Home electricity

[willjrockstar]

I was hoping that one of the experts might be willing to talk a bit about electricity in the home, and what effects it could have on our recordings.

How can we check to see if our electricity is up to snuff.

Ive heard of people speak of dirty power. Is this something that can be heard or make a difference in our sound quality.

I blow a lot of lightbulbs at my house, and the power goes off a lot, What effect does this have on my recording gear?

I have a furman pl8 plus i believe, does this unit resolve all or most of our issues,and if not what else do we need to do?

Thanks for the read. I dont expect anyone to answer all of the questions. (be nice though) I just hoped one of the bigshots could ramble on a bit about electricity in the home.Tell a wonderful little story or whatnot.

This thread seems to have Garageband all over it. Just seems like one of those things he'd know boatloads about.

[newkid]

Originally Posted by willjrockstar

I was hoping that one of the experts might be willing to talk a bit about electricity in the home, and what effects it could have on our recordings.

How can we check to see if our electricity is up to snuff.

Ive heard of people speak of dirty power. Is this something that can be heard or make a difference in our sound quality.

I blow a lot of lightbulbs at my house, and the power goes off a lot, What effect does this have on my recording gear?

I have a furman pl8 plus i believe, does this unit resolve all or most of our issues,and if not what else do we need to do?

Thanks for the read. I dont expect anyone to answer all of the questions. (be nice though) I just hoped one of the bigshots could ramble on a bit about electricity in the home.Tell a wonderful little story or whatnot.

This thread seems to have Garageband all over it. Just seems like one of those things he'd know boatloads about.

Ask your local power company. They are usually happy to explain.
else google for power problem.s

You could have noise on the power, transients, dips, and of course loss of power. And more.

Some can be bad for your gear, especially surges, maybe dips, etc.

And it can affect the recordings.

I would put surge suppressors and a UPS on anything I cared about. No idea what that pl8 thing is.

YOu can buy similar protection devices for your appliances.
Refrigerator and AC in particular.

Use 130V light bulbs. They will last longer. Have to hunt for them. Not retail items.

[RicD]

I just went through a month of trying to figure out why my mixing board was clicking after a few minutes of running. I bought a furman cl15 ( I think that's it ) and it seemed to help but it only took longer to start clicking. turned out that There was a build up of all the ground issuses in my niehbourhood that would build in my line untill it would start clicking. My comppressor which has a noise gate that I don't use was even cutting on and off in time with the clicks. The noise floor was around -35db. Well within the hearing range. It didn't bother my interface ( tascam 1641) that much but was still there. I even went as far as flipping all of the circut breakers off in the house except the one I was using. It didn't fix it so I knew it was from the line in. So I got an Isolation tranformer which seems to have fixed the prob. I got mine from TrippLite. I highly recomend a UPS!

[newkid]

Originally Posted by RicD

I just went through a month of trying to figure out why my mixing board was clicking after a few minutes of running. I bought a furman cl15 ( I think that's it ) and it seemed to help but it only took longer to start clicking. turned out that There was a build up of all the ground issuses in my niehbourhood that would build in my line untill it would start clicking.

My comppressor which has a noise gate that I don't use was even cutting on and off in time with the clicks. The noise floor was around -35db. Well within the hearing range.

It didn't bother my interface ( tascam 1641) that much but was still there. I even went as far as flipping all of the circut breakers off in the house except the one I was using. It didn't fix it so I knew it was from the line in. So I got an Isolation tranformer which seems to have fixed the prob. I got mine from TrippLite. I highly recomend a UPS!

What is a build up of ground issues. makes no sense as stated.
either there is a ground issue or their isnt. ditto loops.
never heard of a build up. that sounds like a problem in the electronics not the power (but power could be affecting it).

Not sure how you eliminated noise from within the house before you got the xmfr.

Isolation is good approach. IBM even went to a motor/generator to filter out power crud. The dirty power ran the motor fine, and the generator created pure sinewave power tht the powersupplies turned to pure dc with no ripple, no noise.
A UPS should be good enough for home use if it has surge protection. Especially with an isolating xfmr.

[willjrockstar]

Thanks for the reply newkid the pl8 is power conditioner made by furman.

[willjrockstar]

Thanks for yr thoughts Rick.
I had some similar issues with my compressors. I have the threshold set -68 or whatever(so all sound passes through un affected) and the led by the gate toggles on and off.

Just some wierd stuff goin on in general. I get to wondering if its all having an impact on my recordings and equiptment.

Newkid you said that surges and dips could be hard on my gear and noise on the power could affect my recordings. Can you think of a way for me to test any of these circumstances.

Whats it going to take to get it right? The isolation transformer which sounds like more money than i have right now? Or a ups?

The furmans got a voltage meter which is pegged right on 122 volts (orange led.) It used to jump around 126v (red led.)

Thanks gentleman

[RicD]

I am no expert on this subject, I've just had similar issues. In my search for answers I called Furman and Triplite and was asked several questions. What I gleened from this was that in your house, every time the compressor in your fridge cut on it affected the sine wave of the electrcity as well as your Air Conditioner or water heater. Now, couple that with every house that is on the same circut as your home and you get fluctuations in voltage and sine wave as well as spikes. All of these add up to dirty electricity. What the Isolation transformer does is takes that electricity and seperates it from the circut and gives it to you clean and consistant. I got my transformer for around 180 usd. I can't speak intelligently about how it does this so I won't try.
They also asked me to plug my board into different outlets to see if I was getting problems from within the house. They also asked if I could turn off all other consumers of electricity. When I fliped off all of the breakers except the one empty circut I was plugged into and still had the problem they suggested that I didn't have a clean source of juice coming into my house.General-Purpose Isolation Transformers
This is the unit I got. Mine is the 250 watt version. You may need more.
Again I am no expert on this! So maybe someone else on here can tell you why this happens better than I can. They may even have better ideas on how to fix it.
Good luck

[jagcmos]

A isolation transformer is the only way to really remove ground related noise.
The transformer creates a new isolated ground (zero volt reference) on the output of the secondary coil and effectively removes the associated noise.

[willjrockstar]

Thanks jag. Im not even sure if im being affected or not, but my mesa amp blows up once a year and recordings and sounds always sound cloudy.

[jagcmos]

It can be hard to tell, but you posted that your interface is a Fireface 800, so
that part of the equation is solved cause that's a top notch interface.

The furman should provide basic line filtering and eliminate spikes, not much else.

How portable is your rig ?
Have you tried it in another location to see if that fixes the cloudy sound ?