Why would I want to disaster test my system. There is no need for me to put my finger in an electric socket to know I may get an electric shock. Even though to you that may not be shocking but to me it will!
Pull The Plug?
- Thread starter ahoustondj
- Start date
So basically, you are not prepared -- is that how I'm reading this...?
Instead of investigate and test, it seems you would prefer to litigate...
Let me tell you this. I don't have to be anybody's Hero to save the day should power go out. My Laptop remains fully charged so if power is lost by any means it will continue to run. The other equipment will shut off. If the plug was pulled by accident or if the power comes right back on then the show goes on. If powers is lost for a period of time EVERYONE would need to evacuate the building as it then becomes a safety issue. So having a UPS or other type of portable power would be useless. I would not be advising anyone to dance in the darkness or lack of illumination.
Last edited:
The only issue with what you describe - if I'm understanding it right (entire system running through ups) is that the UPS has to be sized properly for this. The UPS I'm prevents the laptop & drives (external equipment connected to laptop) from powering down. This size UPS should cost around 50 bucks and is not that bad to carry around.
In the scenario as I describe, all equipment except for laptop & drives (external equipment connected to laptop) will go off.
Agreed - but the UPS (not UPC) is not to keep anyone dancing. It's to allow you to power down properly.
Last edited:
We had one venue owner who was a real (insert your favorite expletive here)!
His first issue was the wedding party arriving late. He actually charged the Bride and Groom extra if they were more than 15-minutes late.
His second issue was with DJ's playing past their scheduled end time.
It bothered him so much, he installed a cut off switch for the DJ's power outlets, in the kitchen.
He nailed my friend and I, as we were saying goodbye, playing "Na Na Na, Kiss Him Goodbye", and watching the guests leave.
No one ever told us, or discussed it before the event.
Fortunately, we were still all CD at the time...so no damage done.
They must have taken a lot of flack from DJ's for doing it...they stopped cutting power and posted a nasty warning on the back door instead!
In the end, the guy no longer runs the venue. He had a heart attack and his son took over.
I think you'd have a case for damage, but only IF the issue was discussed prior to starting,
and only if you could synchronize your watches.
The irony of it all...
I go to sleep last night (I sleep on a chair in my office), and the dog wakes me up to total blackness around 2-3am -- the power is down. So I go out on the porch to see whether it is just us, or the whole road. Sure enough, street lights are out, and the oil companies lights are out.
Laptop is humming along happily on battery power, and still has it's internet connected via the Virgin Mobile 3G dongle. Battery was showing about 3 hours and something minutes left. Didn't know how long the power would be out, so I closed everything out and shut it down, and went back to my not so comfortable chair and sleep.
Wake up about a half an hour ago, and the lights are back on again.
I go to sleep last night (I sleep on a chair in my office), and the dog wakes me up to total blackness around 2-3am -- the power is down. So I go out on the porch to see whether it is just us, or the whole road. Sure enough, street lights are out, and the oil companies lights are out.
Laptop is humming along happily on battery power, and still has it's internet connected via the Virgin Mobile 3G dongle. Battery was showing about 3 hours and something minutes left. Didn't know how long the power would be out, so I closed everything out and shut it down, and went back to my not so comfortable chair and sleep.
Wake up about a half an hour ago, and the lights are back on again.
I have three Furman DMC PLC PRO's (20 amp) spread across my two systems. I have purposely tested the "turn off the switch" senario while testing at a very loud volume in a large room. All that happen was it got immediately quiet. No pops, no issues with a single item when restarting, including lighting fixtures or DMX.
I also did a test where I flipped the breaker off, then immediately back on, (incase someone ever did that), same thing, no pops or bangs everything went quiet, on the Numark Mix Deck Express, there was no sound as you have to reselect to PC as an input device as it defaults to cd when shutdown. Now the Numark N4 Mixer is a different deal, it scared the crap out of me as much as the last trip I made to Baghdad when a Iraqi rocket landed near my sleeping trailer and knocked a piece of the concrete bunker across the top of my trailer. Everything got really loud, really fast when the amps start up protection timed out.
If I were standing behind my equipment and I had the power quit, I would just shut off the Furmans fast, so I could power up everything myself. One of the big issue I would have is how long till they gave me power back, because if you are driving your system fairly hard, loosing the cooling fans on the amps, late in the night while they are hot, would be a bad thing. My EV-Q1212 amp, fans usually run for about 2-3 minutes, before shutting off after I cut the sound.
I did a lot of testing after I bought my new system, as my salesman suggested, he said " Ray take this stuff and drive it like you stole it, push everything hard during testing, if it breaks bring it back and we will get you a new one, or upgrade to something to meet your higher end needs". I haven't hurt a single item. During testing I pushed the limiters on the amps, DCONE, everthing. Now that I play I baby the equipment, I almost never see a limiter light on the amp, if I do I reduce bass by 1-2 DB or the volume.
Ray J.
I also did a test where I flipped the breaker off, then immediately back on, (incase someone ever did that), same thing, no pops or bangs everything went quiet, on the Numark Mix Deck Express, there was no sound as you have to reselect to PC as an input device as it defaults to cd when shutdown. Now the Numark N4 Mixer is a different deal, it scared the crap out of me as much as the last trip I made to Baghdad when a Iraqi rocket landed near my sleeping trailer and knocked a piece of the concrete bunker across the top of my trailer. Everything got really loud, really fast when the amps start up protection timed out.
