Hi All,
Just wondering what system owners are using for power protection / conditioners? Particularly when running a PA off a generators outdoors. After a small incident with one of my amps a few weeks back I dont particularly want the stress and hassle of that happening again (rewiring a system that tested fine the day before about 10 mins before the music was meant to start).
It looks like there are many options ranging from <100 to 5 figures. Whatever I use I guess it needs to be fairly beefy, possibly one per amp with each one pushing between 3500 and 5000rms.
Thanks in advance
Just wondering what system owners are using for power protection / conditioners? Particularly when running a PA off a generators outdoors. After a small incident with one of my amps a few weeks back I dont particularly want the stress and hassle of that happening again (rewiring a system that tested fine the day before about 10 mins before the music was meant to start).
It looks like there are many options ranging from <100 to 5 figures. Whatever I use I guess it needs to be fairly beefy, possibly one per amp with each one pushing between 3500 and 5000rms.
Thanks in advance
power conditioners are a controversial topic as to just what they can and can't do....but when your power source goes south whether it's from the utility or a local generator your at risk for gear damage even with the best "conditioners" in line.
and yes from my own PA days a bad generator is a dangerous thing for the livelyhood of gear, even simply forgetting to insure fuel and having it stall mid show was a recipe for disaster...and why as a PA contractor i always looked for generator suppliers with damage coverage clauses in the contracts!
Furman is pretty much the most commonly seen conditioner in pro racks...to me their popularity is more due to the fact that they're a fancy "power bar" made to rack standards.
and yes from my own PA days a bad generator is a dangerous thing for the livelyhood of gear, even simply forgetting to insure fuel and having it stall mid show was a recipe for disaster...and why as a PA contractor i always looked for generator suppliers with damage coverage clauses in the contracts!
Furman is pretty much the most commonly seen conditioner in pro racks...to me their popularity is more due to the fact that they're a fancy "power bar" made to rack standards.
The solution, IME, is to use a bigger generator. Something large and diesel-powered doesn't care too much about the peaky loads that sound equipment will present.
Smallish petrol generators, by contrast, will constantly be revving up/down, trying to "follow" the varying load. Result: wildly varying mains voltage. I've seen them dip to 208V and rev up and hit 250V on/after kick drum hits.
Interestingly, giving it something to "chew" on, in that case around 1KW of filament lamps, helped to settle it down a bit.
A traditional power conditioner won't help much here: those will mostly reduce HF mush from the mains line. If you really want a stable mains voltage, convert to DC to run some batteries, and use a high-power inverter to get back to mains. Should be very stable, so long as the generator keeps the batteries charged.
Chris
Smallish petrol generators, by contrast, will constantly be revving up/down, trying to "follow" the varying load. Result: wildly varying mains voltage. I've seen them dip to 208V and rev up and hit 250V on/after kick drum hits.
Interestingly, giving it something to "chew" on, in that case around 1KW of filament lamps, helped to settle it down a bit.
A traditional power conditioner won't help much here: those will mostly reduce HF mush from the mains line. If you really want a stable mains voltage, convert to DC to run some batteries, and use a high-power inverter to get back to mains. Should be very stable, so long as the generator keeps the batteries charged.
Chris
The generators in question were huge ones powering an entire site with multiple stages. The incident I refer to (at a guess) was a surge through the mains for whatever reason when the amp was turned on rather than a power drop. Fwiw the other 2 were fine but I turned them on after.
There is no practical(cost wize) solution for power conditioning of AC lines feeding power amplifiers.. especially big ones, but amplifiers themselves are usually pretty robust so this isn't a common concern. How did you determine there was a power surge and how high did the voltage get? Any generator of decent quality will have built-in voltage regulation so if you did experience a surge at an event that damaged equipment you should be speaking to the event coordinators about it and registering a claim. Of course it's also possible that the amp in question was about to fail anyway, were the other amps the same model and age or something completely different? Every time a amp of any size is first powered up there is a fairly large inrush current, this a common thing in many different designs and is the reason the protection circuitry can take a few seconds to disengage after power up.. it is waiting for the power supply to stabilize and the amplifier protection tests to pass.
It's just a guess, as it turned out to have frazzled the house keeping PSU.
I'd be interested to see how a claim would go down with the generator providers. Proving it was their generator at fault could be fun unless it blew everything that happened to be switched on at the same time.
