question about power conditioning

thejck

I just recently purchased my first pair of speakers
I have the rti10's for my front and the cs400i for the center and the rt55i's for my rear with the psw404 for my sub. I also got an Integra 5.6 receiver. I will also shortly be purchasing a big screen LCD hdtv.

My question is about power conditioning
1. I am trying to decide on what I need for this set up. I have a APC smartups 1500 that is sitting around and has a bad battery. I checked on the prices for new batteries and they will be around 100-130 bucks. My main goal is not extended run time on battery and I only care about the power conditioning. I have read that the smartups will be able to remove the EMI from the line and also provide a clean sine wave. Also they will take care of surges etc... Is this actually true?

2.A friend of mine suggested that I could put smaller 12 volt batteries in it for about 30 bucks and that might still provide the necessary power conditioning and save me some money. Any thoughts on this?

3. If not whats a good power conditioner to buy? I do not want to spend a lot more money as I already went overboard on the speakers and reciever.

thanks for your help guys. I appreciate any help

I hope this is in the right forum if not can someone please move it to where it need to be

ben62670

I would not recommend using small batteries in the ups. There is too much power draw pulling through the UPS during high loads. I don't even know if you should use a UPS in the audio environment. They aren't really power conditioners. They are design to even out the voltage during dips to total outages of power. Lots of them are actually noisier Than the electricity that comes out of the wall. The transformer that charges the battery makes noise. Hopefully someone here can recommend a power filter that would be more applicable to your application. The key is filter to take out AC noise and Cable TV noise that plagues many systems. Just for ha ha's take and unplug your cable wire while your stereo is playing at a moderately low level, and you might be surprised.

Welcome to the club
Ben

F1nut

UPS type devices are not designed for audio. You want an audio power conditioner that passes unrestricted high current and supplies enough wattage to cover the demand from the gear connected to it.

Early B.

Power conditioning for audio/video gear can run from $25 into the thousands of dollars. What's your budget? It's tough to recommend anything without knowing how much you're willing to spend.

thejck

about a hundred bucks. What I am a gaining by spending more.
I definitely want to protect my equipment from surges and brownouts. but i have not experienced the improved quality of clean sound and so am still skeptical. i have driven myself crazy reading the forums here and at avs about this topic and want to get advice from people that have been around. I would not consider myself an audiophile and so would probably not notice much difference in the sound quality but want to take it step by step and grow with my sound. hoefully not doing anything to damage the speakers in the mean time. I plan to keep this setup for a good many of years to come...at least the speakers.

F1nut

The main purpose of any power conditioner is to stop surges and not get in the way of the sound. Don't expect them to improve the sound unless you get into the big buck jobs. Please see my advice above, get that info before shopping.

thejck

what about things like emi. does that affect the sound. what do those big buck items provide that improve the sound?

Deadof_knight

If youve seperated your cable's correctly and the right ones are shiedled than that shouldnt be a problem unless you have something really noisy close bye.

seperate incoming power then interconnects and then speakers leads . In herently you cant keep all of them from crossing at least once but the neater you run them the better

The big buck jobs have noise filters in them

Clean power applies in all facits of audio car or home.

mlhm5

thejck wrote:

I just recently purchased my first pair of speakers
I have the rti10's for my front and the cs400i for the center and the rt55i's for my rear with the psw404 for my sub. I also got an Integra 5.6 receiver. I will also shortly be purchasing a big screen LCD hdtv.

My question is about power conditioning
1. I am trying to decide on what I need for this set up. I have a APC smartups 1500 that is sitting around and has a bad battery. I checked on the prices for new batteries and they will be around 100-130 bucks. My main goal is not extended run time on battery and I only care about the power conditioning. I have read that the smartups will be able to remove the EMI from the line and also provide a clean sine wave. Also they will take care of surges etc... Is this actually true?

2.A friend of mine suggested that I could put smaller 12 volt batteries in it for about 30 bucks and that might still provide the necessary power conditioning and save me some money. Any thoughts on this?

3. If not whats a good power conditioner to buy? I do not want to spend a lot more money as I already went overboard on the speakers and reciever.

thanks for your help guys. I appreciate any help

I hope this is in the right forum if not can someone please move it to where it need to be

It is also a surge protector and a power conditioner.

You can buy 250W, 500W and 100W depending what you plug into it. ITs are used in all recording studios. The 250W is as cheap as $90 + shipping.



Isolation Transformer

thejck

is a slight amount of hiss from the speakers normal. I mean i have to really put my ear on the speaker to hear it. its real soft and it happens when I select any input. Right now the only input into the receiver is my PC using spdif optical link.

F1nut

thejck wrote:

is a slight amount of hiss from the speakers normal.

Perfectly normal.

thejck

thanks

jimi64

This might fit the bill.It costs more but it does what your looking for and takes up no valuable rack space:D www.psaudio.com/products/soloist.asp

thejck

since I cant afford to spend that much on a good power conditioner. should I just look into maybe a decent surge protector to protect the equipment and maybe later look at some kind of conditioning. what would be a good surge protector in that case. just to protect from surges

thejck

does anyone have any experience with the Belkin pureav pf60

http://catalog.belkin.com/PureAV_detail.process?Product_Id=178925

any comments

thejck

or the Panamax 4300 ex

http://www.panamax.com/products.cfm?group=1&sec=detail&id=276&ly=h

Skynut

I did a lot of research a few years ago to get my system protected.

This thread has a brief breakdown of what I thought.

miner

The Rotel RPC-1040 (?) is a rebadged APC unit that can be had for $450. It solved all of my issues - hiss, hum, voltage regualtion, spikes, etc. Best addition to my sytem.