Felicia Project Web Site

audioferret · « **on:** 18 Dec 2005, 07:17 am »

I have started on my Felicia Balanced Power conditioner.

You can follow along with my progress at:

http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia.html

Currently, I have just conducted a layout of the parts required for the project and posted the necessary warning to all of us who like to play with electricity.

As always, I welcome any comments on how to improve the site as well as things I should post regarding tips, techniques or warnings to help people safely construct this project.

I have not added any links on the site to guide people towards the circle or to the many shopping venues that I have used to put this together. I will. The next step is to add links to all of the parts I used. I will use a table with apicture of each part next to its description and a link to where I got the part. That will take me a while because I am a mere padawon when it comes to web programing.

JDUBS · « **Reply #1 on:** 18 Dec 2005, 04:05 pm »

Well done audioferret! Terrific start to the site!

-Jim

audioferret · « **Reply #2 on:** 18 Dec 2005, 09:03 pm »

Stage two of Felicia construction is complete. You can follow my progress on:

http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia2.html

I will clean up the site much more when the whole thing is completed. I do not recommend that anyone start their own projects based on my example until it is completely done and tested. If this web site is never completed, it is likely that my body was found in my garage, drool pooled around my head.

I encourage everyone to comment on my plan because it is very easy to forget something that results in a forced rendition of the electric slide. Being electrocuted, while facinating, hurts and is not fun.

When the site is complete, I will have an index page along with "forward" "back" and "home" navigation buttons. Like I mentioned before, my HTML skills are very base.

JoshK · « **Reply #3 on:** 18 Dec 2005, 09:34 pm »

Excellent, nice site! Going to be a nice component when you are done. If I were to say anything though, I'd try to put a little bit more space between the tx's, if possible.

audioferret · « **Reply #4 on:** 18 Dec 2005, 10:02 pm »

The box needs to fit in a portion of my cabinet that requires it to be small...

With transformers, should I be more concerned about the effect they have on each other or the effect they have on components? In other words, should I err on the side of caution by placing them closer to the sides of the box (nearer to the filter clusters) or closer to each other (away from filter clusters). I think I can get another half-inch in between each transformer, but they will be getting closer to the components on the walls.

Also, is the arrangement of the transformers correct? As far as I understand, this arrangement should help cancel out magnetic interferance and RFI.

JoshK · « **Reply #5 on:** 18 Dec 2005, 11:55 pm »

I am not sure about the outlets, but otherwise, I'd think you must worry about the spacing between tx's more than with the components. I am not saying to make the box bigger but try to space out the tx's a little further inside. If not far enough apart, the magnetic fields will couple and pass the noise you are trying to filter, minimizing the effect of the Felicia.

Gordy · « **Reply #6 on:** 19 Dec 2005, 05:00 am »

Very nice Audioferret! Decibel Dungeon of the Felicia world in the making???

The way you're going about it, you won't be making the same foolish mistake I just made while building Chris's Felicia... only three of the five fuses I installed are readily accessible

The whole issue would have been avoided had I simply turned the fuse bank 90 degs. Like you said... measure twice, cut once!

audioferret · « **Reply #7 on:** 19 Dec 2005, 09:34 pm »

Quote from: Gordy

The way you're going about it, you won't be making the same foolish mistake I just made while building Chris's Felicia... only three of the five fuses I installed are readily accessible The whole issue would have been avoided had I simply turned the fuse bank 90 degs. Like you said... measure twice, cut once!

Yep! as you will see, the fuses will be very easy to get at. I will be sure to stress your point on the site.

audioferret · « **Reply #8 on:** 20 Dec 2005, 08:06 am »

I have completed some test runs and the conditioner seems to run all right, but I have two problems.

I have assembled the conditioner on a separate board of scrap plywood for testing. I have only used quick-connects and simple twists to hold wires together.

Before testing the entire unit, I started by leaving the end fuses open and slowly working my way down the circuit with a voltmeter. The voltage is 120 where it is supposed to be 120, 30 inbetween transformers, and 120 at the end.

1. Hum. There is nothing audible through my speakers, but I notice that the transformers themselves have an audible hum. I think it is a ground loop hum, but I have never heard that before. There is a slight vibration in the wood itself, but very faint. I have attached the wires at points by simply hooking the wire and twisting. Does the lack of solder contribute to hum? I have tried moving the transformers further apart and altered the orientation, but it has no effect on this.

2. Fuses. I have now blown three fuses while turning the conditioner on. This is not as much of a problem when I only have one Felicia channel connected as when there are two. The sudden jolt is popping the initial fuse, but the rear four are fine. Should I up the first fuse amperage or just add a resistor to create a soft-start?

When it does run, all of the wires show steady voltage with no problems. The sound from my spare cd player is excellent, but I would like to address the above two issues.

