Switching to battery power

@goofyfoot 

"There was no difference in the resulting sound quality when the Stromtank S2500 was powering my front-end versus the Goal Zero Yeti 400. None."
GOAL ZERO YETI 400 LITHIUM PORTABLE POWER STATION – REVIEW BY ENJOY THE MUSIC.COM - Headphone Guru

@goofyfoot 

Our AC mains is a 50Hz - 60Hz sine wave, so that's why the battery power stations are made to create them - to match the mains power.

If you feed your electronics a square wave or modified sign wave you may damage them. And if you don't, I'm sure your sound quality would be terrible. So a "pure wave" power station is the way to go.

Question is, just how pure is the pure wave? None of the battery power stations manufacturers publish that, so I'm going to have to roll the dice on that one.

To your point re wattage, I want at least 3 - 4 times higher continuous power output from the battery power plant than what my equipment will draw. 

@goofyfoot

I have no idea. The power station I like is the Ego. POWER+ Nexus Portable Power Station (3000W) | EGO (egopowerplus.com)

I just happen to run across the article re the Goal Zero and Strom and thought I'll share it with you.

I wouldn’t know which (Goal Zero vs. Milwaykee vs. Ego) would sound better and I do not have the financial means to buy all three and compare them. I was hoping somebody here may have tried a few and could shed light on it.

Feedback part 1:

My DAC (RME ADI-2) runs off a little wall wart power supply. While I was deciding which power station to buy for the rest of my equipment, I decided to buy a 12v Lithium Ion battery pack for the DAC to see if the sound improved.

The improvement to the sound is astonishing. Nothing subtle about it. The battery cost me $89 and I have never experienced such an improvement from any tweak even costing 10 times as much. In short, if you have equipment that is powered by a little wall wart, going to a battery is a no-brainer.

I left the DAC running last night and the battery still has three bars (out of 4) lit after more than 12 hours, so for my application at least, the battery has got more than sufficient power for even the longest listening sessions. 

The battery I bought was a TalentCell 12V Lithium ion Battery PB120B2, but there are a number of other that I'm sure will work just as well.

I have no affiliation with the Talencell company. 

" You do not power the amplifier with a pure sine wave. You power it with pure DC."

The input to every amplifier I have ever owned has been 110v AC. I don’t plug my amplifiers into a DC source and never have, I plug them into an AC source as per the manufacturers guidance.

"If pure DC is coming out of your power supply using whatever comes out of your wall socket than purchasing any power source is a total and complete waste of money."

Multiple blind tests done by multiple individuals has shown that noise on the AC will negatively effect sound quality and that a mains source with less noise will improve sound.

Most knowledgeable audiophiles on this forum are well aware of it, have had actual experience of this phenomenon, and go to some length to reduce noise on their AC input.

" If you want to know what your power supply is doing just hook up an oscilloscope to it. You should see a perfectly flat line at the voltage spec of the power supply. Now that is a static measurement ...

This is not affected by the cleanliness of the AC supplied to the unit. "

If you believe that the quality of the AC input does not effect sound, why are you posting on this thread? This thread is in part to improve AC quality through the use of batteries and inverters. Clearly you have nothing of value to add in this regard.

@goofyfoot 

Feedback part II

I bought this  EcoFlow RIVER Portable Power Station . I did because it was cheap, it had very good reviews, it does what I am looking for, and this particular model can be be expanded/enlarged.

A few days before it arrived I had amp issues and had to switch to my backup amp which am not as familiar with. Also, right before it arrived, part of my acoustic treatment fell off my ceiling - no treatment for the first reflection point of left speaker. The battery gods were not helping it seems?

My setup for the amp is a Furmam pro, feeding a 1mtr Wireworld silver electra into a balanced transformer and then a 3mtr  Wireworld silver electra to feed the amp. That I changed to the ecoflow and the 3mtr silver eletra. 

