@bernadie5317 indeed that would be theoretically nice. However many amps use several different voltages out of their transformers and tube amps generally are going to requre ac to drive a transformer to make the b+ voltages and other things. For a DAc or other component operating on a single DC voltage you might get great result. Batteries won't hold a constant voltage over a long listening period unless they are very oversized. So that may be an issue. I've never heard personally of anyone doing this but I bet it's been done.
Took the lithium ion battery plunge
After reading here about the sonic improvements of using a lithium ion power station to power your system I decided to give it a try. I bought a Jackery 290 one of their smallest units.
My system's front stage (TT, phono pre, preamp) is plugged into an ExactPower power regenerator plugged into the wall. Power amp is directly plugged into the wall. My initial plan was to only power the turntable and phono pre with the battery thinking the tube preamp would suck too much juice. A cool feature most of these lithium batteries have is a display showing your wattage draw from plugged in devices. My turntable running and phono pre were only drawing about 18-23 watts. With the tube preamp plugged in it was drawing around 50-55 watts. The battery is rated at 290 watt hours so that would give roughly 5+ hours of listening time (290 ÷ 55). Perfect as this is roughly how long my listening sessions are.
I fired up the system. Here's the condensed review: I'm never going back to ac line power again lol.
Here's the long review: I thought I had a pretty good black background before. WRONG! I hate to come off as shill sounding but this was a night and day difference. That whole lifting the veil thing I see here frequently happened. It wasn't subtle. Everything was more defined and just natural sounding. I am made aware of this every time I run the system and plug the regenerator back into the wall (which is a synergistic research Teslaplex) to warm everything up without draining the battery. I wait in anticipation to get it plugged into the battery.
Ok enough shilling here are the cons and what has kept many from taking the plunge themselves. Fan noise. It's not quiet. The fan didn't need to run with only the turntable and phono pre plugged in but it sure did with the tube preamp also plugged in. I listen at high volume though so it's not audible. Any low level listening would be impossible if you have the unit in the same room as you. There are ways around this that I'm considering. Even at full 55 watt draw over a few hours it's still blowing cool air from the fan. I see others have disconnected the fan at your own risk of course. Or I may just put a cardboard box over it with a notch cut out for the power cable. Longevity is another issue. These batteries have a finite life cycle of between 500-3000 charges depending on brand and model. This means whatever you spend on it you will be spending again or more down the road to replace it. However despite all of this I'm not going back. The sound is that good!
Overview: Lithium ion battery power is a game changer if your setup and listening habits support it. If you listen at low levels and aren't willing to do something about the fan it won't work. If your system plays daily and for long hours you may be going through batteries pretty fast. I usually only get quality listening time on the weekends so not an issue for me really.
The end result is the sound is too good to me to go back despite the cons listed.
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I agree, @carlsbad . B+ is a real problem for batteries - it’s often 300VDC or more. That governed my choice of technologies: I use aerospace solid state running at +/- 6VDC for phono-pre. One solution is NiCad batteries, which are about 1.3VDC / cell when freshly charged, rapidly dropping to 1.2 - 1.25, and staying there for the rest of their discharge cycle. Not perfect, but the full complementary design helps to null out any voltage issues if those are symmetrical, which they are, as both rails drop to just over 6 VDC. |
After many reading on DC/AC inverter topic, I put together a system using a low frequency pure sine wave power inverter (the one that use big toroidal transformer) and 8, 3.2 vdc low impedance prismatic Lifepo4 batteries to power all my front end. With all the front end connected to this system and the power amplifier connected directly to the wall, the system sound ok but lost some of the dynamic range I am used to, but also sound much more refined. The system sound much better and dynamics with all front end connected to the Niagara 5000. There is much more than just having a clean AC power, like: isolation between components (Niagara do), proper noise reduction through components chassis ground (SR and Shunyata do) and quick current delivery. In fact, DC/AC inverters aren't AC noise or distortion free. Some inverters are much better than others for this application. I did other tests that I believe some of the readers here will find interesting. |
After doing much more listening on the battery and from the wall I have to step back some of my praise for the battery. I am beginning to come to the same conclusion as you guys. I'm in love with the clarity and clean tone of the overall presentation but there is slam and drive missing with the battery. I see the benefits of both at this point and I'm happy using either. If I could combine the two it would be perfect. Perhaps a battery more suitable for audio applications is necessary as well. With a really quality inverter and a huge heatsink that wouldn't require a noisy fan. The Jackery I have says it puts out 110v pure sine wave. Not enough for my hungry tube preamp huh? |
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