[madwolfa]

So there was a pretty bad thunderstorm the other day (with a huge fire from a lightning strike to the adjacent apartment building - ouch). My Bimby stopped producing any sound after it... I had an "oops" moment.. but a simple power cycle had it resolved. Whew. Maybe I need an UPS.

 

[Vulpe5]

The Valhalla 2 consumes 40W as far as i know. That's not noticeable... for me at least.

 

[MothAudio]

  So there was a pretty bad thunderstorm the other day (with a huge fire from a lightning strike to the adjacent apartment building - ouch). My Bimby stopped producing any sound after it... I had an "oops" moment.. but a simple power cycle had it resolved. Whew. Maybe I need an UPS.

 
Modi Multibit plugged into this bad boy.

 

[StanD]

  So there was a pretty bad thunderstorm the other day (with a huge fire from a lightning strike to the adjacent apartment building - ouch). My Bimby stopped producing any sound after it... I had an "oops" moment.. but a simple power cycle had it resolved. Whew. Maybe I need an UPS.

A good surge/spike protector is probably enough, unless you put all your kit on it and intend to listen during power failures. I suspect that a spike got through and crashed the CPU, etc. in the Bimby. Power cycling it is like rebooting a crashed Windoze PC.

 

[rtaylor76]

Can we just all get balanced power in our homes?

A local guy here in Nashville brought his huge 6-rack space balanced power conditioner to the Head-Fi meet. He had an Asgard 2, but probably the best sounding system in the place because of the monstrous dirty power in the gym we were in. Voltage here can run 128V in some places. It's 123V to 125V at my house. My Triad 12V DC adapter puts out 15V. And when you look at the incoming power it on a trace/scope it is all kinds of spiky. Nasty stuff. It roasted two of my Apple laptop power supplies - those switching supplies can't hang with the over power. Some studio guys here in town request their own transformer from the power company just for the recording studio.

Wouldn't it be nice for us to all have that ultra clean orange plug power that they have at the hospital?

 

[madwolfa]

  A good surge/spike protector is probably enough, unless you put all your kit on it and intend to listen during power failures. I suspect that a spike got through and crashed the CPU, etc. in the Bimby. Power cycling it is like rebooting a crashed Windoze PC.

 
I have a simple 900 joules 6 outlet surge protector. I only have my computer and all headphone gear plugged into it. Maybe it helped somewhat and it could be worse... And then I have a datacenter grade rackmount 1800 joules surge protector for my home theater / big stereo. 

 

[StanD]

   
I have a simple 900 joules 6 outlet surge protector. I only have my computer and all headphone gear plugged into it. Maybe it helped somewhat and it could be worse... And then I have a datacenter grade rackmount 1800 joules surge protector for my home theater / big stereo. 

I believe the joules spec is to how much it can suppress not what kind of a load (kit) you can power.. Perhaps 900 isn't enough. Also the ability to handle spikes might be different as in response time.

 

[FrivolsListener]

   
I have a simple 900 joules 6 outlet surge protector. I only have my computer and all headphone gear plugged into it. Maybe it helped somewhat and it could be worse... And then I have a datacenter grade rackmount 1800 joules surge protector for my home theater / big stereo. 

 
I think everyone is overreacting a bit. You can put a filter and suppressor on your gear, but I wouldn't use a UPS unless it produces clean, sine-wave output.  UPSes for consumer grade computers usually are a load of hash on a bad waveform.
 
Also, unregulated DC supplies will always read higher than normal when not under load.  My house power is notoriously bad, and reads high (135 vac RMS via true-RMS reading dmm, 128 vac from a peak meter, 130 vac from an analog meter).   Everybody handles it just fine.
 
Now, one thing I had on my gear for years was a homebrew latching relay system that would require a manual reset if the power sagged or dropped.  I put it there to try to avoid damage to sensitive electronics.  Now, I have partial solar power, and the headphone gear fails over to the sine-wave inverter and the transfer switch won't switch back to mains until after 30s above 90vac from them.
 
(First World, Last Mile problems)

 

[rmoody]

Can we just all get balanced power in our homes?

A local guy here in Nashville brought his huge 6-rack space balanced power conditioner to the Head-Fi meet. He had an Asgard 2, but probably the best sounding system in the place because of the monstrous dirty power in the gym we were in. Voltage here can run 128V in some places. It's 123V to 125V at my house. My Triad 12V DC adapter puts out 15V. And when you look at the incoming power it on a trace/scope it is all kinds of spiky. Nasty stuff. It roasted two of my Apple laptop power supplies - those switching supplies can't hang with the over power. Some studio guys here in town request their own transformer from the power company just for the recording studio.

Wouldn't it be nice for us to all have that ultra clean orange plug power that they have at the hospital?

Well, those lights were really wreaking havoc on everything. Remember how bad it was until she turned off the ones that were resonating? It was like someone had a grinder in your head. For the life of me I don't remember that sort of power conditioner that day. Granted, I was focused on the Mojo and the Questyle. Where was that?

