anyone ever look at power supply voltages with a scope

[KreoPensas]

With apologies if anyone feels it is irrelevant, pics of what I just mentioned.

 

[lcipher3]

The Eurorack "community" has a lot of info to share about SMPS vs linear. Low cost options use SMPS and attempt to silence it, but the vast majority avoid SMPS completely to avoid misery. I would say that analog synthesizer circuits are as touchy as high gain tube circuits.
I use a Hammond 187E12 and linear regulators for every 3-4 amps of power I need. That transformer would make one hell of a pedal board power supply.

I'm guessing the Eurorack stuff is pretty picky - probably not high current? I've done linear supplier forever but a) they're big b) have to be sized carefully for the application or you waste a ton of power into heat, etc.

Sort of why I've been experimenting with SMPS. A lot of garbage out there to be sure - but given careful design I think they can be pretty darn good. It looks like CIOKS spent a lot of time on theirs - but I've *never* seen anyone really do a review that doesn't just gush about how great it is.

I want all the advertisements to show me a volts vs mA load curve, and show me the waveform of the voltage!

As another "rant" - I think there's such a bunch of crap power supplies out there it's amazing. Putting a no name $4 (advertised as a "boss replacement") supply on a $300+ pedal seems a little dicy. Especially when I see that almost none of them really has UL listing or approvals on them. Buyer beware I guess. Same goes for some of the el-cheapo pedal supplies.

Think I'll check out the CIOKS SOL and DC7

 

[lcipher3]

With apologies if anyone feels it is irrelevant, pics of what I just mentioned.View attachment 94309

Nice -looks like a cool setup. I've gone pretty much all guitar but I still have an SY77 sitting 2feet from me. Needs a backlight update.

 

[lcipher3]

As another piece of info - why doesn't anyone post Volts vs mA load for supplies? This is a collection I've taken on misc supplies. Kinda interesting. The other piece of info of course would be the voltage vs time showing any spikes. For instance the digitech looks ok for regulation but has huge switching noise.

 

[KreoPensas]

Thanks. I was just embarassed enough by the debris to clean up. The desk under the rack is where I put together any direct-in guitar chains as the Focusrite is right there.

There is a vintage QY300 lurking in the background of one the earlier pics.

I have a modular mixing desk project that uses eurorack format and power, which launched me into eurorack in the first place. Nothing pictured here for that except the long rack. Only custom eurorack work out is the usb to din midi manager, but I have a lot in development.

As for linear regulation making heat? Im in Minnesota and cold half the year.

Anyhow... Let me see what my scope says about the Cioks.

 

[KreoPensas]

I think that with the price tag, you're not going to find one single youtube video going on about any inadequacies, unless someone's going full flamethrower.

Some digital effects still will not share a power line with *anything*. You can eat up channels fast.
My sustainer guitar hears the switching ( yup, no battery ) so I have the aforementioned LC network on its floor box.
High power digital devices can need more power than the Cioks typically delivers, I believe that's a limitation of the *excellent* DC-DC isolation IC's they are using. If the overall load exceeds 60% some devices might start picking up switching noise. Some shenanigans with the sustainer get a load indicator. I've seen it flash to the playing.

 

[KreoPensas]

*Interesting*.

Providing data you can easily fold in might prove ridiculous, but I can takes pics .

The easiest thing to get to is the output of the sustainer's floor box. This is "filtered" enough that the guitar isnt broadcasting it.

pulses are 15 millivolt pp, approx 4 millisec apart.

 

[KreoPensas]

yeah I have no comment here...

 

[KreoPensas]

Unfiltered output, same settings. Noise is nearly 35 millivolts pp. All of that other noise surpressed by the LC filter.

Not a scientific analysis but I can see what the filter is doing .

Also, this house? Clean power? Funny.

 

[lcipher3]

Ok - I found a great deal on a CIOKS SOL and bought one to try out. These are the measurements for volts vs load (mA). Tracks with the BOSS, nice and steady around 9.2 volts or so over at least 600mA - didnt have a load setup for 660mA. 900mA it drops to 8.5V but thats outside its range.

Waveform is NO glitches or spices. Nice and low "ripple". FFT shows really nice.

I'm pretty impressed.