Why Battery Power
Benefits of Going “Off-the-Grid”
Premium, high-current Red Wine Audio LiFePO4 Battery Pack
Red Wine Audio founder Vinnie Rossi speaks out on High-current, low-resistance Battery Power Supplies, and how he leverages this purist approach to power hi-fi audio components.
In a 6moons review of your Signature 30.2 Integrated Amplifier, the publisher refers to an old adage: "Power supply with amplifiers is 80% of the game.” Do you agree?
I believe the power supply accounts for at least half the sonic performance you hear when listening to a given audio component, no matter if it is a preamp, power amplifier, DAC or phonostage.
Take a stereo amplifier, for example, where power supply voltage rails are used to generate the “amplified” audio signal used to drive speakers. Here’s a case where the signal quality feeding your speakers can only be as good as the quality of the power supply in the amplifier. Put simply, the better the power supply, the better the sound.
What exactly do power supplies do?
When audio components are plugged into electrical outlets in your home, you’re tapping into high-voltage AC (alternating current) from the power grid. However, all audio components run internally on DC (direct current) power.
Power supplies convert high-voltage AC from electrical outlets, to lower voltage DC needed to create and amplify musical signals.
As noted above, the quality of the power supply greatly influences the sound quality of any electronic component in your audio system.
Now imagine audio components able to create extremely pure musical signals by completely skipping the AC-to-DC conversion process — and all its shortcomings. This is exactly what all Red Wine Audio components do!
Where do you believe traditional power supplies fall short?
Traditional power supplies have two inherent problems that degrade sound quality:
1) Noise
2) Choking of instantaneous current
Problem 1: Noise
With traditional power supplies, electrical noise comes from:
- The electrical noise found on all AC power lines — from household appliances, local industry, etc. — that passes through the power supply, adding grunge to the musical signal
- The rectification process (switching of diodes to convert from AC to DC) in your power supply
- The coupling of magnetic fields generated by AC power supply components (e.g. step-down transformers) onto other internal components
Problem 2: Choking of Instantaneous Power
People may assume components plugged into high-voltage wall outlets have access to an unlimited reserve of power, but this is just not the case.
The AC-to-DC conversion process causes power supplies to continually struggle to deliver enough clean, instantaneous current. This happens because choking (i.e. restriction) of the electrical signal takes place in the:
- Power supply transformer (via Lenz’s Law)
- Rectification stage
- Voltage regulation and filtering stage
Electrical impedances (inductance, resistance and capacitance) of electronic parts in these stages add up. With high-end audio products, it’s typical for vendors to install a bunch of capacitors linked directly to the power supply output. These capacitors house a temporary reservoir of power.
While capacitors help make up for a power supplies inability to deliver large amounts of instantaneous current, unfortunately they impart sonic colorations to the music signal.
Don’t power conditioners solve AC power issues?
Battery charging happens when unit is OFF, keeping your musical signal
as pure as possible.Unfortunately, no.
There are power conditioners on the market that do a good job of filtering AC line-noise, but they are expensive and still far from perfect. By design, they also limit instantaneous current delivery, because they often use “chokes” (inductors) to reduce noise. And even in a theoretical world, where you could somehow feed your equipment with “perfect AC,” this power still needs to go through the AC-to-DC conversion process that takes place inside the audio component. So you still need to deal with all the issues mentioned above.
Because Red Wine Audio components run on battery power, which already outputs DC voltage, they skip the entire AC-to-DC conversion process and its shortcomings that you mentioned above?
This is correct! Our battery powered components skips the AC-to-DC conversion process and run off of the power grid. I like to call it “DC Direct.”
Would you say that your high current battery power solutions are as close as you can get to a theoretical perfect power supply?
Yes. We believe the best source of power for audio equipment is one that skips the entire AC-to-DC conversion process, and one that has very low internal resistance and low noise. Choosing high-current battery power completely frees your music from problems tied to the AC-to-DC conversion process mentioned earlier.
This helps explain why reviewers and customers often find RWA products sonically outperforming competitors’ products costing several times their price. It also explains why Red Wine Audio components produce music with great dynamics, accurate bass response, and a “black background.” There is also an absence of harshness and listener-fatigue since there is no high-frequency noise passed to the delicate audio stages.
How do you manage the battery recharging process?
Improved SMART 1224 module completely automates the battery charging process.
This Red Wine Audio innovation continuously monitors battery voltage. If voltage drops to a predetermined level, SMART automatically turns the unit off and begins recharging the batteries. When charging is complete, the external battery charger turns off automatically.
Red Wine Audio products are either ON (running on battery power, with the charger internally disconnected), or OFF (where batteries are recharging). It’s that simple!
How long do your products run before needing to be recharged?
Factors including listening volume and speaker impedance play into the answer, but the Signature 30.2 and 70.2 power amplifiers as well as the Isabellina DAC typically run more than 12 hours on a charge.
How long does the charging process take?
A few hours, max.
We’re beginning to see other vendors copying your idea to run on batteries… how do you feel about this?
We’ve offered award-winning home audio components that operate on battery power for over five years. And yes, others are starting to catch on. But I view validation of the benefits of our approach by other vendors as a good thing.
Why don’t all audio companies use high-current, low-resistance batteries in their products?
While the use of batteries offers tremendous amounts of instantaneous current and eliminates having to deal with grunge from the AC power, making use of battery power requires the audio component be designed with battery operation in mind. Most manufactures likely did not give consideration to our approach when their products were initially conceived, so in some cases batteries may not be a good fit – especially for products that run on high voltage rails.
Any parting words?
I encourage anyone considering hi-fi components in our price range (or even several times our price points) take advantage of our 30-day satisfaction guarantee. Once you hear the sound of our “off-the-grid” components — without all the AC grunge — you’ll never want to go back to AC powered audio.