If you can track down surplus Power One supplies, then they might not be as expensive as you're thinking. In which case, a complete cut over might not be so problematic.My plan (if we determine the PSU is a major shortcoming which I think it is) is to split the supply so the illumination & headphone amp are handled by the stock unit, while the audio amp rails are handled by something with some more available current. Otherwise it looks like a complete supply system is going to be a lot of $$. I figure if I get a couple of good quality supplies for the audio rails, I can then build them into a complete system once funds are there. I can't think of why this route is a bad idea. Can you?
I'm not sure of any +/-25V supplies off the shelf - you can use a pair of +24s, though. Tie one's + to the other's - outputs, and call that junction ground.
You need to be careful of a few things with that approach:So after measuring the current draw in this scenario (we have a 24channel PM2K with 2 sets of 2A fuses for the rails as you said) how much do you think I should scale it up to have all the necessary current and then some? 10%? 50%?
-Those 2A fuses are on the wrong side of the supply to be a terribly accurate indicator of required current. They're between the transformer secondary and the regulator, so any measurement there includes regulator inefficiency (current wasted as heat, perhaps as bad as 50% or more). The PM1000 has extra fuses on the regulator outputs, between the supply and the distributed rail.
-Was the console working hard (lots of busses & auxes running hot signals, maybe a bunch of 600 ohm loads on the outputs) when you measured the current? If not, then the measurement might not be indicative of a max draw.
If it was working hard, then maybe scale up by 50%...if not, what sort of numbers were you seeing?
