Hey Electrical!Just curious as to what scale power conditioning you guys use for all your gear. Do you have something that conditions the power coming into the building, then clean power is distributed to all the sub panels, and then outlets, then equipment, or are there devices in front of the equipment (such as power conditioners)?

We don't have any power conditioning except for the isolating transformer we use to balance the power in the studio. The technical power is all bipolar 60-g-60 with all the grounds isolated, and the non-technical panels are conventional 120-g-n.

Cool, thanks Steve. I got wondering about this when I was recording on location in an office building, and there was so much shit coming in off the power line, I had to switch preamps to one that had a much better regulated and filtered PSU. It would be a show stopper if the power coming into your studio totally sucked.

I highly recommend the Best Ferrups Ferro-Resonant UPS. Rebuilt units here in many sizes:http://www.gruberpower.com/gruberpower/ ... efault.aspThe battery backup part of the UPS is all nice and everything. But there's a ferroresonant transformer in here (one winding of the transformer is used to force the frequency of the AC to exactly 60Hz). So if you are always running your place through this box (and not simply switching to it when Edison goes down for battery backup) you are totally isolated from everybody else on your branch of the power distribution grid. And your sine wave is all pretty and nice....no harmonics or spikes from the neighbors.weston

Thanks a lot for the suggestion Bob! Those look really cool.I'll have to keep my eyes open for one of those.

I was parusing pictures of EA and noticed many of the electrical outlets are red. Does a red outlet mean it's an outlet on the 60-g-60 technical power box, or do you guys have a battery backup system?Just curious.

Adam Smith wrote:I was parusing pictures of EA and noticed many of the electrical outlets are red. Does a red outlet mean it's an outlet on the 60-g-60 technical power box, or do you guys have a battery backup system?Just curious.We don't have a battery backup system, though, it might be a good idea for the DAW. The orange outlets are hospital grade and have an isolated ground terminal. The safety ground not tied to the chassis of the outlet, or conduit, just the ground pin. This avoids multiple ground current paths back to the ground stake. There is a green triangle icon on the face of the outlet which tells you it's an isolated ground outlet (and that it can equally used by gay and straight people). There is also a green dot, which tells you that it's a hospital grade outlet. Orange is an informal color standard for these outlets, though they don't have to be orange.

The Ferrups recommendation sounds solid, I've not seen those before.If anyone else has any experience with an honest piece of gear like this I'd love to hear it.I bet even Furman and APC accidentally make a real conditioner now and then.