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I've got a monster power conditioner that has a voltage reading on it, and it varies from 121 to 125. how bad is that for my equipment? i had a hovland preamp that had a power supply issue, when i sent it in for a check up, apparently a couple resistors had gone, hovland thought it had something to do w/ higher than normal voltage conditions.
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There could have been a short-term spike or even an under voltage that caused a problem. A friend of mine had both monobloc tube amps go down at the same time from some kind of power problem, but, because he was not home at the time (the amps were on standby), he does not know what was the specific problem.
In my area (N. Va.), I have constant power problems. For me, the concern is with the bulb in my RPTV (bulb life is significantly shortened by power outages that suddenly turn off the bulb with no cooling from the fan). In the past week and a half, I've had five short term outages, twice at night while I was running the set -- it is time to buy a new bulb because the current one is probably close to death. I am now looking into a balanced power regulator with battery backup.
As other posters have stated your voltage is within tolerance. My household voltage varies between 122V and 125V depending on season and time of day. According to the manufacturer of my components, their equipment will tolerate up to 130V with no problem.
I have never had any problems. I think that the standard is now 117 volts. I have never known the variations you have (I borrowed a track recorder for a week and found I had a variation of .2 volts in a week), but a friend in Nashville had 103-114 volts range with constant variations. This is TVA! I tried to get him to raise hell, but he is not the type.
> > but a friend in Nashville had 103-114 volts range with constant variations. < <That may not necessarily be the power company's fault. I have a large house in the Nashville metro area, with many, many feet of 14/2 NM power cable. For the regular series-wired household "convenience" outlets, especially the ones that are far away from the distribution panels, I've measured anywhere from 109 to 117 volts, depending on which outlet and how many devices were plugged in/active on the chain.
OTOH, my listening room has a dedicated subpanel that is run off a high-current breaker that sits in the top slot of the least-stressed distribution panel. The circuits in my room are all home-run dedicated circuits using 10/2 NM and high-quality outlets. I paid a top-notch commercial electrician (not the contractor who did the general-purpose wiring in my house), and I supervised his work. He took his time and everything looks beautiful! Wires are routed properly, as short as possible, everything is stripped with precision and dressed properly, all tightened/fastened securely.
It shows - each outlet in my dedicated room is at 121v +/- 1v pretty much all the time, regardless of season or load in the rest of the house. In the summertime I can see lights dim momentarily when the big AC unit kicks on, but there is no corresponding drop in current/voltage in the audio system.
It's less than 5% higher than nominal. Any power supply that can't handle small variations in voltage is faulty.
According to PSE (my regional power provider) residential service voltage between 110 and 130 Volts RMS is considered normal.
I know line voltage is something people like to wring their hands over if it is not exactly 120V.
But in reality any decent power supply should be able to handle wide input voltage swings and continue to provide its DC output within specifications.
I do design qualification testing at work and all my companies designs must operate from 85-135V RMS input.
I'll stop wringing my hands. I've got a balanced power unit, with separate trannies 300v, one for dac one for transport, and I don't want to sell it, sounds awesome, but when the hovland blew a resistor, and they said it was caused by high voltage, I kinda freaked.
The utility company tries to keep voltage at 123V, and doesn't consider it high until it's over 127V.
Good equipment is usually designed to allow for 10% over voltage (135V).
Resistors in a good design are de-rated at least 50%
If a resistor blew it was because of a faulty transistor, diode, IC, etc., and the person communicating with you either didn't have a clue or was lying about it.
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