Home Studio

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This winter once my other electrical issue is resolved, I hope to use one of my spare rooms for a home studio installation. This will consist of various pieces of audio equipment as well as computers. I would like to have a main double pole isolating switch fitted on the wall probably around the light switch area, so that this will switch on or off all equipment in the room in one go.

There will probably need to be 18 sockets to get everything plugged in and I am wondering if all this equipment will run off a standard 13 amp supply or will a higher capacity supply be required.
 
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The number of sockets does not matter. The total load does. Most sound stuff is insignificant load. Heaters are heavy and special lighting can be.

A ring circuit is usually fused at 32 amps, a radial in 2.5mm at 20 Amps, a radial in 4mm can be 32 Amps.

If you want a lot of socket all round the walls, my preference is for a ring, with the cables run horizontally beween them, all round the wall, in oval conduit or mini-trunking. this is economical in labour and material and it is simple to add more outlets into the row.

If you have a dedicated circuit for the studio you might be able to put noise suppression on it, though I have no experience of this. I have only seen it in the MEM catalogue. If you don't do it that way it might be easier to retrofit suppression on a radial.

In one of my previous lives we had rack equipment installed in things like LAN cabinets with heaps of sockets in them, but all run off a 13A supply that plugged into the wall.

sorry I missed the one-switch thing. it will be easier on a radial then. You can easily have a 20A DP switch (or a 40A one) at the start of the row. But if you want other sockets in the room, the equipment cabinet is OK and can have its own switch. First off, you need to decide what the total load will be.
 
i personally would use a contactor (do a search on here, its basicaly a relay) so you can use a low ampage switch to turn the high ampage supply on/off. (but note Im not a spark just saying what seams to make sence to me!)
 
To find out the total load I assume I will need to look at each of the equipment's voltage plate and see what each unit consumes in watts / amps etc and then add them all up. Is that correct? I doubt to be honest whether the total load would even come near 13 amps - most of the stufff I remember is quite low wattage useage

for example - I have 4 sonifex cartridge players they are rated at 500ma each as are the 2 record modules, so that's 6 appliances already at 3000ma. Is there 1000ma to 1amp? So that would only be 3amps for the 6 appliances?

Sorry if I have got this all wrong, but a bit new to this kind of stuff. Heating is not on this circuit - there is a radiator that will supply heat from the central heating system. I might use a portable air conditioner in summer which I would just use on the 1 mains socket that is in there already - it is 650 watts! All the studio equipment would be on a separate circuit.
 
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I don't really see much advantage of using a contactor, an adequately rated switch inline as suggested by JohnD would imho be the simplest way to go. The sound guys over at the blue-room might have a better idea on things like noise supression (but don't mention its domestic!!)

edit,
Yes, 1000mA = 1A. (m = milli or 0.001)
 
why does installin g more things to go wrong (contactor) make sence when a dp isolator is fine?
 
david_galashiels said:
To find out the total load I assume I will need to look at each of the equipment's voltage plate and see what each until consumes in watts / amps etc and then add them all up. Is that correct?
Yes
david_galashiels said:
...Is there 1000ma to 1amp?
Yes
 
breezer said:
why does installin g more things to go wrong (contactor) make sence when a dp isolator is fine?
I stand corrected. as i said Im not a spark I just had a picture in my head of how i would envision a home studio with diferent circuits on different radials (to seperate noisey stuff) I was envisioning a lot more power been used and i liked the idea of one nice little switch to shut it all off, -but the picture in my head wasnt what the situation is here. yeah keap it simple with a DP isolator, lol.
 
One thing does puzzle me is how some appliances only show watts while others show amps on their voltage panel. I have a mixing desk that shows 45VA - what does that mean? Is that 45 watts?
 
Yes.


And 45watts divided by 220v (nominal) means 0.2 Amps

For practical purposes, and if you are using ordinary domestic stuff, you can consider vA to be the same as Watts
 
david_galashiels said:
One thing does puzzle me is how some appliances only show watts while others show amps on their voltage panel. I have a mixing desk that shows 45VA - what does that mean? Is that 45 watts?

Multiply volts by amps to give you watts (or more technically VA)

You may as well treat VA and watts the same here to avoid getting too confused, watts is equal to VA multiplyed by power factor if you want be correct

(power factor is a number between 0 and 1, and its the cosine of the phase angles between the current and voltage wave forms... phew...) for resistive loads such as lamps and heaters they are the same waveform and pf=1 for other types of load pf will be lower)
 
I'm suprised no one has mentioned dado trunking yet.

This is going to a nice neat way to achive 18 sockets in a room, with the flexibility to add or remove socket in the future if you wish. If you fit three compartment you could then run phone, network, TV, radio, audio etc points in it too.
 
Thanks for the info guys. On inspection in my meter cupboard I have found a spare switch (not connected to anything) that has a 30amp cartridge fuse in it. Could this cable be used for the studio power supply? This would be more than adequate supply for everything. I think this supply may have been used for an old boiler that used to be in the house many years ago but has since gone.
 

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