Does anyone use DC power adaptors on their ac circuit fed from an inverter? I know in most cases it’s more power efficient to supply DC devices direct from the DC from your batteries but I’m a musician and have a bunch of equipment that runs on DC which I take into studios etc where I have to use grid ac obviously. So I find it more convenient to just plug my rig into my ac from the inverter when I’m at home rather than have plug in a load of different leads.
I’m having a bit of trouble with the DC power supplies though… They seem to be giving too much voltage!
I have two battery banks each with a seperate inverter. One inverter gives 231-233vac as measured at the outlet (which is normal for my country!), which I would expect as it’s a ups made by apc and designed for running of’s in the evnt of a power outage. The other inverter reads 215vac – I.e a bit low, and it’s a modified sine cheap unit from a discount store…
But… My “9 volt” DC power adaptor which I use to power my sampler (a box with flashing lights that makes funny noises!), shows around 12 volts on the “quality” sine wave inverter, I.e too high but shows it’s proper 9 volts on the crappy modified inverter!!
I suppose the most logical conclusion is a fault with the DC adaptor itself so I have tried other power supplies but they all display the same phenomenon to varying degrees.
I have yet to do any tests on grid power.
What I’m wondering is this: can the use of a modified sine wave inverter have an adverse effect on a dc power supply’s ability to give accurate DC voltage… And is this what’s happened to my DC power supplies?
Not so sure about that though as I’ve just died a practically unused 12v DC adaptor and it’s reading 15vdc output at 230vac input
So in short…. Why are all my DC power supplies giving higher dcvoltage than they should when I give them a stable pure sine ac signal at 230volts?!
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