[mresseguie]

Those aren't designed for audiophiles. If they did, nearly every audiophile would sell their power conditioners and get off the grid. You need batteries that sound good, among other things. I have an Ecoflow that powers my home during an outage. I've never hooked it up to my audio system, but it would be interesting to try it.

I'd be very interested in knowing how your Ecoflow works with your audio system. I wonder what it would take to get a power station like the Ecoflow or Bluetti to acheive the same quality power as a Stromtank system? Perhaps, add a Puritan Audio PSM156 power conditioner or a PI Audio UberBUSS?

[Early B.]

I'd be very interested in knowing how your Ecoflow works with your audio system. I wonder what it would take to get a power station like the Ecoflow or Bluetti to acheive the same quality power as a Stromtank system? Perhaps, add a Puritan Audio PSM156 power conditioner or a PI Audio UberBUSS?

I also have a Puritan Audio PSM156. However, the problem is that batteries generally don't sound very good. Even if you found the perfect-sounding rechargeable batteries, you need the typical innards to support an audiophile component, such as a good design, high-purity copper wiring, tricked-out outlets, high-quality caps and resistors, etc. The unit must also produce a pure sine wave. Some battery backup units are marketed as having pure sine waves, but they aren't in reality. Plus, you need a lot of battery power, so the unit will be very heavy (at least 100 pounds), bulky, and not so wife-friendly. However, if you have low-sensitivity speakers powered by huge solid-state monoblocks and you like to crank it up, forget about it! And God forbid if you need to replace the batteries -- that will be an insanely huge cost. I sort of understand why those Stromtanks are so expensive!

Danny is the only person I know who runs his system off-grid. I'm sure he can tell you how many battery brands and sizes he experimented with.   

[Jon L]

batteries generally don't sound very good. Even if you found the perfect-sounding rechargeable batteries, you need the typical innards to support an audiophile component, such as a good design, high-purity copper wiring, tricked-out outlets, high-quality caps and resistors, etc.

IME it's not so much that batteries don't sound good.  It's just that available battery backup inverters (that's what they are really) make the DC coming off battery go through a bunch of processes/regulation and cheap parts before reaching audio gear, which then puts that AC through its own AC-DC conversion. 

I get better results by powering source gear (streamer, DAC) with pure battery DC without any regulation/conversion and using a pure sine-wave battery PS for downstream gear that cannot be powered by pure battery DC. 

[Early B.]

I get better results by powering source gear (streamer, DAC) with pure battery DC without any regulation/conversion and using a pure sine-wave battery PS for downstream gear that cannot be powered by pure battery DC.

Perhaps on another thread, but I'd love to hear more details about your battery-powered setup and others who use them. I'm interested in going battery-powered, but I need to learn more.

[mresseguie]

Okay, fellow audio addicts. Here is a brief rundown of the rooms that caught my attention.

HS-Audio is a new audio shop in Taiwan. It's one of those solo audio engineer sort of shops. This guy has two different sized two-way standmount monitors. The tweeters are aluminum while the midrange drivers are actually fullrange drivers. One  model has a 4" fullrange driver while the other model has a 5" fullrange driver. I listened to the larger model. Its midrange was pretty nice sounding, but the higher frequencies were a bit brighter than I care for.

The guy is developing a pair of mono 211 amps, but they're not yet finished. I told him I would like to audition the amps when he's ready to bring them to market.

