Video Asylum

Posted by Andy Hung on March 11, 2000 at 11:24:52:

Hi all,

I thought I'd follow up on my previous posting on the Best 610 1kVA online UPS. Originally I bought this uninterruptible power supply to provide cost-effective regenerative power (<$500) for my HT system. After a couple of weeks of use, I decided to relegate the Best 610 1kVA UPS to serve three computers in the house (and now I have a couple of spare offline UPSs :-). The reasons for my decision are as follows:

1) 80% Fan noise was disturbing. Although the Best 610 1kVA fan is reasonably quiet (actually the quietest in that line), during soft music passages it can still be heard in the background.

2) 20% Audio improvement was not dramatic. I thought I could hear a bit more smoothness. An oscilloscope shows that my house power has a slight clipping (flattening) on the top and bottom peaks of the sine wave. The Best 610 UPS puts out a really nice, smooth, sine wave on the o-scope, better than my house power, and in a completely different league than the stepped (or rather pulsed) sine of my APC or Exide off-line UPS power supplies. It has plenty of power headroom and never really went >50% even at loud volumes with my 31"tv attached. Still, it just wasn't providing "darker blacks" on the TV or "spacious quiet passages" from the amp.

In conclusion, if the Best 610 were silent, it probably would still be powering the HT system. But the minimal improvements didn't justify attempting to baffle the fan noise or running a power cord from a different room.

Your mileage may vary. Some cases where the Best 610 might provide more dramatic benefits: 1) noisy house power (e.g. apartments); 2) a more resolving system (e.g. tubes); or 3) a HT closet electronic setup obviating the fan noise issue. At <$500, the Best 610 online UPS is a cheap tweak and if I ever get a better amp I might just put the Best 610 online UPS back into the HT setup :-).

Yours,

--andy