To Battery Or Not To Battery (12 Volt)

I do location recording of orchestras, bands, choirs, etc. and don’t want to be running long cables across the floor of a church or auditorium.  Trip hazard!!  So a Tascam SD-20M was a solution.  Much better than those hand-held portable recorders. It was designed to use a 12 VDC wall wart, but what was amazing is when I substituted a 12 VDC battery pack made up from 8 D cell batteries.  Not only could I dispense with the long AC extension cord, but the increase in sound quality in my recordings was remarkable.  Lower noise floor (I always recorded at 24/88.2) and much smoother tone from massed strings and voices.  And I could park the recorder right under my Blumlein microphone set up!   The only disadvantage was that the recorder drew about 350mA so the battery pack was good for only about 3-4 hours using 48 V phantom power for the mikes. Enough for anything but Wagnerian operas 😆.

Back in the day I had N.E.W. (Nirvana Electronic Werkes) class a SS amp that ran off 4 wheelchair 12V batteries. My Merlin VSM BAM runs off four 9V batteries. I've tried various battery packs/inverters to run some source equipment. There is a certain level of the black background/noise floors thing even conditioned AC can't compete with.

As a woodworker I could dress that up in a vented cherry wood box, but the off-gassing of the batteries inside a home might be a problem. Of course, one could place the whole assembly outside and wire it into the house. Then the problem becomes very cold weather and that effect on the batteries. Probably battery heaters would be required.

I don't think I want that mess in my audio room. My streamer (Aurender W20SE) runs on a battery and looks good. I have heard preamps that operate on batteries, very low noise floor. 

I'll raise you a harrumph.

Sigh

I've hear another option is one of the battery back up systems like from golezero etc.  as long as the requtifier is noise free it should be a stable power source. Add solar charging to it and your off grid for your audio system. Some youtubers say its an upgrade over standard AC from the power co.