If I were standing behind my equipment and I had the power quit, I would just shut off the Furmans fast, so I could power up everything myself. One of the big issue I would have is how long till they gave me power back, because if you are driving your system fairly hard, loosing the cooling fans on the amps, late in the night while they are hot, would be a bad thing. My EV-Q1212 amp, fans usually run for about 2-3 minutes, before shutting off after I cut the sound.
I did a lot of testing after I bought my new system, as my salesman suggested, he said " Ray take this stuff and drive it like you stole it, push everything hard during testing, if it breaks bring it back and we will get you a new one, or upgrade to something to meet your higher end needs". I haven't hurt a single item. During testing I pushed the limiters on the amps, DCONE, everthing. Now that I play I baby the equipment, I almost never see a limiter light on the amp, if I do I reduce bass by 1-2 DB or the volume.
Ray J.
pulling the plug is no different than tripping a breaker, and it is highly unlikely to do damage by shutting down power. As Rick indicated, the damage is typically caused by surges or power-up.
We've tripped plenty of 220V breakers and have yet to experience any damage. We have lost an amplifier due to an insufficient generator...amps don't like low voltage. Never seen an issue with No Voltage though.
We've tripped plenty of 220V breakers and have yet to experience any damage. We have lost an amplifier due to an insufficient generator...amps don't like low voltage. Never seen an issue with No Voltage though.
If power goes out the first thing I would do is turn off the amps, then turn down the attenuators so it's ready for power up. I would then turn off rack & power strip switches so nothing gets hit with a surge at power up. My laptop has a built-in UPS, also known as a battery.....
I'd be pretty PO'd if that happened to me...on purpose. I've got all Active speakers AND a Driverack PA plugged into the Monster Furman. Before Furman, I used only a power strip. Well...anybody knows that the DRPA will "blast" the speakers if turned off BEFORE the speakers. I've had a couple of incidents where the power went out...Bang! Fortunately, the speakers were not damaged. Now that I have the Monster Furman I'm still afraid to shut off the power to see what happens. You tech guys care to respond.
I had a gig where we lost power 4 times, it browned out to only 87-98 volts (via killowatt meter) the last time, and then died completely. The venue fired up a portable generator they had on hand, and he ran a 12 inside to my setup, and told me to get the party going again, ahhhh 122 volts of pure party. They ran my equipment, the coffee maker, and a fan off the 5200w generator. The emergency flood lights and my DJ lights lit the place up enough to finish the last 2 hours of partying (venue said they lasted about 12 hours). In fact, when the emergency lights came on, it was brighter then when we started since we had the house lights off. When packing up, the power came back on.
Had that Driverack noise happen to me ONCE and it was my fault due to a tight double.
That was one nasty loud and weird noise that lasted almost two seconds.
Scared the jeebies out of me.
The UPS I have is like a 1500 and has given me about 15 minutes for my full system. My concern is a special dance like in the video.
That's OK but what do you do when the internal HD gets filled up? I have 2 external HD's. One I bought on Black Friday. They both are 2 TB HD's. I've got 1.5 TB space used up and getting more music put on it. They do have laptops now that have a 1 TB HD. I don't know if they have one that is a 2 TB. My point is that once the internal HD gets filled up it slows the computer down and of course you can't add any more music.
Since we are talking that most of us do mobile gigs doesn't that mean we should have all types of music and as much of each style as we can?
How does one "get more music put on it"...?
I rip all mine off CD @ 320 kbs. Most come in at under 10 mb. The rest I purchase from Amazon @ roughly 256 kbs -- those are even smaller as they are VBR files.
So, let's do the math here:
Each GB can hold roughly 150 songs (average at the bit rate I'm using). So, 10 GB can hold about 1500 songs, and 100 GB can hold about 15,000. So let's say you allocate roughly 300 GB on your internal drive just for music -- that lets you hold about 45,000 tunes at your disposal.
Now, presuming that you actually paid for those songs, that's about a $45,000 outlay in cash.
So I'm curious -- where do you get all that music, that you need 4 TBs to store them...? 1.5 TB is roughly 225,000 songs, at say $1 each! Can I borrow some money from you, since you seem to be rather wealthy...?
Lol you think he paid for his music. That is the best joke of the day.
I'm with Rick, a UPS is a wasted effort - and wasted money.
Even if my external hard drive got toasted it would be cheaper to just buy another one. I carry a backup drive and PC anyway - each probably costing less than the kind of UPS it would take to power a whole DJ system. Yes - the whole system - beacsue, once the PA goes out who cares if my external is still on? Are we all going to share the headphones?
Hell... getting unplugged and being down for a few moments would pale in comparison to the train wreck mixes my competitor's make every 3 or 4 minutes all night long.
It's not that complicated - or even that expensive. I'm sure it's just DUPLICATES - garbage - more duplicates - and more garbage.
There's only about 5,000 - 6,000 tracks I need to hit 90% of all the requests I've gotten these past 25+ years. My drive tells me I have 15,000 tracks and I'm sure I have a lot of duplicates or alternate versions. Everything else is there simply because it can be - unlike the CD days when the less popular half of the inventory stayed at the office.
...and for the record, I don't car how much duplicate garbage people steal.
Canute,
Down here there are a ton oof electrical gremlins, a dog just needs to take a leak on an electrical pole for things to go out so, all my source gear is on a UPS which weighs about 10 lbs. it gives me time (30 minutes) to shut things down or avoid the big pop known on the DRPA so I don't worry about it.
Down here there are a ton oof electrical gremlins, a dog just needs to take a leak on an electrical pole for things to go out so, all my source gear is on a UPS which weighs about 10 lbs. it gives me time (30 minutes) to shut things down or avoid the big pop known on the DRPA so I don't worry about it.