A few months back I wanted to see if I could replace my Shunyata Everest/Omega XC combo with an Ecoflow Delta Pro inverter/battery. The answer I found was no but I took the opportunity to also test the Shunyata gear WITH the Ecoflow together. I connected the Shunyata hear to the Ecoflow's 30A RV receptacle using an adapter. The Everest is 30A rated. The results were eye opening. The clarity and the details gained in the highs alone were nothing like I've ever experienced. Usually when I listen to music, I listen to the mids and the lows and I listen to the highs third. But such a large veil was lifted from the highs that I found myself focused on it and enjoying all the new nuances I never heard before. At last, this setup didn't last because the Ecoflow's fan was too loud so I returned it and I sold the Shunyata gear for funds. The music has not been that good since.
Since that time, I've bought the Bluetti AC300/B300 (no fan noise) and last week I installed the Puritan PSM1512 conditioner along with the Puritan Routemaster and two Puritan Groundmasters. I haven't had alot of time with this current setup but initial results are fun to say the least. I need more time to see if things are better than the Ecoflow/Shunyata combo.
However, I'm not staying still and I've already ordered the Giandel 5000 and the Amperetime battery and charger. My new setup will be very similar to the user oeno from the other forum. Knowing what I know now, I would've gone with this setup before buying the Ecoflow and the Bluetti especially considering the price and potential performance.
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The analogy is correct and your statement regarding all the connections are also correct. Power conditioners like the Shunyata and the Puritan can and in my experience do benefit from an inverter/battery that sits upstream. It could be because of the cleaner AC or electrical isolation but I'm not 100% sure. So that's why I demo and listen. I don't like to just wonder if something is good or not. Part of the fun for me in this hobby is to try and experience various audio gears. It's all about the experience for me.
The Amperetime battery and charger and the Giandel inverter arrived over the weekend. Now I'm just waiting for the battery cables to arrive and then I can hook up everything and demo. The AC adapter I made previously for the 30A RV connection has been modified and will now connect to the AC terminal block of the Giandel. Like oeno, I don't simply connect the Shunyata/Puritan to the 15A or 20A outlet. We utilize the 30A+ outlets.
One correction I want to make. I no longer have the Shunyata Everest/Omega XC combo. I now have the Puritan PSM1512 conditioner with Ultimate power cable.
My near term goal is to get back to the performance level when I had the Ecoflow and Shunyata combo. I'm not there yet with the Bluetti and Puritan combo but I'm hoping the Giandel and Puritan combo can get me there or even top it.
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When I play music with my active speakers, the total power draw for the system is about 220W. And when I listen to the headphone system, the power draw is even lower. So 5000W from the Giandel is overkill from a pure power perspective but I think audio quality comes from the parts and wires that can support that 5000W power draw. For example, on the Ecoflow, I studied the parts and wires for the 30A outlet vs the 20A outlets and they are different. This difference should cause a differece in sound. Being the tweaker that I am, of course I will test this theory on the Giandel :) My experience with Shunyata gear over the years tells me that wire gauge and quality matter and the quality of the parts and connections matter.
I agree, the AC adapter I plan to use with Giandel will have a negative effect but I have a hunch this will be overcome with the "higher quality" connection on the Giandel. We will see.
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I do plan to use the special connection on the Giandel. The 4/0 gauge 1 foot long battery cables arrived this morning and I’ve spent a good chunk of my evening connecting up everything and insulating all bare electrified metal. A word of advice, the Giandel has internal capacitors so to avoid sparks from the initial connection with the battery, it’s recommended to use a resistor to charge up the capacitors.
The battery is charging up right now and I’m waiting until full charge before I have the initial listen which may be in the morning.
I did not know about the EMF filtering which is good to know. The casing of the Giandel is all metal which I think should help with EMF as well.
I plan to charge the battery during off hours and then disconnect the charger during other times. And I want to do this automatically using relays and some type of smart controller.
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All is well and the music flows like fine wine 😁 I've been very busy with life (mostly good) and replying back to this thread has been low priority.
We're working with essentially a 12V car battery so sparks can and do happen so wear proper eye and glove protection and mitigate the sparks by using a resistor. My 30 Ohm 25 Watt resistor came in last night and I will use that next time when making connections with battery (inverter and charger).
