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
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.