Important! they're about to mess w/ our wall power !UPDATE!

[donny]

but i like to use my tape machines in the middle of the night !

Hey donny.. So I guess it means as you use your tape machine in the middle of the night, it'll improve your 2" machine running at 30 ips will all of a sudden, take off like a bat out of hell to 60 ips and you'll get one song out of a roll of 2" tape..!... ...

HA! unfortunately, mine is only 1/2" and goes 15 ips !

[snatchman]

but i like to use my tape machines in the middle of the night !

Hey donny.. So I guess it means as you use your tape machine in the middle of the night, it'll improve your 2" machine running at 30 ips will all of a sudden, take off like a bat out of hell to 60 ips and you'll get one song out of a roll of 2" tape..!... ...

HA! unfortunately, mine is only 1/2" and goes 15 ips !

Well ok, it'll increase to 30 ips and get three songs out of a roll of tape..!..

[Gregg Juke]

I have the _utmost_ respect for Bob Olhsson (!), and anybody else that knows more than me about this stuff (which is almost anybody), but reading some of the comments under that article (some from electricians and people that have worked at power plants) don't seem to support the idea that this relaxed attitude will cause "much ado about nothing;" on the contrary, it seems rather ill-advised!

I've spent thousands of dollars on lots of stuff that is supposed to need precise voltage!!!!

Are we sure that voltage regulators (not power conditioners, but voltage regulators like those made by Furman) won't help? Too much AC just sounds scary to me, but too little, I've had experience with. I've played a few gigs that were run by generator, and a bunch more in joints with bad power under "brownout" conditions, and electronic gear _does not like brownout!_ I'm thinking this is pretty bad.

Another silly question/observation-- The article doesn't seem to mention any NERC. It talks about the FERC, the NAERC, the EIC@CMU, and the NIST, but no "NERC." So what NERC are we talking about?

GJ

[Gregg Juke]

PS-- I do understand that voltage and cycles/HZ are different, but related topics, but it just seems really bad to change things after 100 years of counting on 60 cycles, doesn't it?

GJ

[???????]

I'm talking about the link at the bottom of the article... that's where I read NERC.

Voltage regulator has nothing to do with cycle frequency. A voltage regulator makes sure that the voltage is stable. You can have 120 volts at 60 Hz, or if you go overseas you can have voltage at 50 Hz (at 120V if you use a stepdown transformer). A voltage regulator will make sure that it stays exactly 120V, but will do nothing to the cycle frequency.

After reading about this some more, I will cautiously say that it's probably nothing to worry about.

As I understand it, what they currently do is count cycles over the day, and have an allowable variation of about .2% in general. If, at the end of the day, the cycle count is off... they speed the cycle rate up to the maximum .2% fast for the requisite number of time, until it catches up. I hope I have those numbers right, but in any rate, it's irrelevant to illustrate concept.

Now what I think this new thing is going to be is two-fold... I've heard from at least person that they actually will tighten the tolerance to something like .002% (it was described to me as an "order of magnitude" better), and second, they will stop counting cycles. In other words, no more speeding up the cycle in the middle of the night for a time to 'correct' for the error of the day, but hopefully there won't be as much error to begin with.

Supposedly, the AC cycle frequency will be even more stable, they'll just stop counting and then error-correcting. IF the way it's been described to me is accurate, this is actually a preferable situation for most of us.

[???????]

Here's an e-mail I got from the NERC today--

Hi Brad,

I wanted to write to you to clear up any misconceptions regarding our Field Test. We will not be changing real-time frequency - it will stay at a 60 Hertz target. The frequency control we use today will stay the same, so unless you have a longer-term need for time to remain synchronized (for example, if you were doing a single recording session over several days), I don't think you will see any effect. Turntables should not see any sort of difference.

If you were performing a long, multi-day recording, you would not see anything significantly different - but your equipment might think that it recorded for 7200 minutes, while a check against a NIST clock might show it recorded for 7201, or 7199.

To explain a little more about what we are doing, today, at certain times, we set frequency at 60.02 or 59.98 Hertz. We do that to "correct" errors that were created due to normal variations in frequency. What we are proposing to eliminate are those manual corrections.

The reason those corrections are done dates back to the 1930s. They ensured that if you bought an electric clock, it would generally be able to count seconds accurately. In the example above, it would make sure that the both your recording gear and a NIST clock would count out 7200 minutes.

It is our belief that there are superior time sources in use today, and that this manual step of intentionally going off 60 Hertz (to 59.98 or 60.02) is no longer needed. We are performing this Field Test to determine if we can stop doing those manual corrections, or if they are still providing a valuable service.

We plan on undertaking this test cautiously, and have developed a detailed plan that allows for the Field Test to be stopped immediately if we identify any problems.

I hope this response has alleviated your concerns. Please let me know if I can help you further.

[drumsound]

I got pretty much the same email. My mind is at ease.

[ofajen]

I've spent thousands of dollars on lots of stuff that is supposed to need precise voltage!!!!

...

Another silly question/observation-- The article doesn't seem to mention any NERC. It talks about the FERC, the NAERC, the EIC@CMU, and the NIST, but no "NERC." So what NERC are we talking about?

GJ

The field trial on eliminating time error correction has NOTHING to do with voltage. Don't worry.

Also, by eliminating time error corrections, we expect the average cycle frequency to be CLOSER to 60 Hz than it currently is, when the target is sometimes higher or lower.

The nuisance is going to be for schools, hospitals and other institutions that still have electric clocks driven by the electric system time. They will vary more over the course of a year.

NERC is the new acronym for NAERC, the North American Electric Reliability Council. It's a "voluntary" organization created by the electric power industry to ensure reliability of electric power in the aftermath of some rather unpopular cascading power outages in the late 60s.

Cheers,

Otto

[Snarl 12/8]

In light of some of the emails people on this board have shared in the past, I find the NERC message to be refreshingly readable and understandable.

*feels mind 'at easing' slightly for once*