I've been listening with the Puritan/Giandel combo and it's as good as expected. I'm going to use an analogy to help describe what I gained. I had an old pair of eye glasses and I recently got new ones. With the old ones, I could still see 20/20 but they were scratched up. Over the months and years, I got use to these scratches because I could still see very well. When I tried my new pair of eye glasses, the clarity without the scratches were appreciated. Comparing old and new, I also saw that the old pair had a yellowish tint that I never noticed before. After having the new pair, I can't go back to the old pair. I'm going to be cliche and say a sizeable veil has been lifted with the addition of the Giandel. I can hear the improvements easily with my headphone listening and with my Kii Three Active speakers.
For anyone already with a good power conditioner, I believe the addition of the Giandel will enhance the performance of that conditioner and one may be surprised at the level of improvement. I've tried the Ecoflow Delta Pro, Bluetti AC300/B300, and now the Giandel 5000/Amperetime Battery. The rest of the system has not stayed the same throughout my time with these three solutions but I believe the Giandel is the best performer of the bunch.
For how I plan to charge and discharge the system, the 200Ah Amperetime battery is not big enough. It's running too low on capacity at the end of the day. I'm returning it and getting the 300Ah model. Also, the Amperetime 40A charger is not as powerful as I would like, so I'm getting a Progressive Dynamics 80A charger (the one for lithium batteries). This new charger requires a 20A outlet which I have. I currently use a smart plug to automatically charge the battery at night and this has worked out very well. With the new 80A charger, I now plan to use a smart outlet that can handle 20 amps.
Big Thank You to ricevs and oeno for sharing the Giandel!
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How to use resistor: https://youtu.be/ZlrtmJRfSP8
I use a TP Link HS105 Smart Plug to turn on/off power to the charger. I use the Kasa app on my iPhone to schedule the power on/off. I leave the power switch on the charger to on.
Ease of use is very important to me because it's not just me that uses the system. So part of making it easy, I leave the inverter on 24/7 and this drains the battery quickly. Last night while watching a movie with the family, the charge went down to zero. So I'm getting a bigger battery and I may also start charging midday for an hour to mitigate losing power during late music listening or movie watching.
If one doesn't plan to leave the inverter on 24/7, then a 200Ah battery is plenty and the 40A charger would be more than enough.
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I'm still enjoying the Giandel 5000 and the Amperetime Battery. I'm also happy with the Progressive Dynamics 80A charger. The fan noise on this charger is lower than the Amperetime charger I had before. The Leviton 20A smart outlet is also doing a great job of charging the battery twice a day.
My previous power conditioner can detect the THD of the AC. On the Giandel, THD is 2%. On the Bluetti AC300, THD was 4%. Both are Pure Sine Wave inverters but the Giandel 5000 is obviously at a different level.
I currently use a cable adapter on the high current terminal block on the Giandel which is not ideal because it may limit transient current delivery. Tomorrow, the 1m Furutech DPS 4.1 power cable, Furutech FI 52 NCF 20A connector, and Furutech FP-209R spade connectors are arriving. I plan to put this cable together and use it to power my conditioner from the terminal block of the Giandel.
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@khbaur330162 Good to see another person take the plunge. I too wished I had seen this thread before I bought the Ecoflow and Bluetti. With the Ecoflow I was able to return and get a full refund but with the Bluetti I was not and I lost a good chunk of change selling it to a family member.
Make sure to get the Giandel asvertised as Pure Sine Wave and FCC Approved. The 5000W is indeed overkill. If I had to do it again, I would’ve gone with two 1500w or 2000w inverters and two conditioners. I would’ve put my digital components on one set of inverter/conditioner and my analog components on the other set. Perhaps next year I incorporate another inverter into the system to separate my digital and analog components.
I do highly recommend a conditioner to go with the Giandel. I compared plugging my DAC and amp into the inverter directly versus plugging into the Puritan PSM 136 conditioner fed by the inverter and I preferred the conditioner. It wasn’t close. Puritan PSM conditioners give a lot if bang for the buck and it’s what I would recommend if a conditioner of this caliber is desired.
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@khbaur330162 How do you like it after some extended time?
For a short while I ran my power cables off the inverter/battery directly and I used very expensive noise reducing Shunyata power cables on the DAC and amp. The music sounded great but it wasn't as good as I knew it could be. I had heard better from my system. I sold the very expensive Shunyata power cables and I went back to using a power conditioner with the inverter/battery.
Are you using a conditioner and aftermarket power cables? I find them very beneficial even with an inverter/battery system.
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I've personally doubled down on battery/inverter power. I just bought a Shunyata Venom V16 power conditioner and a Giandel 2000W pure sine wave inverter. All of my digital components will go to this new inverter/conditioner and the analog components will stay withe the Giandel 5000W inverter with the Shunyata Denali V2. The idea here is to keep all of the dirty digital garbage on its own "dedicated line" and away from the analog components like the amps. I plan to stay with one battery to power both inverters. I'm not going to back to wall outlets any time soon. I know too much.
