battery powered with 'vivid' sound

Hi Rotty,

I cannot speak for all manufacturers who use batteries, but ALL of our Red Wine Audio components run only on the internal SLA batteries, so the chargers can be unplugged and they will run just fine. Of course at some point, you'll need to plug them in to charge. Charging takes place when the unit is turned OFF and the charger is plugged in.

You might also find this link to be interesting regarding battery power:
http://www.redwineaudio.com/about/why-sla

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Vinnie Rossi
Red Wine Audio

Thanks for the responses, Listens2Tubes and Vinnie.

I dont mean to single out Red Wine Audio in my concerns about battery powered hi-fi being required to stay plugged in, its just that in doing some of my preliminary research on the RWA 30.2 unit, what struck me was this line in the Tone Audio review:

"Turn the 30.2 off and it immediately
goes back into charge mode, as indicated by the red
LED on the AC charger. Red Wine Audio insists that
you leave the charger plugged in at all times."

And then this line in the 6 Moons review:

"Forget accidentally deep-discharging the onboard batteries to eventually drain them beyond revival. The monitoring module keeps continuous tabs on battery voltage to automate the recharge process. Just leave the now universal 100-240V battery charger plugged into a live AC outlet."

In my perfect battery powered world (that exists only in my imagination right now), I can take my battery powered components out to a camping site, bust out a pair of smaller 2-way speakers that are a good match, and have some hi-fi for a few hours. Better yet, I could bring the entire rig over to a friends house without worrying about displacing any of his furniture or other electrical components for the evening.

I have a battery-operated preamp from another manufacturer. The point of disconnecting the power cord from the preamp during operation is to address RF issues that would otherwise result from being connected to the AC grid, or even having an unconnected power cord dangling from the back of the preamp.

Rottenclam; you can indeed disconnect and take a battery amp like the RWA with you. The lit that tells you to leave it plugged in is should probably be clearer and let you know "you can unplug it if you like, but you don't have to and it is still running off the battery." Most leave it plugged in for simplicity sake (if the snarl of wires behind your rack is like mine, it's a pain to unplug something).

In the case of RWA, SLA batteries work best when fully charged at all times, so it makes sense it charges up every time after any use. Some batteries (like Lithion, I believe) will charge and power equipment better after being fully drained and can actually go bad if kept charged all the time.

The RWA products have a "smart" module that causes the charger to engage when the batteries are drained to a certain level. The concern with SLA batteries is that if you drain them too much at one time they cannot fully recover and it significantly reduces their useful life. The reason the reviewers - and RWA - tell you to leave the RWA's plugged is so that the smart module will kick in when needed and save the batteries. They will certainly operate without being plugged in, but you risk excessive discharge if you listen too long. I owned a competing battery product without the smart module feature and battery maintenance was an issue.