Who uses a UPS ?

[dante]

Today we had a 10 second blackout in the middle of a Scope/Cubase/reason session. Computer blacked out & on reboot no go. Rewire and Scope project in use were corrupt. Reinstalled Cubase / reason etc, replaced rewire DLL no go.

Now this has never happened before - blackouts have but not ones that corrupt the DAW. So now Im in the painfull process of reinstall winXP and all software bah.

Now Im thinking of spending some $$$ on a UPS.

I'm interested to know if anyone else uses them for DAW stations, and details of cost, spec, opinions, testamonials etc. If I get enough info, could be made into a ScopeRise article (although its not strictly a Scope specific subject).

[garyb]

yes! get a big one.

[dante]

Well apparantly I can get this from Dick Smith $129

POWERWARE 500VA

dicksmithups.jpg (15.28 KiB) Viewed 2138 times

Supposed to last 43 minutes and has 6 outlets.

I always thought they were more expensive than this unless this one is el cheapo & crappy

[garyb]

you should be sure that the unit outputs a sine wave in normal mode and something damn close to a sine wave in battery mode, and that it provides a consistent voltage regardless of voltage input.

i'd get a bigger one, 1000-1500va, but that one should at least protect the data, even if it won't support a couple of screens and the computer....

[dante]

Ill check out the price of a 1000va one, I think that one is only 500va. All I need is something to let me enough time to shutdown the system in an orderly manner.

Ill look at getting an image backup program as well.

took me 2 days to get the system back to where it was, with scope, reason, spewbase and Kontakt etc, I documented each step and Im up to step 28 or something.

thanks for info GaryB Ill bear in mind the sine wave requirement when I shop...

[valis]

Sin Wave = filtered output. 3-5 stage filtering + voltage spike suppression + voltage correction is essential, even 4-6 mins for battery backup is enough time to save your work. Ie, the size of the battery is less important than proper power flltering & voltage correction. Most of the lesser UPSes on the market are ONLY battery backup and output close to square wave, so look for the power filtering features for sure.

I use 2 UPSes and 3 extra boxes to correct voltage & filter power (1 big guy before the UPSes to correct for voltage dips/spikes greater than +/- 10V AC as the UPSes have issues past that, and 2 smaller guys to correct voltages before my rack power distribution which again handle things better if it doesn't have to correct & filter voltage all by themselves.)

Here in the US, Tripp-Lite makes affordable solidly built UPS units that offer the power filtering features close to the prices that APC has for its simple battery backup units (BackUPS models.) CyberPower is an inexpensive (Korean?) brand that might be ok if you go for their UPPER models.

[dante]

Well I got the 700VA powerware model

http://powerquality.eaton.com/Australia ... .asp?CX=22

It doesn't say anything about filtering so hopefully it does the job. I only have the DAW on the UPS / Surge outlets, with some of the other gear on the Surge only side.

Should be enough to ride out a 2 second outage though, which is what happened last time.

[garyb]

yep.