Wall Wart Replacement?

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

Moderators: drumsound, tomb

Post Reply
TapeOpLarry
TapeOp Admin
TapeOp Admin
Posts: 1665
Joined: Thu May 01, 2003 11:50 am
Location: Portland, OR
Contact:

Wall Wart Replacement?

Post by TapeOpLarry » Wed Nov 16, 2005 4:57 pm

Anyone have personal experience or knowledge of this? I'm wondering if replacing wall warts on gear (RNC, Alesis, a few others) with PowerOne supplies is worth doing. I'm coming from the idea that wall warts sometimes send hash back down the power lines, they suck up space on power strips, and they 'might' be underpowering the gear.
Larry Crane, Editor/Founder Tape Op Magazine
please visit www.tapeop.com for contact information
(do not send private messages via this board!)
www.larry-crane.com

User avatar
soundguy
ghost haunting audio students
Posts: 3182
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 12:50 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by soundguy » Wed Nov 16, 2005 6:23 pm

it depends on what the wall wart is doing, they arent all created equal. If the wall wart is supplying AC, a power one supply with give you DC, so that wont work. Wallwarts arent all bad, I have a commercial product coming out sooner or later and am planning on using an external wall wart transformer to supply AC to an internal power supply, REALLY helpful with dealing with the audio transformers inside the chasis, keeps the cost down on building an external power supply with a seperate chasis, etc. On most of the stuff in my studio I have been using AC wall warts just to get the noisy power transformer out of the chasis, but keep the power supply inside the box. Technically, this might suck, I dont know, but the boxes I build like that are quieter than ones where I have to battle with internal power transformers which are always a ripe pain in my experience.

I dont think however there is a universal answer, you'd have to take that one on a circuit to circuit basis.

dave
http://www.glideonfade.com
one hundred percent discrete transistor recording with style and care.

Family Hoof
buyin' a studio
Posts: 877
Joined: Mon Apr 19, 2004 5:30 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Post by Family Hoof » Wed Nov 16, 2005 8:42 pm

Need more specifics in order to answer this question.

- what is the wallwart spitting out, AC or DC? If AC, then it's simply a step down power transformer, externally packaged, to give the units internal DC supply the AC voltage it needs i.e. 24VAC or whatever. No need to replace this.
- If DC is it a cheap, off the shelf, switching supply from Asia? (most likely) or is it a skillfully designed linear or switching supply purpose built for the unit? (I doubt it). If the former then I would say yes, replacing it with a nice big linear DC supply such as Power One is not a bad idea. Power ones aren't the greatest but most certainly should perform better than the cheap wallwart switcher. The "hash" and "under power" you speak of, Larry, are characteristic of the cheap wallwart switcher combined with poor design choices.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 51 guests