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Unika Audio is a Taiwan company. Their amplifier is the Unika UK700 700W/ch amplifier with the first 50 watts in Class A. It was powering a pair of large 96dB speakers with 18" woofers, titanium tweeters and super tweeters. The speakers are used and could be purchased for just $99,999 New Taiwan Dollars (~$3300 USD). The guy in that room said they were 6 years old, and that model had been discontinued.
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Next up was a unique room. This guy's speakers (2-way, 2.5 way, 3-way) are housed in lengths of bamboo. No, not plyboo....real bamboo stalks with 6" or 6.5" midwoofers mounted in the sides of the bamboo. The speakers sound okay, but (in my personal opinion) they're pretty funky looking. [The show was in the middle of April. If it had been April 1st, I would have been convinced it was an April Fool's joke, but the speakers' creator (mastermind??) was absolutely serious. The speakers were powered by Threshold clone SS amps which the guy claimed were 250W pure Class A mono amps. I doubted that because they were available for just $105,000 NTD (~$3500 USD).[They seemed kinda small for 250w of Class A, but what do I know?] I took a photograph.

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 Next room had Wharfedale speakers powered by a Luxman L509Z amp. The amp is available for $358,200NTD (~$12k USD). I left soon after I sat down because I was not impressed with what was emanating from the speakers.

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The Burmester room. I had to pick my jaw off the floor after I caught site of the prices for the speakers and equipment in that room. I didn't bother to write down the prices. The music that was played impressed me as being 'well-behaved' <- That's what I wrote in my notebook. Well-behaved,but not special.
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Goldnote room:
2-way standmounts powered by a Class D PA-10 EVO 140w/ch amp. No commentary
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T+A Audio room:
Broadmann Flagship speakers. WOW! These speakers sound F@@@ing AMAZING!!! I'd sell my house to pay for a pair of these wonderful sounding speakers. ~$260,000USD.
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Another 'mortgage the house to pay for this room's system' room. MSB Technology amps, preamp, 'gear' + Marten Diamond speakers. I also wrote about another amplifier called the ASR Luna8 Exclusive HV amp for $1,280,000 NTD ($40kUSD) Link: https://tgksound.com.tw/product_detail.php?act=List&PPId=75&Id=63
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Next room had Wilson Audio floorstanding speakers - big, expensive, and surprisingly <to me anyway> noticeably bright sounding.
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Final room that I wrote about:
Borresen M# floorstanding speakers. These are tall, imposing looking speakers. Price: $250,000USD! Of course, they sounded wonderful. They were powered by Aavik gear. I wrote, "Sure, they sound wonderful, but a quarter million USD?? I don't think so." The guy choosing which songs to play was a tall (>6') viking looking guy who's probably pushing 70. He was playing electronica rave music, tapping his toe and obviously enjoying the music. He said hello to me when he noticed the only other non-Asian face in the packed room. I didn't stick around to chat as I was pretty tired by then.
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I showed up just a few minutes before Saturday's show began at 10am and stayed until about 30 minutes before the show ended at 6pm. I noticed five other non-Asian attendees wandering the halls at the show that day (not including the guy in the Borresen room). The show was definitely not crowded, but the number of attendees did pick up by around 3 pm. I have photos, but someone needs to tell me how to upload them.

It was not a big show, but Kaohsiung (and southern Taiwan) has far fewer people than the greater Taipei area.

Michael

[WGH]

Nice report Michael.

[Early B.]

Geez!!  Those are American prices, for sure. I would expect the prices for high-end audio gear to be significantly lower in Taiwan due to no overseas shipping costs, no high USA marketing costs, no tariffs or duties, lower dealer markup, etc. What am I missing?

[mresseguie]

Good observation, Early B!

All imported audio gear is hit with an approximate 23% import duty. This duty was imposed by the Taiwan government to protect the domestic audio industry. [The only way to avoid the duty is by bringing personal audio equipment into the country in one’s luggage. I have brought some personal gear to Taiwan this way.]

The domestic audio manufacturers, of course, have enthusiastically raised their prices, so most domestically produced audio equipment is not cheap. That said, I have noticed that audio dealers will offer discounts on gear if asked. Some of these discounts are significant; some are insignificant.

If a dealer is selling top of the line gear and many of their customers drive Porsches or Maseratis, there’s little incentive for them to drop their prices. [You wouldn’t believe how many very expensive cars there are here. A McClaren passed me on the road today.]