 

[Armaegis]

Wouldn't it be nice for us to all have that ultra clean orange plug power that they have at the hospital?

 
Though just as a quick note, the orange plugs do not indicate "clean" power. "Hospital Grade" plugs and receptacles are simply built to a higher mechanical standard; they are sturdier, can withstand more physical stresses and impacts, and in the case of the receptacles have a higher grip strength and retention.

 

[Don Hills]

   
Though just as a quick note, the orange plugs do not indicate "clean" power. "Hospital Grade" plugs and receptacles are simply built to a higher mechanical standard; they are sturdier, can withstand more physical stresses and impacts, and in the case of the receptacles have a higher grip strength and retention.

 
Also, they are often but not always on a UPS circuit.
South Africa use an old-style UK plug, with round pins. I noticed that the UPS sockets there had a "bevel" on the earth pin hole, so a normal round pin wouldn't fit. It prevented the cleaners plugging their equipment into them... Another oddity was 2-way and 3-way power cords. There was a single plug, then 3 IEC plugs daisy-chained from it. For running PC, monitor and printer from one wall socket. I brought several home and replaced the plugs with local versions. They tidied up the back of my stereo rack considerably.

 

[bigro]

   
I think everyone is overreacting a bit. You can put a filter and suppressor on your gear, but I wouldn't use a UPS unless it produces clean, sine-wave output.  UPSes for consumer grade computers usually are a load of hash on a bad waveform.
 
Also, unregulated DC supplies will always read higher than normal when not under load.  My house power is notoriously bad, and reads high (135 vac RMS via true-RMS reading dmm, 128 vac from a peak meter, 130 vac from an analog meter).   Everybody handles it just fine.
 
Now, one thing I had on my gear for years was a homebrew latching relay system that would require a manual reset if the power sagged or dropped.  I put it there to try to avoid damage to sensitive electronics.  Now, I have partial solar power, and the headphone gear fails over to the sine-wave inverter and the transfer switch won't switch back to mains until after 30s above 90vac from them.
 
(First World, Last Mile problems)

If memory serves me right most UPS's pass the A/C power with out very little filtering. It only runs on battery during a power failure. The ones that output pure AC sine waves all the time are not cheap or small.
 
My old Place had horrible power. Everything hummed. What I use at work in a cube with a bunch of computer and some guy with a mini fridge plugged in the same circuit and on my Headphone setup at home is the Furman SSB 6. It is less than $30 on amazon and I hear nothing but music. No Popping, hums from that damned fridge etc.Oh yeah and if you are using the Modi, Magni, Vali or anything with Wall warts, The Furman accommodates them very well.

 

[FrivolsListener]

 
If memory serves me right most UPS's pass the A/C power with out very little filtering. It only runs on battery during a power failure. The ones that output pure AC sine waves all the time are not cheap or small.
 
My old Place had horrible power. Everything hummed. What I use at work in a cube with a bunch of computer and some guy with a mini fridge plugged in the same circuit and on my Headphone setup at home is the Furman SSB 6. It is less than $30 on amazon and I hear nothing but music. No Popping, hums from that damned fridge etc.Oh yeah and if you are using the Modi, Magni, Vali or anything with Wall warts, The Furman accommodates them very well.

 
Your memory does serve you right, largely.   Playing in the renewable energy world, there are vendors that make PWM sine-wave inverters -- advantage is that they are small and light and have clean power, disadvantage is that poorly shielded and filtered ones spray RF noise everywhere.
 
Old-skool inverters used a square wave and an enormous inductor to give a sine-like waveform.  I wouldn't use one.
 
Power filtering does use inductors, albeit not in the same size as above.  But it's addressing a different problem.

 

[rtaylor76]

Well, those lights were really wreaking havoc on everything. Remember how bad it was until she turned off the ones that were resonating? It was like someone had a grinder in your head. For the life of me I don't remember that sort of power conditioner that day. Granted, I was focused on the Mojo and the Questyle. Where was that?

He was over between me and Eric (skyline315). I forgot his name. He and Eric were wondering if we were going to overload the circuit in the gym, but I knew better than that. My friend used to power a whole small club stage setup with mains, monitors, FOH, and the stage on one circuit with other stuff plugged in. Only one time did we have issues, and that was only because the club had a few pinball machines hooked up to that circuit. Those things draw some juice apparently.

And yes, the Mojo was the hit of the day, I didn't even get a chance to hear it. Maybe at the fall meet.

 

[rtaylor76]

Though just as a quick note, the orange plugs do not indicate "clean" power. "Hospital Grade" plugs and receptacles are simply built to a higher mechanical standard; they are sturdier, can withstand more physical stresses and impacts, and in the case of the receptacles have a higher grip strength and retention.

Very true.

At our school that had two recording studios, the orange plugs were actually tied to a different transformer and they utilized a star grounding scheme. The campus physical plant power was even worse than the city power, although it was regulated to a much tamer 117V. So the orange plugs actually did indicate something to us.