lilith_envy wrote:http://www.furmansound.com
So when you guys talk about power conditioners/UPS's would the above be enough to run the studio's recording gear?
Those are power conditioners, not UPSs. A UPS has large batteries inside (or connected externally). In the best true full-time on-line UPSs, the electrics are split into two independent systems, around the central battery pack. On the input side, you basically have a large "battery charger" that takes AC power in, and turns it into DC that charges the batteries. All that this part of the UPS does in life is to charge the batteries continuously. It does not directly supply power to the load (your gear), so it does not really matter how stable the input supply is: If the voltage varies a lot, or the frequency changes, or there are spikes and drops on the line, all that happens is that the batteries are not charged quite as well as they could be, but that's it. The input variations just become variations in charging current, but that does not have any effect at all on the output.
The second half of the electrics is on the output side, where you have a large inverter that draws DC power from the batteries, and "inverts" it (strange name, not really correct, but whatever...), which basically means that it turns the DC back into something resembling a 110 volt sine wave (or 220 volt sine wave, depending on what you need / where you live) that supplies your load. The inverter creates a clean, stable, regulated output to supply your equipment, regardless of what the input does. If the input power goes outside of design specs (for example, the input voltage drops too low, surges too high, drifts way of frequency, etc.), then the UPS detects that and just turns off the "battery charger" part, and continues to supply clean power to your load, until the batteries run out of juice. That might be anywhere from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours, depending on a number of factors, but most of them have large dollar-signs built in to the equation!! So you'll probably want to go for a UPS that will give you maybe 5 or 10 minutes of power in the event of a complete blackout. Plenty enough time to shut down everything cleanly before the batteries give up.
What your link shows is just a power conditioner: It has no batteries, no charger, and no inverter. Instead, it has power regulators, filters, surge suppressors, and other fancy circuits designed to try to stabilize the output as much as possible. It will certainly help, but depending on how bad your problem is, it might not solve the issue 100%, for two basic reasons: Power conditioners do not disconnect the source from the load, and they cannot make up for "missing" power. With a power conditioner, there is still a direct AC electrical connection from input to output, albeit through circuits that do good things in between. So if you have a noise issue, then a power conditioner won't necessarily fix it (although it probably will). And if the power fails, or varies outside of design specs, then that can get passed through to the output.
In order to be certain of fully isolating your gear from the rest of the world, a true UPS is your best bet, since the only connection between input and output is through the batteries, but they are DC, not AC. The entire AC waveform is first "killed" in the battery charger part, then re-generated cleanly from scratch in the inverter. A UPS cleans, filters, and conditions your power much better than any power conditioner could do by itself, and has the added advantage that it will continue to supply you with power even if you have a total blackout. A power conditioner will not do that.
If you want even better isolation you could use a large isolation transformer, in addition to either a UPS or a power conditioner, and that will also let you isolate the ground. A true isolation transformer (but NOT an auto-transformer!) has two identical windings that have no electrical connection between them at all. The only connection is via the electromagnetic field created by the input coil. So you can ground the neutral side of the output coil to your own totally separate, isolated ground (usually one or more large, thick, long copper rods driven into the ground), and have an absolutely separate clean ground for your gear like that. However, do check your local code to find out what is and is not permitted with grounding, and DO get a qualified electrician to do the work: electricity is dangerous, and it can bite you real hard if you don't to it correctly. I'm just telling you what my code allows here, and what I will be doing, but your situation may be different, and your code might require that input ground and output ground be linked, or it may not allow you to ground your neutral conductor, or whatever (in which case the isolation transformer isn't a lot of use!). so check with a local electrician, to make sure you do it right for YOUR location.
However, an isolation transformer big enough to run your entire studio is not going to be cheap! Lots of dollar signs there too! Good news: Some UPSs allow you to have separate input and output grounds, thus isolating everything as best as possible. Check with the manufacturer to see if you can do that: Not all UPSs are capable of doing that. But even if you don't do that, the UPS is still a much better isolator than a power conditioner.
Now don't get me wrong: power conditioners are still a good idea, and they may well solve your problems, but a UPS is better, and stands a much better chance of killing all your power issues at once. Of course, a good UPS costs a lot more than a good power conditioner, but like most things in life, you get what you pay for!
To answer the question of whether or not a power conditioner is good enough for your needs, maybe you could get someone to lend you a power conditioner first, so you can try it out before you buy?
One final comment on your ACTUAL question: to figure out how big a UPS or power conditioner you need, you'll first have to check the power label (or the manual) on every item of equipment that will go in your studio, to see how much power it consumes. Note down either the "watts" or the "amps" rating from
everything.
Then add up all of those numbers (either "watts" or "amps"), and if needed take into account a ball-park power factor for your equipment if you are using VA (probably something like 0.7), take into account a decent margin of safety and future expansion (20% for safety, whatever you feel like for expansion), and then you will now what size conditioner / UPS / isolation transformer.
So, for example, if you figure that all your equipment together draws a total of ten amps, your safety margin would be 2 amps (20%), your expansion margin might be another three amps, so you'd need a power conditioner / UPS / isolation transformer that is capable of handling a continuous load of at least 15 amps.
Excuse the long ramble... I'll bet you are no better off now for deciding on what to get, than you were when you started reading! Probably even more confused than ever!!!
- Stuart -
