Using battery power to go off the City's power grid

ricevs,

I don't see the point of adding as much battery power as you like.  For example, your friend uses two Amperetime 200 amp-hr batteries.  At 12V, this is 4800 watt-hr if the batteries are fully charged.  His Giandel inverter is 5000 watt-hr continuous or 10,000 burst.  So I don't know why Giandel recommends minimum battery of 500 amp-hr, when 400 amp-hr should be enough.

More batteries means more charging time required.  To begin, my EQ and CD player each draw 20W, so only 40W-hr is required from the battery for 1 hour of daily listening.  A single A-time battery with 2400 W-hr will last me 60 days until it is drained.  Only monthly recharging should be OK.  This alone should let me know how much benefit there is with the battery + inverter at a minimal cost.  If results are good, I'll add my Mytek Brooklyn power amp.  On peaks, it needs 1000W, but for routine listening to my classical music which most of the time uses only a few watts, I still estimate that recharging every few weeks will be fine.

I suspect that the purity benefits of battery-inverters are mainly at low SPL's.  At loud levels, sbayne didn't even hear the fan coming on, but heard the fan only at low levels.

It is unfortunate that the country such as the US has such an inadequate, outdated, unmaintained system of public utilities that so many citizens resort to battery power to insure reliable, stable, sufficient electrical power and endure the cost, trouble, and inconvenience of such battery systems when the rest of the world has moved on to AC power!

clearthink - The US, like the rest of the world, uses AC power thanks to Nikola Tesla. And it's "fine" for 99% of the consumers. Its main problem, in my opinion, is it fluctuates anywhere between 110v - 120v depending the time of day and where you are located. Plus, it has all kinds of noise on it.  Some audiophiles try to clean it with voltage stabilizers and conditioners. Using batteries (off the grid DC) converted to AC is another way to solve these issues which me (and ricevs and others) think hasn't gotten enough attention. 

I have been to the US so I know you are on AC power my point is that it is so unreliable, outdated, and not maintained that so many audiophiles resort to battery power for the music reproduction systems which is a "third-world" type "solution" but some of you have no choice, alternative, or option it appears I hope you can keep your food refrigerated to safe temperatures! 

haha, yes we can "keep our food refrigerated to safe temperatures" in the US