Tech Tip #16
Whoaaaaaaaa… .. Back Up !!!!!

Well it was a wild weekend for us here in Winnipeg. The Centre For Conscious Living hosted it’s second annual Canadian New Thought Conference and it was a smashing success if I do say so myself. Hats off to all the organizers and thanks to the great musicians who travelled to be with us. Deanna Clee and her pianist Sylvia Maltby. The incredible Rev Judy Armstrong and the amazing Jack Fowler. No sound glitches all weekend and Suzanne and I got to do a Sunday afternoon concert for the conference which was a wonderful experience for both of us. We were so grateful and humbled to be asked to perform for our peers. Thank you everyone.
That said, on to our tech tip. Today’s sound systems incorporate more electronic devices and computer gear than ever before. This gear requires stable and clean electrical power but often just gets plugged right into a wall outlet without much thought about what is coming out of that outlet. A reasonable solution is to purchase one of the many affordable UPS systems that are available these days. No, I don’t mean the parcel delivery company we all know so well. I am talking about Uninterruptable Power Supply’ which are basically a big battery that is rated in watts (250-350-500-1500) Here is a website with some examples. http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=21
I have saved hundreds and maybe thousands of dollars by having my home computer plugged into a $40.00 UPS. The differences between a surge protecting power bar and a battery back up UPS are many but the most important is that a power bar can not protect you from over voltages and under voltages (brown outs) which occur hundreds of times a day. I proved this to myself once by inserting the prongs of my digital multimeter into an outlet and set it to read AC voltage. Just watching the display for 20 minutes or so I witnessed voltage drops down to 75 volts and surges as high as 300 volts. Considering that 119 is the average voltage that should be coming out of an outlet, this could be and is a huge problem. All digital equipment works best when it is getting constant power and only a UPS can do this for you. The battery acts as a reservoir and when the power drops in voltage a microprocessor in the UPS switches over to battery in the blink of an eye. So fast in fact that your computer / electronic device never knows the difference. Same thing when the power surges. Your fancy surge protection power bar is not in the same league and in my humble opinion is a waste of money when the price of a UPS is almost the same cost in many cases. If your home computer has ever acted strange ( Who’s hasn’t?) it is likely a result of unstable voltage. This can be even worse at supper time or in hot weather when air conditioners are going on and off. I have 4 UPS systems in my home and one just for my home theatre. I say to you that UPS systems are no longer an option for your computer and home theatre system but should be part of your whole system. At our church we use 3-1500 watt APC UPS systems. 2 on stage that protect our 2 Bose L1 tower systems. (in the bose user guide is states that the system should be plugged into a surge protector) and a third UPS back at the sound board area for our computer recording system. Ever since implementing the UPS backups all of our “sound gremlins” have mysteriously disappeared. Take note that a little math is required to get the right system. You need to add up the total wattage draw of your equipment and purchase a UPS with enough juice to run it in the event of a power failure. I personally recommend a UPS rated at double the amount you are drawing. For example each of our Bose towers draw 750 watts maximum so I plug each one into a 1500 watt UPS system. This gives me lots of room to work with and if the power goes out I will not exhaust the battery in 15 seconds. Remember the UPS is not meant to run everything in the event of a power failure but rather to give you time to shut down. How about those lightning storms where the power is going on and off like crazy? You know what I am talking about. Those are the ones that do the big damage. With a UPS system your gear never even knows that something is wrong. It works that fast. I even carry a 350 watt portable UPS to all my DJ gigs to protect my hard drives and computers. I was DJ’ing last summer at a very posh country club and there was a huge storm going on outside. The lights were zapping on and off but my sound system and computers never knew the difference. How about a lightning strike? Your fancy power bar with surge protect has a resistor in it that can only take one big surge and then it is only a power bar. (manufacturers don’t tell you that ) UPS have a much more robust ability to handle huge surges and keep on working. So EMPOWER yourself and your equipment with an important addition to your equipment. The battery backup UPS. Don’t leave home without it.
techtips@mts.net