Right off the bat I felt there was a a little more detail I could not hear before or could barely hear before. I was very impressed given the lack of diffusion in my ceiling that I felt added detail. What was even more impressive is that I normally listen at night as my sound is not that good the day, but I this was during the day. It had turned day into night. Very impressive given my pre amp and streamer was still on mains power. 

The sound was not constrained in any way, in fact if anything it sounded more dynamic than ever. 

Other nice things about this battery is that it has a couple of 5v and 12v DC output too, so you can run equipment that rely on wallwarts.
It's also wifi enabled, and you can keep an eye battery levels etc. from your iPad. 

The not so good things. The battery went down waaaaay faster than I thought when using 120v AC. The 5v and 12v DC output would last days, but the AC out seems to be very inefficient.  Note, my spud amp draws only 35 watts and has an output of a whopping 2wpc into 8ohms.

It also has a fan which would run when the AC was used. It's very quiet, but you have to orientate the battery so the fan exhaust point away from you (and not at a hard reflective surface)

I've ordered the EcoFlow RIVER Extra Battery which I believe will give me around 5 hours of listening. 

I highly highly highly recommend switching to battery, but I would suggest going for the larger models for components that consume 120v AC. 

Take 2 on the battery charge. 
For some reason my battery is not getting drained today. I suspect I had not had it fully charged before. I had on charge over night and most of the morning. It’s hanging in there like a champ tonight. 

My ecoflow can be used as a ups. So you can plug your ESLs into the ecoflow and keep the ecoflow plugged into the mains. While you listen, you unplug the mains. As soon as you stop listening, plug the ecoflow back into the mains. 

Pauly, Wrong. The amplifier section of every power amplifier you have ever listened to is powered by DC

Please just shut up. You said, and I quote you verbatim " You do not power the amplifier with a pure sine wave. You power it with pure DC." Now you’re trying to tell me you said the "amplifier section". You said no such thing

With a properly regulated power supply the quality of that AC power makes absolutely no difference. None, nada, zilch, zero.

I just tried it and it does. I trust my ears a lot more than the cr*p you post.

You don’t have anything of value to add, all you do is irritate those who try have a discussion to get some attention. Get lost.

@antigrunge

The guy posted pictures of his "sound system". His amplifiers were sitting  on his speakers. I kid you not. I really, honest to God, kid you not.

Enough said. 

@goofyfoot 

My model can act as a UPS, but best you confirm before you buy other models or other manufacturers offerings. 

Are you planning to jump in all at once, or do the DAC or phono first and see how it works for you? 

@goofyfoot 

My DAC came with a 12v wall-wart. I put that onto a 12v Lithium battery I got off Amazon a few weeks ago already. The improving was amazing. I have a RME DAC.

I think your phono should also benefit a lot too - the signal inside a phono is very small, so the more you can waylay noise the better.

The amp which takes 120 AC from the power station also sounds better than it ever has before. There is just that something in the music that I didn't hear before. It's razor sharp, but still delicate and gentle - if that makes any sense to you. 

Anyway, let us know what your experience are. I'm 110% sold on batteries now.  

@goofyfoot 

Some random feedback.

I downloaded some new software for the battery - it is on my network and I can monitor it from my iPad. With the new software, the fan does not go on while driving my amp.

(Note, my amp only draws 35 Watts which is little more than what a DAC or CD player would draw.) 

For kicks-and-giggles I ran the toaster off the battery. The toaster drew close on 700 Watts(!) of power and the fan turned on from the get go and the unit did heat up. 

I did get the extended battery for my unit. I now seldom have my battery go below 85% during an evening of listening. Keep in mind my amp is very frugal power wise. You can expect the same or better performance on your front end components.

Lastly, the unit unit can be switched between 50Hz and 60Hz output. I am not sure if I am imagining things, but I'm sure my amp sounds better on 50Hz. I suspect the rectifier has an easier time with the slower cycle, and/or it has an easier time dealing with ripples at 50Hz than 60Hz.