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Battery backup copes with musical transients

On my street the power goes out around once a month. The average outage is only about half an hour, but knowing the power could go out at any time interferes with my concentration. So I installed a battery backup to supply power when the power goes out. It also supplies power every afternoon when the electricity rate is highest. But would the battery be able to keep up with musical transients? Batteries generate electricity from a chemical reaction which could be slow at the critical moment. There's nothing like having the power company's big honking generator at the other end of your power cord to supply the extra current needed when the music hits a peak. Happy to report the music sounds as good on battery as when it's getting power from the grid.

The battery powers the whole house including air conditioning even when temps hit triple digits. By chance, the power went out for three hours not long after the battery was installed. It was worth it just for that. Now I relax and enjoy the music knowing my listening session can never again be interrupted by an outage.
chowkwan

Showing 2 responses by millercarbon

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
No such thing as an AC battery. What you have is some sort of power storage unit with its own built-in charger that converts AC to DC to charge the battery, and inverter that converts DC to AC to power your house. All this converting is highly ironic considering the main job of the power supply inside every component is to convert AC to DC. All our components run on DC.  

You will get a lot more sound quality when this thing is disconnected from the grid. Then if you were able to regulate the DC and turn it into a DC power supply for each component, bypassing the components power supply stage, that would be another big bump in performance. 

Sounds like a lot, but we are after all talking about someone who just dropped twenty large on a battery, and nonchalant about the same on an amp, so what's the holdup?
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
chowkwan, I was expecting you to say it sounds better on the battery. It will, if you are able to switch it to be cut off from AC when you are listening. In one of the early versions of my turntable the motor was battery powered. The battery charger was connected to AC. It was just a very small version of yours. Even running off battery it sounded better when the AC was disconnected. Probably because noise riding on the AC line is able to ripple across the battery. Physically disconnecting it removes this noise and the sound improves.
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