Switching to battery power

pauly, please let us know how the EGO sounds.

My Zyx Artisan phono stage is battery-powered and hard to beat in terms of S/N ratio and speed. As pointed out above it makes most sense where small amounts of DC power are needed. 

That said anyone converting a whole system with a Tesla power cell pls report on your experience

@millercarbon,

how did you convert your Verus Rim Drive and what is involved? Sounds very intriguing. What weight is your platter?

I’ve done it before: fully off-grid battery powered audio system. At the moment, my preamps are the only thing on the grid when I’m playing music. Long story short - battery power done right can sound fantastically smooth and detailed. Where it seems to lack (unless you put a lot of effort into it) is with musical transients - like the smack of a kick drum. Right now I find myself enjoying classical music the most - the harmonics are so full and rich! I don’t seem to enjoy music as much that has extremely demanding transients. It’s a bit hard to explain because batteries have plenty of current capacity - I’ve accidentally melted copper wire before when wiring up batteries. I think it has to do with having too few amp-hours, the high internal resistance of the batteries, etc. It’s hard to compete with the grid in that regard. Sitting between 120 volts with megawatt size generators providing the voltage and current isn’t too shabby. I’ve got to wonder how large battery banks and/or capacitors/supercaps would sound. 

Feedback part 1:

My DAC (RME ADI-2) runs off a little wall wart power supply. While I was deciding which power station to buy for the rest of my equipment, I decided to buy a 12v Lithium Ion battery pack for the DAC to see if the sound improved.

The improvement to the sound is astonishing. Nothing subtle about it. The battery cost me $89 and I have never experienced such an improvement from any tweak even costing 10 times as much. In short, if you have equipment that is powered by a little wall wart, going to a battery is a no-brainer.

I left the DAC running last night and the battery still has three bars (out of 4) lit after more than 12 hours, so for my application at least, the battery has got more than sufficient power for even the longest listening sessions. 

The battery I bought was a TalentCell 12V Lithium ion Battery PB120B2, but there are a number of other that I'm sure will work just as well.

I have no affiliation with the Talencell company.