Post by KeithL on Sept 6, 2016 14:16:25 GMT -5
Someone asked earlier about "the surge suppression built into our equipment".
It's very simple, really...... and, no, our current equipment doesn't have any MOVs that I know of.
Essentially ANY AC power supply converts AC power into DC power.
A power surge is really just a slightly unusual form of AC power.
When a very short surge arrives at the inlet of a power supply, the inductance of the transformer limits the instantaneous current flow,
and the portion of the energy that isn't blocked by the transformer is absorbed by the filter capacitors.
(The energy of the surge is absorbed by the power supply - and so is not passed on to the delicate audio circuitry.)
In other words, the typical power supply found in most audio equipment is a series mode surge suppressor.
Even though the circuitry in a SMPS, like in our Gen3 amps, is quite different, the basic principle is the same in this situation.
The incoming AC is rectified and filtered before being turned into regulated DC.... so any surges are "filtered out" as well.
I should also take a moment to differentiate between "surge suppressors" and "line filters" in this context.
A normal MOV-based surge suppressor doesn't act as a noise filter because it doesn't do anything until it's activation voltage is reached.
Our CMX-2 and CMX-6 are not considered to be "surge suppressors" because, while they filter high frequency noise, they would not filter out all or most of a power surge.
(Their circuitry has a lot of effect on high frequency noise, but much less on a typical power surge, because the frequency and duration are rather different.)
However, the power supplies in most of our equipment would in fact filter out a typical power surge quite effectively without any harm.
To put these numbers in perspective......
The joule rating on a popular TrippLite surge suppressor is 5,000 joules.......
That's enough energy to run an XPA-1 at full power for slightly under three seconds.
It's very simple, really...... and, no, our current equipment doesn't have any MOVs that I know of.
Essentially ANY AC power supply converts AC power into DC power.
A power surge is really just a slightly unusual form of AC power.
When a very short surge arrives at the inlet of a power supply, the inductance of the transformer limits the instantaneous current flow,
and the portion of the energy that isn't blocked by the transformer is absorbed by the filter capacitors.
(The energy of the surge is absorbed by the power supply - and so is not passed on to the delicate audio circuitry.)
In other words, the typical power supply found in most audio equipment is a series mode surge suppressor.
Even though the circuitry in a SMPS, like in our Gen3 amps, is quite different, the basic principle is the same in this situation.
The incoming AC is rectified and filtered before being turned into regulated DC.... so any surges are "filtered out" as well.
I should also take a moment to differentiate between "surge suppressors" and "line filters" in this context.
A normal MOV-based surge suppressor doesn't act as a noise filter because it doesn't do anything until it's activation voltage is reached.
Our CMX-2 and CMX-6 are not considered to be "surge suppressors" because, while they filter high frequency noise, they would not filter out all or most of a power surge.
(Their circuitry has a lot of effect on high frequency noise, but much less on a typical power surge, because the frequency and duration are rather different.)
However, the power supplies in most of our equipment would in fact filter out a typical power surge quite effectively without any harm.
To put these numbers in perspective......
The joule rating on a popular TrippLite surge suppressor is 5,000 joules.......
That's enough energy to run an XPA-1 at full power for slightly under three seconds.