I sympathise with your desire to keep audio boxes out of sight. I have a little digital amp tucked away in a wardrobe as a bedroom amp. My Quad 606-2 sits in a well ventilated cabinet, without any problems. Anyway, I would be surprised if a fan would generate sonic problems via the electricity supply, unless your amplifier has a badly designed power supply. I would worry more about fan noise. If I can find the time I will try out some time next week, with a fan next to one of my amps (we have some spare electrical fan heaters as back up).
Amp fan cooling without dc current in the 110 line
So I just finished renovating an old TV console, modifying it by removing the TV and adding shelves to hold my gear within it. While it has vents on the sides, bottom and back, I’m sure my amp will get super hot inside. So I’d like to put a little fan in the cabinet to cool it off. But I’ve always heard those little computer fans put a lot of dirty DC current in the AC lines, resulting in noise in the amplifiers presentation.
So question is, how to avoid that.
So question is, how to avoid that.
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The fan should be put on a top of the Amplifier where is the hottest to suck the hot air out. Check this out. Many different options. http://www.ebay.com/itm/AV-Cabinet-Home-Theater-Cooling-fans-w-digital-thermostat-multi-speed-contro... |
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I realize that an amp in a cabinet is not ideal. However having a kid click the power button on and off but repeatedly isn't great either. Really kids and HiFi don't mix. But I don't live in a perfect world so I work with what I've got. The ventilation in the cabinet isn't too bad, just need something to give it a little extra cool. So how do the batterys work, are they always charging and the fan runs off the batterys. Where can you get one. |
I sympathize, even if my pretty unruly kids never did this. Ultimately, of course, this is the product of the gross inefficieny of many amplifiers. All that electricity that goes in does not come out as electricity at the speaker terminals, but a lot of it ends up as heat. We are bound to see big improvements here as (at least EU) regulations will demand more efficiency, to meet our emission reduction ambition. Here in the EU this has already happened with many domestic appliances (see here for televisions: http://ec.europa.eu/energy/en/topics/energy-efficiency/energy-efficient-products/televisions) We recently bought a new vacuuum cleaner because the old one (a top tier brand) had died after 15 years. The old one was 1200 watt and the new one (conforming to new EU regulation) only 600 watt. The new one is lighter to carry, much (ie. really much) quieter, and it actually cleans better. I was recently looking at a new refrigerator to replace a 15 year old one, and the new models consume about a third of the old one. Ditto with the new office computers in my university. This is bound to happen with audio equipment as well. Class D amplifiers are becoming more and more common. The only reason power hungry designs have not been outlawed yet is probably that there are only few of them. |