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Thoughts on power conditioners?

fas42

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Which didn't even get a comment in its thread.

I thought maybe it drove a couple of transistors on the board, but they seem to be part of the power supply instead.

So, all in a chip, no heat sink unless it uses the board itself.

But I get it, nothing to see here.

High efficiency, there's a heatsink bump under the chip, which could be mounted on something with a bit of mass, if needed. Effective delivery of high power can be done with tiny bits of hardware - the DIY chip amp I did had its important bits in as tiny a space - all the bulk of the amplifier was in the power supply, the heatsinks, and the smoothing capacitors surrounding the amp chip. Spreading the working bits around the place is asking for trouble - squash everything in tight, and then get rid of heat as efficiently as possible.
 

Speedskater

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How effective is a bog standard isolation tx in terms of giving a clean mains output?
The virtue of a big permanently installed isolation transformer, is that it can be wired as a 'separately derived system'. This means that the Safety Ground/Protective Earth path to the Neutral is short and low impedance. So the noise/interference currents don't need to go all the way back to the main breaker panel to get to their voltage source.
 

DonH56

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The 2 x 50W amplifier in my little JBLs - STA350BW:

View attachment 4170

Which didn't even get a comment in its thread.

I thought maybe it drove a couple of transistors on the board, but they seem to be part of the power supply instead.

So, all in a chip, no heat sink unless it uses the board itself.

But I get it, nothing to see here.

You can see the ground plane spreading out above and below the chip; that is the main thermal conduction path. At 90 % efficiency and 2x50 W then the package dissipates about 10 W, but only at full power, so they get away without a heat sink. Average power dissipation is probably under a Watt. I'd probably add one but there may be a sink on the back I am not seeing (part of the board mounting system), and/or I may be overly conservative (flight hardware has to work and we built in pretty good margin). The regulators on our boards are switchers, can (and do) drive 10 - 30 A at around 1 V continuously, and require no heat sinks but do depend upon the ground pour (plane) to help dissipate heat.
 

DonH56

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How effective is a bog standard isolation tx in terms of giving a clean mains output?

Tx = transformer? Highly variable, natch, but 40 dB is pretty achievable, then the circuits themselves add another 60 dB or so of rejection. The catch is that the transformer probably has sufficient bandwidth to pass some line distortion and it does not know any better (signal is signal, no feedback loop for error compensation in most transformers). I have measured 20 dB or less across some transformers, sometimes essentially none (0 dB) for LF noise, whereas something like a SOLA (self-resonant circuit that helps reject harmonics) can push 60 dB. In most cases the real rejection is from the power supply after the transformer, which yields 40 to 60 dB pretty easily. On a 100 V rail (e.g. a power amp) a signal 60 dB down is 100 mV, which would be a pretty noisy low-level signal but add another 40 dB of rejection and you're at 1 mV so power noise to the speaker is around 100 dB down. I don't think that's atypical. Regulated low-voltage supplies do even (much) better, of course. Where rejection typically falls short is in sustaining high-level signals of long duration from the power amplifiers, and you must include good high-frequency decoupling to filter out RF noise that can blow through the transformer.

Based on foggy memories of days gone by... - Don
 
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Thomas savage

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So, iv had to take out my balanced TX due to issues with tinting or ringing from my amplifiers and go back to bog standard mains..

I'm thinking of putting a isolation TX (5kv) in its stead, the company who make them also offer this(see picture bellow) . Any suggestions or musings as to just what it does? They put them on their balanced TX but I'm needing a regular TX so might ask them to install this device in one of the regulars isolation transformers .

Maybe a few questions I should ask or a spec I should inquire about? Any contributions will be appreciated

image.jpeg
 

watchnerd

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Room and Recording quality are not in the list, because they automatically disappear as "something that needs to be worried about" when the other stuff is sorted.

Wow, life would be so much easier if room acoustics sorted themselves out by ignoring them!
 

RayDunzl

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fas42

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Wow, life would be so much easier if room acoustics sorted themselves out by ignoring them!
Which is what happens when the SQ is good enough - the mind does the sorting out then ... lets say you invite someone, highly proficient, to play acoustic guitar in your home - do you run around madly beforehand, re-organising the room, doing measurements galore, to make sure the room is a "perfect" listening environment - otherwise, your ability to enjoy the event will be severely impeded?
 

RayDunzl

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Sheesh. I thought I was away from the balanced section.
 

Thomas savage

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RayDunzl

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I wanted to know if it will increase performance, or at least what it will do in terms of the electrical supply.

1100142888_photo2_DSC00454.JPG


Amateur eyeball:

It appears to have devices on it to do two things:

Overvoltage protection - blue and black varistors on the left

High Frequency noise attenuation - copper chokes and gray bypass capacitors (if that's what they are). Chokes wound for common-mode noise rejection between L and N.

Plastic box at the top and little circuit at the top - don't know. Maybe a shut-off relay.

Black varistor - can't see how it is wired.

upload_2016-12-28_5-52-5.png
 
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DonH56

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I think the black thing is a thermistor, not a varistor. They are often used to control surges; they are high(er) resistance when cold, then as current flows through them they heat up and their resistance decreases. (You can buy them with the opposite tempco but that is for a different application.) Helps prevent large in-rush current (turn-on surges). The bad thing about them is that, since they are thermal, a short power glitch is not controlled if it is shorter than it takes for the thermistor to cool down ("reset").

The circuit on top has "9V IN" with some components then a relay. The relay appears to be in series with the "MAINS IN". Looks like a remote turn-on/off (trigger) circuit to me. I cannot tell if it is to shunt the thermistor (which could reduce the series resistance and take the heat off the thermistor).

Other than that, my guess matches RayDunzl's; looks like a noise filter.

Things to check include the current capacity (best to operate inductors, especially iron-core types, well below their maximum rating as they produce very ugly waveforms when those limits are exceeded) and the filter's bandwidth for voltage and current.
 
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amirm

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I wouldn't use that Thomas. Those MOVs (blue components) must be fused and have some kind of containment around them. The way they work is that the create a short when their voltage is reached. That voltage is above nominal mains voltage. That is fine except that the voltage keeps going down every time the get hit. Over time this can go low enough to become equiv. to mains voltage. At that point, they become a dead short and blow up catastrophically. The shrapnel can then cause secondary shorts elsewhere.

The proper design calls for fuses in line with each MOV. Without it, this is what happens in milder situations:

upload_2016-12-28_10-53-7.png


On positive side notice the cages around the MOVs on the left.

And this when everything hits the fan:

upload_2016-12-28_10-53-46.png



upload_2016-12-28_10-53-57.png



Here is an example of a better designed product with (wire) fuses:

upload_2016-12-28_10-54-58.png


On filtering your equipment has similar design internally so you would not notice any difference.
 

RayDunzl

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RayDunzl

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I'd be interested to know why your amps don't like balanced power...
 
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