Planning party in the woods… I know SC5000’s are known to have issues on poorly grounded electrical systems. Has anyone tried powering 5000’s with generators? I’m planning to use a pair of Honda 2000 suitcase generators to power my soundsystem and DJ setup. Never had issues with laptop/controller setups in the past but we’re planning to use media players this year to make DJ changeovers easier. Putting together a budget right now and trying to decide if I should plan on renting some Pioneer players or can I count on my Denon’s working well off the generators? I intend to do some tests but I wont have the generators till closer to the event which makes the budgeting difficult. Advice greatly appreciated!
You can use an additional power conditioner to have more safety … but normaly it should work. I did some gigs with a 2.2kW generator … PA, computer, mixer , light … no probs at all. But my generator provides sinus power like the power from normal home plugs.
If you use normal generators, (the cheap ones) you can use a 500W Halogene spot, to regulate the spikes.
The plan is to run all the DJ gear off and LED lighting running off one generator and have the PA on the second, hopefully that cuts down on the transients. Also looking into a ground spike… I’ve run the PA off a generator in the past with no problems, The Honda EU2000i’s I’ll be using are very nice little units. I’m a little spooked by the jog-grounding issues I’ve seen here and on FB.
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Those are perfect for you application. I have a yamaha 2400i. The “i” is for inverter/sine wave which is best for electronics.
It’s best to groud the generator aldo
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Now, i’m not an electrician, so check any opinions from me with somebody suitably qualified…
Would it be a problem splitting your Decks & PA over two generators? Wouldn’t that be similar to having them split over different phases on a 3 phase supply?
It may be worth having your audio outputs from your mixer pass through some sort of isolating transformer / D,I. box, before it hits your PA system.
Like I said, I have no qualifications in this field, so double check with a pro electrician.
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with two generators you have 2 seperate power-circles … so there is no problem from splitting pa & decks. you will not have anoying things like ground hum or something. to have them splitted is also better for sound quality. so your pa can get its own power and dont kick the player with hard base drums in the ass xddd
absolutely right how you plan it!
di boxes … arent nessasary … but a nice haveto . I always use my di boxes to have the best audio experience without humming or buzzing 
I use my setup plenty on a variety of generators. No problems whatsoever.
Watch out, that the mass cable is conectet to the gen-set.
Did this event go down? If so any feedback on how it worked out with the generator setup?
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So you’re saying the electricity is not in phase with each other so even though all the gear connected to each other might not be sharing one ground, you won’t get a ground hum?
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DI Box is the magic. It is an Audio-Ground Isolator. So if everything is all right, there is no hum or noise.
I meant regarding this comment, not the DI box…
and ?
2 generators … one for pa and one for light ?
first generator for pa and deck - second generator for light … and if you also use di-boxes u are on a sure way.
don´t know what you don´t understand …
Ground loops occur when audio equipment that is connected to each other has two separate grounds various equipment is connected to, which commonly occurs with using two different circuits for a large system or amalgam of gear… say one circuit plugged into for the speaker system and one for the front end. It sounds like you actually meant that a DI box was the solution and the other part about having 2 separate power circles (I think I miss-read that as “cycles”) would already not have ground loop problems. I didn’t know if using two generators simply never presented ground loop problems as compared to using two different circuits in a building.
I think part of the problem here is our transatlantic friends don’t have the same grounding built into the system, certainly as we do here in the UK, where grounding isn’t an issue as it is simply implemented into the plug and the electrical system with the Earth cable. Even legacy products like 1210s can be rerouted to internal grounding instead of the old grounding wire.
The Prime products all have three prong IEC plugs in the US just like in other countries. You saying the UK is immune to ground loops on electronics?
I’m saying in 30 years of DJing in the U.K. I’ve never had a grounding issue - so pretty much, yes. Our wiring is different to yours it isn’t just the plugs as you can also run a two prong system (I believe). We can’t, if you electrical item isn’t earthed the power won’t distribute.
I’ve had many, many problems with breakers tripping and the whole system going down due to earthing problems, which is what the system is designed to do.
Two prong gear that draws low power and can legally have just two prongs directly into the item can’t produce ground loops since it lacks the third ground prong. Again, ground loops are not an issue of not being grounded, rather that there are two or more ground paths (one per circuit you’re utilizing) in use on the same collection of connected equipment that have three prongs. If you have more than one ground path in the linked chain of gear, the only way to prevent a loop from occurring ever other than disconnecting those extra ground paths (i.e. putting all the gear on one circuit) is to unsafely “lift” your grounds and bypass the third prongs. The other solution is to filter the noise out of the audio signal, which is obviously the poorer-sounding but physically safer solution than dropping the ground prongs.
Not sure what you mean about earthling problems causing breakers to trip, unless you have an outright short circuit of the other wires onto the ground connection. Otherwise it’s caused by overvoltage for too long a length of time – that’s the threshold that trips a breaker. Something was drawing too much power from the circuit. This has less to do with preventing electrocution, as someone can still die long before a main board breaker trips, and more to do with preventing the lines from catching fire. A building’s main electrical board’s breaker thresholds are all based on the durability/capacity of the particular lines they’re connected to. The exception in your country should be outlets near sinks, showers, etc, which should have local protection circuits to help prevent lethal voltage draws.