Noise. That damned demon you may not even know about...

[Kingrex]

It would be interesting to know what harmonic distortion is being delivered through your utility. You could probably find something like a Fluke 345 or other models to give a sine wave and breakdown of the distortion spectra.

Like I said, my utility power is not bad, but I can easily hear the improvement with battery power. If you have terrible AC power, I would imagine that has a significant effect on your sound quality.

I was expecting to hear dynamic loss with battery power, because that’s the common narrative that gets repeated over and over.

However, I’ve heard absolutely no loss in dynamics or transient speed. If anything, it seems faster, perhaps psycho-acoustically, because of the increase in clarity.

Measured out of the Exeltech inverter:

The sine wave is smooth with less than 1% distortion.
And, fwiw, the SureTest Circuit Analyzer (which Shunyata has used in some of its demonstrations) usually shows 1.5 KA peak current and .05 Impedance ( relative to 700 A and 1.5 from Utility).

My power draw is low in my system: 320 W and my speakers are 96DB efficient. The LPO battery produces 5300 watts.

Just based on my limited experience, your 800 watt system would present no dynamics issues with a similarly sized battery/inverter.

From what you have shared with me, you are measuring with a
Alpha Lab EMI meter
Entech for RF
Shure Test for Current
And a Fluke scopemeter for THD and low level harmonics.

That is a pretty good set of inexpensive tools that will give you a good general idea what issues you are experiencing. The Alpha Lab and Entech are not that accurate. Sort of a shot gun approach. They tell you if noise is there. Just not what the actual frequency of the noise is. But, how granular is the consumer trying to get. If you know you have noise, and you plug in a filter, your going to be able to retest and see if the noise is gone. That is all we really want to know.

It would be nice if there was a tools to measure a change when using a Shunyata ground device. It would be interesting to know if anything changed. The Ground device is used after the audio equipment. So its hard to measure the affect. The internal noise of any audio device would overwhelm the low lever distortions the Alpha Lab or Entech is measuring for. The scope would tell you the power looks horrible with any audio equipment plugged into it. And I doubt that horrible wall power would be reduced by a ground box. Its the power supply that is distorting the mains power.

I would be curious to test the output distortions of an amplifier like they were doing in the article Amir linked. It would be interesting to know if a ground box improved the levels of distortion and amp creates as the power is increased. I wonder if anyone has done as such???
@Lee have you?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Once I have a stable running device, I would love to bring it by and we listen. My 3000 watt inverter feed into a 2000 watt Torus RM20 is plenty of power to drive your front end equipment. You can select what you want to plug into it. I am confident it would drive both Dartzeel without clipping. But I would think 1 per amp would be a better setup. I don't have 2 complete setup yet. I may, come PAF to have packages to sell at the show. Or to power vendors systems.

Rex, thanks for the detailed answer.

i'm open to trying your battery device(s) with a complete understanding of the logistics involved. would it plug into my duplex outlets or somehow need to be wired into the Equi=tech panel output? then snake to my gear directly somehow? not sure i'm up for that.

(EDIT) and maybe we could compare it to being plugged into my dirty outlets in-room?

Your system is a good test system. You have power that is done as best as can be. I am a firm believer in a single large high power transformer. It seems Amir is too. I do believe you do have a level of cohesion with one power source.

last time we talked some years ago about this that was the impression i got. nice to hear you still see it that way.

good power and low noise is not an accident.

That is why having multiple inverters requires a syncing device. Otherwise the frequency would be out of sync between gear. Some will say, so what? The power supply in your equipment turns the AC to DC so the matching of frequency to equipment does not matter. The other reason to sync is to attach multiple inverters to a power panel to multiply the available power. You can attach 6 inverters together. If they were 3000 wat inverters, you would have 18,000 watts of power. Divided by 120 volts and that is 150 amps. Plenty to drive any amplifier. You could easily attach your Equitech to that to distribute the power to the room.

with 97db efficient speakers my main amps are hardly pushed. and my class d bass amps are quite efficient. so even though i have 5000 watts of amplification in my system; the actual peak loads are quite modest. i have lots of sources but none are too current hungry........system preamp is battery powered......maybe the start-up draw of the hot-rodded Ampex decks and MR70 preamps are a little hungry but with a 10kva transformer i have more, a lot more, than 2x.....more like 4x transformer power grid headroom even when i'm pushing things. i never have any sense other than there is a lot more throttle i can engage. but that is just my amateur/uneducated hunch as to what is really happening. i don't really understand it all that much.

 

[Kingrex]

The app on the battery will tell the draw. Static watts in use. We could plug a amp in and see. If its truely at a range I am targeting, then try it there too.

Its 3 batteies that weigh 35 lbs each. About 10 x 12 x 12 inch each.

A inverter that is about 20 x 12 x 6 inch. Weighs about 40 lbs.

A Torus RM20. About 20 x 8 x 16 inch. 70 lbs.

The inverter and batteies have a short cord between them. About 30 inch. The inverter to Torus has a 8 to 10 foot cord. The Torus needs to be by the equipment to plug into. Or a power strip needs to be used to move the Torus further away.
All that plugs into the system is power cords. Thats it.

Technically its totally stand alone. It doesn't need to plug into anything. It's battery power. Having said that, if you need to recharge the batteries, any outlet will do. Its a noisy fan on the charger so you won't recharge when playing.

Talking about fans, the Inverter has a fan. It will kick on if the load is too high. Keeping it in a happy power range and it should never turn on. I almost got the 5000 watt inverter, but its so heavy. I'm experimenting and want to keep it light.

FWIE once I have it configured , I will send the inverter to Wil to compare to his Exeltech. I will probably borrow his inverter too. The more ears the better.