Using battery power to go off the City's power grid

When you're really serious about power quality:

Fluke 43B/003 Power Quality Analyzer

Even though this model is now discontinued, you can still find them used on ebay. This unit will display the 60 Hz waveform (in addition to many other things), AND, give you a THD figure. With this meter (I've had one in the past), you might be surprised to find out that your home/apartment/condo utilityAC power is cleaner than you think it is. As many of you are already aware, AC line THD is a good indication of how clean your power is. 

Here's another picture of the Fluke 43B:

Fluke 43B

ricevs,

Here's a perspective on how stupid audio expenditures can be.  Is $2K a trivial amount of money for an audio item that you cannot try before you buy?  NO.  If you buy it after your own listening for a week when you are working with a reputable local dealer, and you like the improvement in the sound, then it is worth every penny, even if you spent $10K.  

But $1K buys a medium intensity PEMF (pulsed electromagnetic field) unit which can be used for numerous health problems.  $10K buys a powerful PEMF unit which can heal major neurological diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, chronic fatigue, cardiac disease, prostate enlargement and others for which mainstream medicine merely uses drugs and invasive procedures.  Since I know you are interested in alternative health methods, I think you will be interested in this.  Read the writings of Dr. William Pawluk, a major expert in this field.  Look at his site drpawluk (dot) com.  

Wanna be happy?  That comes from achieving the best health and well being possible, which is much more valuable than fleeting audiophile satisfaction.  Most sane people who have good but not perfect health are happy, but many audiophiles who are seeking perfection are never happy.  You can have both, and it is necessary to have a perspective on what is really important so you can justify whatever money you spend on both pursuits.

That station’s radio tower is a couple miles away so fairly close. Interesting that particular RF goes away when on battery power. I assume my house wiring is acting like an big antennae. I just tried it in a few kitchen outlets and got great radio reception there too! haha

For $40 the Entech is enough for now. The Fluke analyzers, even used ones, are over $500. Good inverters have THD of less than 3%. The voluntary THD limit for US voltage is 5%. So, that might explain partially the result here. But, I agree we must listen to music and not just rely on a cheap Entech or expensive Fluke analyzer.  Measurements are a tool not a result.

https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/essential-basics-of-total-harmonic-distortion

Many audiophiles (myself included) consistently focus on earth grounds, grounding, and "clean" power. Yes, that's important, to maintain low noise floors (as earth grounds can also act as bonding conductors, which is also good), but what many times gets overlooked (IMO) are AC neutrals. Many times you can lower AC power total harmonic distortion (THD) by maintaining clean neutrals (and sometimes even oversizing them).

Let's take for example a dedicated 20 amp circuit, exclusively used for audio equipment. If you only plugged in one piece of audio equipment to that circuit, the THD on that circuit would probably be at 1% or lower (a good sign of clean power). Start plugging in more equipment to that "dedicated" circuit (especially equipment with switching power supplies), and the THD on that circuit is almost guaranteed to rise in value. The *neutral* bears the burden of equipment with poor power factors. There is a whole science behind this.

When electrical building engineers design an electrical system for a building, (if they're smart) neutrals, and balancing 3 phase electrical systems, are paid close attention to (neutrals especially). The story revolving around The First Interstate Tower (now called the Aon Center) fire in 1988 in Los Angeles has many times been reported as electrically related. Here's what Wikipedia says about that: "The fire's origin has been attributed to overloading of the building's electrical system by reactive distortion of lighting circuit currents." I'm not sure reactive current was fully understood in 1988, as computers were just starting to be the norm in office buildings, along with electronic fluorescent ballasts. It is rumored that the building had a lot of personal computers in the building, which all had switching power supplies (along with the numerous electronic fluorescent ballasts), which possibly/probably overloaded undersized neutrals (probably because the 3 phase power was not balanced correctly).

Times have changed, and switching power supplies are being built with better designs these days (energy star), and have better power factors (a perfect power factor is 1.0 or 100%). A perfect power factor means the piece of equipment is using all of its power, efficiently. There are however still a lot of switching power supplies (and electronic ballast fluorescent lighting) out there that have poor power factors, and high THD. 

So when establishing (utility powered) AC circuits for audio, have as many dedicated AC circuits as you can, and make sure that each circuit has a dedicated neutral, along with a dedicated isolated ground (no daisy chaining neutrals). I realize this can be costly, and quickly fill up a circuit breaker panel (technical term being Load Center), but it will keep AC circuit THD at low levels, which is the key to maintaining high quality noise free utility AC power.

Personally, besides trying to keep my neutrals clean, I also employ Equitech balanced AC power (Google that), isolation transformers, and Tripp Lite Ultra Isobar surge protectors to keep my noise floors as low as they can be. Good luck everyone.