UPS for recording studio

[patchboy]

Hey y’all!

 

Not sure if this is the appropriate forum (I’m new here), but I had a question which I think server-savvy people may be able to help with. I work in a recording studio with three analog consoles, and a ton of outboard gear/mics with tube power supplies. We’ve been having rolling blackouts, and are becoming quite concerned about our equipment being damaged. We have multi-phase power, and typically one of the phases will have issues at a time, meaning some outlets will work but not others, and some lights will work, some will be dim, and some will be off all at the same time.

 

We’d like to get a better UPS system, as we only have it on our Macs and HDIO equipment (we run Avid) right now, but are looking for a better solution for our high-power equipment.

 

Does anybody have any recommendations? The consoles are each in different buildings, so I’m not sure if one massive generator or one for each room would be better.

 

Thanks!!!

[jake9000]

There are two types of mitigations:

 

UPS mitigates against brownouts and short blackouts. For a long term blackout (longer than 20 minutes or so) its job is to give your equipment enough time to gracefully shut down or to keep it on just long enough for a generator to take over. You'll probably have these protecting just the circuits with your gear on them, and use a proper generator thereafter.

Most UPSes are pretty clean but you have to make sure you get a generator that outputs a decent sine wave or your audio is going to be jacked.

You NEED to consult with an actual commercial electrician about this. Your choice will probably be limited by whoever your electrical contractor has partnerships with but personally I like APC for large applications. Their modules are pretty durable and their support dispatches replacement parts quickly.