Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[(Brian) Frost]

I have been running sound for 12 years professionally and have never needed to use redundant psu's, but have had them on plenty of gigs.  Today I was using the onboard psu of my crest hp8 and suddenly mid gig, the smell of magic smoke and the board psu lights went out.  No more board!    

What Im really concerned about is whether getting it fixed means that there is a problem with the board that will repeat itself later or if this was just a fluke full moon kinda thing.  

Ill be calling crest monday morning, but this further shakes my faith in crest products (i have blown up more CA series amps than I can count).  

[Kim Watson]

Hey Brian

Recently we have had 2 supplys go down. A&H GL3300 luckerly had a GL3 in the van with supply so stole that. turned out to be a crack on the board. and we also have had a DDA CS8 supply go down, but that console has redundent supplys which saved the day.

We also have a Soundtrax megas... (still going) and that supply was built like a tank! only recently has Capacitors needed resoldering to the board. lost one of the rails... easy to fix though.

So it does happen

Kim Watson

[Bennett Prescott]

I've lost supplies on two boards, fortunately it was never show-threatening. A Midas H3000 dropped both its supplies on me during line checks the day before an opera, the rental company flew their tech down with a toolkit and a replacement in carry on and had the board and two supplies back up and running by the end of the day, one of them was really busted so he took it back with him the next day.

I've also lost a DDA CS3 power supply. There was no backup, but we were just measuring, so we made do without it.

Both boards were older and well used. Neither failure seemed to have anything to do with the innards of the board itself.

[Chuck Augustowski]

Question: How reliable are console power supplies?

Answer: In Pro Gear = Very - BUT - Do you believe in Murphy's Law?

Suggestion - Always have a Spare/Back Up Supply for your consoles and a backup plan for every piece of gear that is critical in your system.  Hopefully you will never need them.

Chuck Augustowski
APB-DynaSonics

[Langston Holland]

Cowardly Lion: I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do! I do! I do! I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do! I do! I do! I do!

Wicked Witch of the West: You'll believe in more than that before I'm finished with you!

I've noticed that all the lights on my 40 channel Crest X-VCA get a little brighter with both power supplies on. Maybe the use of dual supplies causes them to last longer due to halving their current requirement?

[Tim McCulloch]

Hi Brian-

We run Crest *001 pro series amps and have for a long time.  In the last 5 years no Crest required a trip back home.  We've sent Crown a couple of casualties.  In 10 years I can only think of 1 major Crest failure at showtime.

All the desk PSU issues I've had that were actually the PSU itself involved Soundcrafts.  Dropped the +17v rail one time, +5 another.  Cable issues also with Soundcraft and a TAC Scorpion.

We had an issue with a Yamaha M3000 right out of the box.  A short in one of the Littl-lights took out a fuse inside the console, taking out control and most audio.  Wasn't the PSUs fault, but it sure looked like it at first.

Good luck, and let us know how this works out.

Tim Mc

[Dave Dermont]

I have never been hit by lightning, but I still take shelter from thunderstorms.

The only time I have ever lost a supply was when something weird happened with the incoming AC line voltage.

This is why I don't hook up switchers and/or redundant supplies. I don't even plug the backup supply in.

This way, if any weirdness only takes out the supply, backup is happily waiting to provide service, usually after issues with said weirdness are addressed. I find that plugging in the backup supply and swapping the cable takes far less time than chasing around for a third backup.

You know, "hope for the best and prepare for the worst", and all that.

[Rob Burgess]

I've had two supplies fail on me in the past three years.

One was a Crest X-Monitor board and the supply started giving me ozone on power up.  It was a loaner board with only one power supply but luckily I was close enough to the shop to call for another board.

The second was on a Series 5M (Hmm, monitors both times, maybe a message?).  The day before a festival I was tuning monitors and heard a fairly loud bang.  When I got back to the board all the lights were off.  Switched over to the backup supply and all was well.

Both times there were no power anomalies to speak of.  The first time I was running off a genny but nothing else was affected.  The second time was a 600v feed from the power company - once again the 5M was the only thing affected.

Sometimes shit just happens.

--
Rob

[Jason Tubbs]

I've lost two that I can recall - an A&H GL3 supply back in '98 and a Crest (I'm sensing a theme here) X-8 supply back in '03.  The A&H was used when we bought it a couple of years prior, so it had been in use for some time.  The X-8 (pre-Peavey) was about five years old at the time.  In both cases, it was the supply and not the console.  

jt

[Jens Brewer]

In 15 years of getting paid for making noise, I've only seen two PSUs go down; both were for Allen & Heath GL series consoles.  Still, you're only as good as your backup plan.

[ProSoundWeb Community]