"balanced power"

[no-fi]

while stuffing about online at work the other day looking for 120V 60Hz sinewave inverters in Australia, I came across this interesting product

http://www.tortech.com.au/balanced_stud ... upply.html

It basically looks like a normal isolation transformer, with the output side centre tapped and connected to input side's earth...

I'm can see how the electric field around a mains lead running balanced power instead of normal "unbalanced" power would be a little different (2 out of phase signals at 120V instead of one at 240) but I don't expect to see much electric field outside of a mains cable anyway, with a big fat earth wire running through the cable already... And I have absolutely no idea how it could effect magnetic fields at all - current is still the same, and either way you should have fields cancelling.

but I'm still wondering... has anyone actually wired up a studio with power from something like this? if so, how did it work out for you?

[geofflee]

I got a Peach balanced power supply in 1997. All the hums and buzzes went away instantly. I've sort of forgotten about it...

[Futureman]

Looks like that is made under liscence from Peach audio..
Also, looks like the 'buy it' link is 404 dead.

[no-fi]

yeah - I've seen and heard some peach gear once. it's very well made and sounds very nice. definitely a serious company - so I'm keen to know more and understand about what this whole balanced power thing actually does. because right now I just don't see a massive advantage beyond the line filtering, and it forcing a single star ground configuration....

It would be very nice if all my studio hums and buzzes would just go away though...

[mark rachelle]

You can Buy It from tortech
http://www.tortech.com.au/category/bala ... er-supply/

its $1450 and it takes 2 weeks to make

[no-fi]

yeah.... that's the link I found that made me wonder about it in the first place......

[GlennS]

I don't have one in my own studio, but I've worked off & on in A Sharp studio in Sydney over the last 12 years. When they installed Peach balanced power supplies (one in the CR & one in the main live room) everything sounded better. My impression was that the bottom end sounded solid, in fact everything sounded solid, I don't know how else to put it. I guess it's a reminder that clean power = clean audio.

[Alastair Reynolds]

Lower Hum and interference is best achieved by first improving the power supply to your studio. A poor condition switchboard or Circuit breakers with a heat stressed neutral link and a rudimentary earth strap to the cold water pipe or a small earth stake in dry soil all contribute to noise in your audio as do old power points with high contact resistance. As Rick has pointed out in AT articles , poor quality IEC leads also can limit current to equipment, cause voltage fluctuation and give a "constipated" sound. Get a good technical earth happening. Preferably a 125mm cable to a 3 -6 metre copper stake. If your soil has poor conductivity, bore it and fill with a high conductivity mixture such as "Good Earth". Internally run the main earth connection to a good heavy copper Buss-Bar and use this as the star point. 125mm or 75mm cable to equipment racks, break out from star point to 6mm individual feeds for power points.A good practice is to use different coloured power points for Technical power, e.g. red. keep desk lamps , printers and other noise sources on house power. Another usefull way of cleaning the power is to use an inline UPS that is always conditioning the power and giving a constant 240V as a pure sine wave.This will help filter harmonics on the AC mains power supply , keep a session from crashing in case of a brownout or glitch and as a bonus drastically reduce power supply failures in equipment by keeping a clean constant feed to all downline equipment. I have installed dual 40KVA inline UPS for all tech power with an earth system as described. This runs a machine Room, Master Control and 13 Studios. With over 140 Servers, Audio routing, transmission encoding (Analogue and DAB), consoles playout and editing etc etc. Outages due to power supply failure were reduced by about 80% compared to our earlier studio configuration. Electrical Noise floor is extremely low. Paying attention to the power supply before it gets to the power point will solve a myriad of problems. Plugging a centre tapped isolation transformer into a crappy power point with a poor earth won't solve your noise issues any more than a $200 IEC lead with pure crystalline copper loving smelted by tibetan virgins will. That's my opinion and I welcome yours on 13 13 32, damn .... slipped into on Air mode by accident, Time for my medication... Bundy Roy ?

[TimS]

Hmmmm, Rob Fyfe got me onto 'balanced power' for guitar rigs years ago (when I was building them)
Well worth a review in anyone's language..

[lespauljunior]

I have run a Peach/Fyfe in my audio setup.

If you "A-B" a power conditioner with no conditioner, you can hear the difference.

Some noticeable improvements were better bass and better channel separation.

But I guess the degree of difference is in the ears?