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I think that's a question for Bluetti.
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There is always risk with anything electrical. Even when everything is plugged into the wall there are power surges and lightning strikes that can overwhelm any audio system. One reason I use a Shunyata power conditioner is because it has an electrical breaker built in to mitigate surges. Regarding the inverter, in my almost two years of going off grid, none of my audio equipment was ever damaged. I did however manage to damage the inverter and the battery charger. For the Giandel inverter, one should never plug and unplug equipment with the inverter on. I think I damaged it by doing this in a moment of haste. I was able to get a new 5000W inverter under warranty. I now always power all components off, then the conditioner, then the inverter, when I need to reconfigure the AC setup. Giandel they actually say to remove the positive cable from the battery. After making the change, I would power on the inverter first and then verify the AC voltage is back to 120V (US) before I power on the conditioner or any component. Regarding the Progressive Dynamic battery charger, I must’ve crossed the polarities at some point because the reverse polarity fuses blew. Fortunately, the fix was simply replacing the fuses which is not costly. The Ampertime battery has been very solid this whole time. It always runs cool.
For what it's worth, here is a listing of features under "Safety and Stability" from the Giandel website:
- Isolated Input/Output Design
- Soft Start Tech
- Over Voltage
- Low Voltage
- Overload
- Short Circuit
- Overheat
- Polarity Reverse Protection (Fuse)
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I used the Venom V16 for source and Denali V2 for amp because the the Denali V2 has the QR/BB technology that helps with amps. With that said, for cost reasons and simplification I’ve sold both conditioners and now I’m using a single Shunyata Typhon T2 for DAC, preamp, and amp. I also have a pair of DC power supplies connected directly to the inverter and they power the Lumin streamer and other auxiliary devices such as network devices.
I bought a Zavfino Silver Dart power cable and I modified one end to connect to the high current terminals on the Giandel inverter. On the other end I installed a Furutech 20A plug. I prefer this cable over the modified Furutech DPS 4.1 power cable I was using earlier.
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This is just my educated opinion but I think there are a few key things that a powerful battery/inverter system offers over the average 15A wall outlet. It’s separated from what can be a noisy grid. It can offer more dynamic power (from a large bank of capacitors?) and it can offer higher maximum power (30 amps plus). Lastly, it can offer a better AC sinewave (better THD) to power supplies that were designed with perfect AC sinewaves in mind. I believe all of these points matter in a good sound system. Where the battery/inverter and 15A wall outlet may be at the same level is in the area of component to component noise. I’m talking about the noise from the streamer’s power supply travelling only a few feet across power cables to interact with the preamp’s power supply. This type of noise may be more problematic than anything on the grid. So this is where an excellent power conditioner comes into play. Some well designed power conditioners tackle this type of noise and they tend to offer outlet to outlet isolation at some level. I have tried Shunyata’s top of the line conditioners (Everest on down) on a battery/inverter and it makes a big difference. I have also tried Puritan conditioners and they make a noticeable difference as well. Value wise, the Puritan conditioners are hard to beat but I’ve found Shunyata TOTL to be better than Puritan TOTL. I can recommend both.
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sirnui
... a few key things that a powerful battery/inverter system offers over the average 15A wall outlet. It’s separated from what can be a noisy grid ...
And replaces it with a potentially noisy inverter.
The inverter will have noise of its own so it comes down to the lesser of two evils for noise. Even in the suburbs where I live, the data is telling me my Giandel inverter has slightly better AC Total Harmonic Distortion than the wall AC. I use to own a power conditioner that showed AC THD.
It can offer more dynamic power (from a large bank of capacitors?) ...
Greater than the dynamic power available from your local electric utility, which uses banks of capacitors at the substation? I don’t think so.
Those substations are not a few feet away from the audio system. Any power reservoir from the susbstation needs to travel many feet and it will have to go through transformers and the house wiring and electrical outlets likely rated for 15A. The audio system is not seeing anything close to what the substation can offer for power. But in my case with the Giandel 5000W and using the High Current terminals, my ceiling is not limited to 15A. Doing the math, 5000W / 120V = 41.67A. Now, max power is not really what I'm going for but it's beneficial to have wires and circuits that were designed to handle that kind of power. This can come into play during moments of sudden and quick power draws. I once had Kii Three active speakers hooked up to the battery/inverter system. They were not class A monoblocks but not once did I feel the power was lacking when I turned up the volume.
