QU-32 and UPS

[obucek]

Hello!
I have qu-32 mixer and want to buy some UPS. What do you suggest? Thx for answer and all the best!

[Anonymous]

I’m looking at the little 4 bank integrated versions, but I’m only looking to protect against transient outages and brownouts…

[obucek]

Yes. Me to. Something not so expensive 😉

[Andreas]

I’ve added an APC Smart-UPS SC 450 to my stage rack and run power supply for both stagebox and FOH from there. Compared to the value of Qu+Stagebox the price (~200 EUR) was ok for me since a real ac line conditioner (online UPS) was too expensive for me.

[obucek]

Thx for answer 😉

[Dick Rees]

The best and most effective units will be the “online” or “inline” units which have the batteries in the circuit at all times. That way there is no lag…zero, none… if and when the house power goes down. An added advantage is that you’re always running through the inverter, so you’re getting as close to pure sine wave power with low THD at all times.

Best deals are to buy used Tripplite units retired from server farm backup, buy new batteries and you’re good to go at a fraction of the cost of new. The “OfficeMax” cheapo UPS units like the APC are not worth having.

Go for the good stuff or take your chances. You have to decide if it’s worth the “savings” to leave your gear exosed.

[Anonymous]

Depends what you are protecting against. Cheapo (lower than APC) units will probably still protect you from short power outages, they might not regenerate a perfect sine wave at all times, but they’ll be good enough for “operational” protection, even if not for direct lightning strike…

[Anonymous]

On New years eve (at a festival) it was pumping! 125db back behind the monitor desk.Very loud
QU32 & QU16 doing their business superbly
Suddendly a power outage!
Apparently about 3 seconds.
I run a UPS unit with batteries and its always conditioning.(unfortunately a pain to carry around as not rack mounted)
The 6 LAB amps went off but came straight back… soft start.
The FOH engineer sweated though as he was running a different digital stage box of that other brand. And we didnt have his stage box plugged into the UPS.
He (FOH ) engineer had an UPS so his desk came back.(The same UPS brand as mine)
But there was confusion about getting the other brand digital stage box to resync!
It finally did resync and we all carried on.

I would invest if you are doing bigger shows in a rack mount UPS that is always conditioning.
I will be getting another rack mount UPS for my FOH desk (the always on type)
I dont have the specs on it(Digitech brand) but you can just see it is behind the EQ rack on the floor over on the right. Its quite heavy awkward little thing!
Thank goodness I thre it in “last minute” before departing to the wild bush frontier!

[Anonymous]

ok to add to my last rave
1stly I’m no electronics expert however…
I went yesterday to buy a rack mount UPS and looked at the specs of the smaller model that I have been using. (and will use again on smaller stages)
For anyone’s information the smaller unit has a changer over of no greater than 10ms and is not pure sine-wave.
So I assume then the QUs’ are pretty stable, as it carried on when we had what I guess you would call that a brownout ?
The new unit I purchased dose have pure sine wave and is zero crossover.
And it did cost a lot of money..

[Andreas]

Just for reference: Uninterruptible power supply

Let me throw in some numbers. We all know that our mains carry AC, a somewhat sinusoidal waveform with 50/60Hz, so we have regular mini-brownouts each 20 resp. 16mSec which are totally uncritical, since any powersupply contains a rectifier and capacitors to hold internal voltages at least for this period. So switching time of 10mSec is not even recognized by any connected device. Normally a powersupply should be able to compensate a couple of missing phases (~100mSec) without affecting system operation.

The 10mSec relate to isolating your devices from mains in case of large transients on the mains input which may lead to damage. Offline and Line-Interactive UPS therefore can not provide 100% safety. The much more expensive online UPS source power from batteries only and the load is never directly connected to mains.

[Detonator]

obucek –

The APC Back-ups mentioned by Andreas is perfectly fine. I started using an APC desktop model about 7 years ago after an unfortunate unplugging incident with my LS9, and have used the APC 500 VA units on my T112/idr48 and R72/idr32 since, 500 +- shows. I perform the “pull the cord” test 2-3 times a year and have NEVER seen any of the consoles as much as blink. It’s important that you pull the cord once a year or so and make sure the power maintains for at least 5 minutes, as a failing battery can often handle battery output for a few seconds and then cease.

Real world experience, not conjecture.

Cheers,

-Tim T

[obucek]

Thx 😉

[Author]

Posts