I'd be interested to see how a claim would go down with the generator providers. Proving it was their generator at fault could be fun unless it blew everything that happened to be switched on at the same time.
I'm looking for power sequencer/conditioner to run my band's on stage equipment. We have a mixing board, three amps, EQ and both mains and monitors. Want it to be cost effective yet be reliable. The Furman tends to be pricey. I glanced at the Monoprice 15 AMP with 8 outs at about $120 and the ART PS8-II at about $250. Would like to stay under $300 if possible. Any suggestions?
Don't waste your money on this kind of power conditioner they usually only contain a 1-shot surge suppressor which offers very little protection, if you have a digital mixer get a backup UPS to protect it and any other small signal electronics in your rack, but connect amplifiers directly to wall power. Any decent UPS will have over and under voltage protection, some noise suppression, and the battery which will allow a graceful shutdown of digital components should you loose all AC power in the venue. There are also stand alone voltage regulators and online UPS versions but they are usually well above your stated budget.
That isn't 15 A x 8. That's 15 A in total. Or 1800W peak. Each outlet is limited to 10A max. The power conditioning is only filtering high frequency noisefloor. It has none protection against over- or under- voltage, none against a power surge or voltage frequency drift.
Yes. Like @Damo s and @conanski already said: Don't buy that crap, that can't help you with any problems you might have with a power generator. Invest that money into a better generator - which will be much more expensive than that btw. If you don't have the money for that, then rent a good one which can deliver easily the kind of power you need.
Do not connect ANY refrigator to the same generator! EVER! The power spikes when it starts its cooling cycle kills tons of PA equipment every year. Also, don't let others 'borrow' power from that generator. Lights, hazer etc go on a different circuit. Don't use big halogen flood lights on the same generator either.
E: @Damo s already said, use a UPS for the DSP, the mixer (unless it's a power-mixer), laptop or low power non-PA units like CD players, BT receiver etc.
Exactly! Same goes for microwaves. Many ppl don't know the power of a microwave isn't set to 300, 600, 1200W etc, the different power settings just change the interval and duration of how long it's switched off and on, to zero or the maximum power. So that's a no-no too!
When is the last time you heated up fast food on anything other than 10? Even if it had other power settings nobody in that environment would be using them. And it’s a very large half wave rectified load….
Me? It's not if just one does it, it's excluding such points of failure, you never know if the microwave is HF tight. A broken switch of the door is enough to let the microwave blast with 1kW (or more) into any of the cables, speakers, laptop or pieces of equipment of the PA. So it's not only the possible power surge - for which even 1s of the MW being on can be enough. Not having it on your PA power generator is a huge plus in excluded points of failure.
Wow. I have never had to think in these circles before. What we take for granted in most situations, can be rife with problems in the portable power situation. It strikes me a s true that you must start with a generating system that doesn't need any 'help' to begin with.
An isolation transformer might not be a bad idea for the more delicate, lower powered equipment, but the amps should be fine running from a decent generator.
The use of power from generators can be a whole new world of pain tbh. You cant always rely on their being someone managing it properly. You don't know what else is loading it, or whether power has been distributed properly across the 3 phases. And in reality you have no control over that since budgets often dictate that one generator is running everything on site (at smaller events).
More likely that the power distribution on your stage had a faulty neutral connection on the problem circuit than a huge generator would "surge" from a single amp turn on.
A faulty (loose) neutral could potentially cause the amp to see 400v rather than 230.
A faulty neutral may "arc weld" itself back together during a fault, and work normally until it fails again.
The neutral and ground should only be bonded at the generator, not at sub panels, but that rule may be violated by generator or power distribution providers.
Anyway, the problem you described can happen with mains power or generators, a product like the Salatek AVS30 could protect from that.
https://www.sollatek.com/products/avs30/
Make sure it's not a counterfeit...
Art
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It's often an issue with DIY power distributor panels or -cables. Do not trust "Oh, wait I've got such a cable!" either.
I know in the USA there are (ignorant) licensed electricians that have required bonding neutral and earth ground to pass their inspection, even though it is demonstrably unsafe and a current code violation.
I'd expect the potential problem exists more often than we are aware of, it's not easy to detect in a festival situation.
I'd expect the potential problem exists more often than we are aware of, it's not easy to detect in a festival situation.