John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Roger that Steve!
Thanks for the link too.Once again, you've been an invaluable source of good info..as has everyone else here...
I better go and read those equitech papers again more thoroughly...

thanks

I have been looking to get one of Equi-Tech's wall mount balanced power supplies, but they are so expesive! The one I have been looking at for a while is like $6500. Can you guys perscribe any more ways besides the MOVs to clean up and filter power with a standard wall breaker box?

BTW...cool avatar Steve!!

Carl, how much gear (amperage-wise) were you planning on running on balanced power? (Keep in mind that your finished product, other than the improvements you'd hear while monitoring, doesn't care whether your power amps and the rest of the monitoring chain has balanced power or not - only the recording chain) -

Things that can help without balanced power - surge suppressors/filters on all power distribution strips, ABSOLUTE star ground system, the lowest capacitance cabling you can find, soldered or punch block patch bays (not 1/4" jacks/plugs in the rear), keeping power runs as far away from (and non-parallel to) mic cables and line level audio, keeping digital runs (both digital audio and MIDI) at least a few inches away from mic lines, keeping "wall warts" as far away from EVERYTHING as possible -

On that last, I once temporarily plugged a wall wart into the aux power plug in the rear of one of the power amps in my PA setup - the only audio cables close to it were two 18 inch long TRS balanced feeds from a Symetrics 525 compressor/expander/gate into the balanced TRS inputs of a Yamaha power amp - the cables passed within about 3-4 inches of this wall wart, and the hum was so bad I couldn't kill it with the expander/gate. All this with shielded, BALANCED, half-meter cables...

Glad you liked the avatar; closest likeness to an Akita we had who died last year - smarter than most of the people I work with, and I never worried about my wife being alone nights when he was around - 150 pounds of "don't even THINK about it"... Steve

I have all the brochures for the gear so I need to sit down and calculate it out. The audio and electrical cabling is being worked out by John on the design plans. I plan to use the existing wiring for the lighting and one or two regular 15A outlet in each room for a vacuum or cellphone charger, computer, lamp, whatever. The breaker box or balanced supply would ONLY feed the outlets for audio gear and would be the AV grade outlets. The patchbays are being built pre soldered pig tails so that shouldn't be a problem. I am also considering running my OWN ground for my gear and not tapping off the building's since there is machinery being uses all over it.

Actually no Steve I was talking about something way more expensive (after installation). I figure if you got budget for 3 phase heck might as well go all out and purchase a Dry-type ISO transformer and get that puppy installed.

When I was building small studios for Video production back in the Early to mid 90's We always spec'd a Dry-type Power transformer. I noticed that Equi=tech is now selling them as well. We always used a 10Kva unit.

Really regulated the heck out of the current

But then those Rack mount Equitech's really work well.

I have one on my recording truck. when I 1st used one (which prompted my purchase) you could look at the console and see the lights (LED's) stablized. It really smoothed out the AC.

And you dont need the expensive deal. Geez we go for overkill sometimes. I use the 2RQ to drive all the electronics on my remote truck.

knightfly wrote: Things that can help without balanced power - surge suppressors/filters on all power distribution strips, ABSOLUTE star ground system, the lowest capacitance cabling you can find, soldered or punch block patch bays (not 1/4" jacks/plugs in the rear), keeping power runs as far away from (and non-parallel to) mic cables and line level audio, keeping digital runs (both digital audio and MIDI) at least a few inches away from mic lines, keeping "wall warts" as far away from EVERYTHING as possible -

Ok Steve now..with the star earthing...Are all the pieces of equipment in the studio earthed to one common point or is it just every piece on one circuit to the same ground and then again every piece on another circuit to the same ground point??

Glad you liked the avatar; closest likeness to an Akita we had who died last year - smarter than most of the people I work with, and I never worried about my wife being alone nights when he was around - 150 pounds of "don't even THINK about it"... Steve

I thought it maght have been actually your dog, and am very sorry he's not around anymore ..looks like a beautiful dog

Sorry..wasn't logged in again..

Hey Sen. From The SAE site......

The Star Earthing System is where you ask your electrician to earth each power outlet individually (as you see in the above illustration.)

In this setup each power point sees the same ground directly and a unit earthed to outlet 1 and connected with a patch lead to something earthed to outlet 2 won't see outlet 2 as it's earth because it has it's own more direct route to ground.

The earth, as stated before, is connected to a copper stake in the ground.

This is a short but interesting document on tech power:
http://www.soundcontrolroom.com/GuidelinesElecPower.pdf

Carl,

That's some good info. Here's the links to the dimmer info...

http://www.superiorelectric.com/PDF/Lux ... ntrols.pdf

http://www.lutron.com/grafikeye/grx4100 ... 00&t=18600

Aaron

Don't forget Staco Variacs, the models 501 and 511 are the ones to use:

http://variac.com/staco_variable_transformer_500_s.htm

So far, I've used a couple of the Superior Electric "Powerstat" variacs.

I got a slammin deal off ebay one day. Got 3 of them for $17.00. That's better than $128+ a piece.



Aaron