... it can offer a better AC sinewave (better THD) to power supplies that were designed with perfect AC sinewaves in mind.
A good power supply doesn’t require "perfect AC sinewaves."
I didn't use the word "require". I generally believe if dirt goes in, then dirt comes out. If a clean AC sinewave goes into a power supply, then clean DC power comes out. If a jagged AC sinewave goes into a power supply, the DC signal out would likely have artifacts(noise) from the jaggedness of the AC sinewave.
I have an academic background in EE. I have a BS and MS in Computer Engineering. I don't share this to say I know everything about electricity because I don't. I share this because the decisions I've made regarding how I deal with power in my audio system is helped from this EE knowledge or whatever is left of it. I don't do EE for a living. But above all, I try the gear and nothing beats actual experience. Theory is nice but actually applying theory is better.
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Electric power can be distributed over hundreds of miles with minimal losses.
The line feeding my house originates at the substation as a 12,470/7,200 volt wye circuit. That is a very common distribution scheme in the US, and it’s a big step up from the old delta circuit that my utility previously used. Either way, you don’t want that 7,200 VAC anywhere near your system.
My audio system uses dedicated, derated 20A lines and my utility - which is not a very good one, by the way - has no trouble delivering power on demand. If there is any doubt about your utility’s ability to deliver sufficient power, a "beast of burden test" will settle it. You would need a massive bank of batteries and capacitors to come even close to delivering the power a proper utility offers.
Shunyata Research believes in what is called Dynamic Transient Current Delivery. Another audio forum describes DTCD in more details and I won't repeat the whole concept here. From what I understand of it, power supplies pull current from the crests of the sinewave. So the rectifiers are only open during a small part of the sine wave. When the rectifiers are open, the instantaneous current that flows through to the power supply's storage capacitors can be 10 to 20 times the average current. For example, if an amp draws 10 amps average, the instantaneous current can be 100 or 200 amps. This doesn't blow the breakers because the average current is still below the line's rated current of 20A. For the power supplies, it's best to get the number for the instantaneous current to be as high as possible. Upgrading from a 15A line to a 20A line, using audiophile outlets, using audiophile power cables, are all actions that would increase instantaneous current.
The point I'm trying to make here is that one has to look at what is immediately connected to the audio system's power supplies. This is the power cables, the power conditioner, the wall outlet, the 20A line, etc. The quality of all those things would affect the instantaneous current. In my decade in the hobby, I've found all of these things to be very important. It's not just theory to me since I've proven it to myself over and over. So I'm not really talking about total power or maximum average current. I'm talking about instantaneous current to the power supplies which can be very different in two power delivery systems even when those two systems can provide the same average current.
So how does all of this tie back to batteries and inverters? Here are the positives I see that can help increase instantaneous current for a battery/inverter. The total length of wiring from the battery and through the inverter is very short. I'm using the high current terminals of the Giandel inverter which I believe can provide 41.67A of average current. Generally, the higher the average current, the higher the instantaneous current. It's difficult for me to know for sure if these qualities actually give my audio system more instantaneous current versus my previous 20A line. Shunyata makes a device they call a DTCD Analyzer that can be used to measure but I don't necessarily want to buy one, assuming they would sell one to me. I had to follow my ears on this one.
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In fact you have now If I understand well two separated battery inverter system
- One for DAC ,preamp ,Amp with Shunyata Typhon
- The second one for Lumin streamer , switch etc...
Since I have a friend with a Denali , I will do the test with this conditionner .
For the audio system, I have just one battery and one inverter, the Giandel 5000W. The Giandel 5000W has one high current terminal and 4 normal US outlets. The conditioner is connected to the high current terminal and one of the normal outlets powers the HDPlex 300W power supply that feeds DC to the Lumin streamer, switch, etc.
I technically have a second inverter connected to the battery but it powers the HT system and is not part of my audio system. I experimented with the second inverter for the audio system but didn’t find it beneficial, at least not in the way I had things configured. I may experiment more with the second inverter in the future.
I haven't mentioned grounding recently but that is something I do with the system. Grounding an inverter is different than grounding with a house AC line and different types of inverters may call for different ways to ground. The Giandel manual says to ground to the car/vehicle or to earth. The audio system's ground is grounded to the house AC ground with a Puritan Ground Master. I use another Ground Master on one of the isolated SPDIF connectors on the Lumin streamer and I also use another Ground Master on the ground pin of the Lumin streamer. In the near future, I may decide to install a grounding rod outside and connect all these Ground Masters to this rod. I think this would benefit the system. I won't know until I try.
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