Krell Power Consumption

Magfan .. Monster has a power stablizer that meters and displays power consumption . I no longer have mine but it was very interesting to observe .

" what the supposed effect of PFC is on your amp or sound?"

If done right - enourmous !!!

It suppose to make your power supplies fully regulated i.e. to remove ripple and other terrible artifacts power supply do create - usually resulting in addional ear-piercing odd-order distortions.

I don;t know if Jeff Rowland audiophile or Spectron Audio pro audio amplifiers power supplies with PFC are fully regulated.....

Dob,
As far as I know, regulation and PF should be unrelated.
PF is a measure of the reactance of a load, be that inductive or capacitive.
A (perfect) resistor has a PF of 1.0 while at a PF of 0, no work is done.

I'd be curious to know how PF and regulation relate.

Thin Ice alert:
Isn't regulation simply how well the PS maintains voltage under load? Aren't their either formula answers or 'rule of thumb' answers to how much capacitance a PS needs given voltage and proposed power output? Doesn't that kick out a %ripple number....lower generally being better?

Tmsorosk:
PF is a measure of the reactance of the load.
your monster will display what? Watts or VA? maybe Amps and Volts?

I doubt it displays PF.

Just an example. My 40 watt fluorescent lamp next to my workstation measures about .34 amps. at 117.5v that is about 40va. But, since the lamp has a PF of about .8, it is only about 32 watts.
My electric company (yours, too) bills for WATTS but you use VA. The electric utility company will bill you a surcharge for Low PF. Some factories even have huge PFC correction circuitry in order to avoid this surcharge.

If you want to just monitor power consumption and get an idea what the PF of various devices is, get the 'Kill-A-Watt' meter.....they are very inexpensive and functional.

"I'd be curious to know how PF and regulation relate. "

Hello Magfan: It is that PF correction, as I wrote above, remove ripples and other "terrible" artifacts which produce odd-order ear-piearcing harmonic distortions. Please see below from Jeff Rowland web site:

"External JRDG PC1 is active Power Factor Correction (PFC) units. These devices preconvert the AC from the mains to a steady 384V DC current fed into the monos through a banck of intermediate charge capacitors and make the "501" much less sensitive to AC noise and fluctuations. They also keep the 501s internal caps optimilly charged avoiding AC induced ripples. PC1s should yield even larger authority to the "501"s and will give them a lot more subtlety and nuance"

mote "avoiding AC induced ripples ".

Effects of ripples and other things on distortions are desribed in Simon Thacher of Spectron paper:
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/manufacture/0708/index.html

All The Best