ones, are on-line units which do convert from AC to DC then back to AC again. But is that really necessary? I have put scope in more than one house, and I have never seen anything besides a perfect sine wave. granted, there are some ripples here, there, but mostly are very very HF stuff that is easily filtered out. So unless your power is truly abysmal, I would stay with stuff that's on the reasonable side of the dollar sign.
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post #15 of 54
1/18/07 at 11:37pm
Thread Starter 
Matt: I tried repowering. I was able to take the amp/cans to the kitchen, plug in and not hear the static, then walk back to my room, plug in and hear it again. And YEAH, we Aussies get ripped off hardcore on a LOT of things, but we can mostly get around it by knowing good local dealers and haggling, or by buying international-safe stuff overseas (usually the US).

Quote:
UPS’s are not dirty at all, when run off the battery yes
Why is battery power 'dirty'? Many people have told me battery power is the cleanest sort because it's isolated from any other possible interference like other plugged in devices.

Sovkiller: what's the difference between audio gear running off a UPS which has gone AC>DC>AC and any audio gear (portable or otherwise) which runs from a battery? Or are you saying that any portable gear has comparatively 'dirty' power? My previous DAC (The Storm D02) ran off a battery 99%) of the time and was/is silent.

Anyone got a good link for understanding how/why outlets can put out sin wave AC and yet (by the sounds of this thread) some UPS' output square wave?
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