Thoughts?

Occam · « **Reply #9 on:** 20 Dec 2005, 01:25 pm »

Audioferret,

Its an excellent idea to assemble a prototype on a scrap piece of wood prior to final assembly. No matter how confidant I am that I've got everything covered, I inevitably find I've mucked something up and need the flexibility of space and ease of change.
I'd think you should find about 15volts ac between the secondaries. As you're feeding 120volts into the series connected primaries, you should be getting half the nominal secondary voltage, 1/2 of 24 with a rise for the unloaded secondary, about 14-15 volts. Same on the arse end, 1/2 secondary voltage feeding the output transformer should give you that 120v+- from the 'primary' (output) of the output transformer, i.e. 1/2 for 240vac.

Dunno about the hum, but what you're describing doesn't appear to be ground loop but rather simple magnetorestriction. This is simply the nature of transformers. You might be able to fix this with firmer affixing or mounting on rubber compliant bushings. You migh also find the hum goes away when you are actually powering something. A final resort is preloading the transformers with a resistor accross the secondary. A 100ohm 5-10watt resistor accross the secondary shoud preload Felicia with about 2.25watts dissapation.
I also hope you realize that you're the first to try the Marlin Jones sourced transformers, and they're an unknown, and will probably require some experimentation with capacitor values, etc....
I'm not familiar with the Schurter filter and can't oppine whether it would help or hurt, but for the purposes of prototyping, get it working without the extra filter, KISS, and then evaluate its efficacy....

The blowing fuses and 30v secondary measurement does concern me. I sent you a PM with my phone # on Sunday. You need to click on upper right entry on the AC pages that says 'You have x new messages', and we can walk through the configuration and measurements in real time.

Keep up the great work,
Paul

audioferret · « **Reply #10 on:** 20 Dec 2005, 02:41 pm »

Cool, I will give you a call this evening. (around 1800 Mountain Time)

The hum is barely noticeable. I only hear it when everything else in the room is silent and my ear is within about three feet. It has no apparant effect on the sound. The voltage concerned me as well. I think I may have wired the secondaries incorrectly. I will try to get the photos of my last steps up on my web site during lunch today so you can see the progress I have made so far.

The transformers would be an awesome aid. I will create a separate page for each specific transformer and its wiring. I have a buddy nearby with a scope. I will try to get images of each result on the site as well.

Thanks for your help and comments. I am having a lot of fun with this web site. I wish more people would document their work as they construct.

audioferret · « **Reply #11 on:** 20 Dec 2005, 08:39 pm »

The third page is completed and up to date with my current progress.

http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia2.html

ricmon · « **Reply #12 on:** 20 Dec 2005, 09:13 pm »

I'm a little late to the party. could some one tell me where to get started with the Falica project? I think I may try and build one.

audioferret · « **Reply #13 on:** 21 Dec 2005, 12:01 am »

Check out the sticky for the Felicia Power Conditioner in "The Lab". It explains the context of this discussion and provides links to the various constructor's threads. Happy reading, you't got over 28 pages ahead of you!

Building one is turning out to be trickier than I thought...

audioferret · « **Reply #14 on:** 21 Dec 2005, 02:35 pm »

I had a wonderful phone call with Occam last night where he helped me understand the basics of transformer wiring and testing.

Lets just say I had the transformers wired almost totally backwards...my primaries were in parallel, not in series; the secondaries were out of phase; and the center tap was taken off of the secondaries (WRONG) and not the primaries.

I know this may sound confusing, but I will add a special page with pictures to show how to properly wire the transformers. Please do not ask me how to do the wiring yet, I would like to take a very methodical and visual approach and I think the web site would be the best medium. It is very easy to get confused when wiring because people use widely varied terms to refer to the same thing...resulting in dangerous wiring.

I need to stress again that I am NOT a certified electrical engineer. I just like to play with electricity. If you follow my example, you are following the path of someone who totally screwed up his own wiring even though he "thought" he was being very careful!

If the danger of shocking and killing yourself is not enough warning, let me put it into terms that we all can understand. If this project is done wrong, you can damage and destroy your precious audio equipment!

The warnings placed on this site are not just routine warnings placed there to avoid liability. You are not just playing with AC mains, you are playing with TRANSFORMERS (no, not the Autobots...) A 120V step down to 12V transformer does not just turn 120V into 12V. If wired differently, it will turn 120V into 60V, 180V, 240V, or (momentarily, before meltdown) 1200V or even 12,000V. It all depends on how the wires in your circuit are connected.

I am intent on creating a guide that will help constructors understand and avoid these dangers. In the process of doing his, I am learning a lot about transformers. Occam was a lot of help in getting me this far. I will keep folks updated as I progress.

Oh, by the way- this thing sounds AMAZING! I have never had the sense of "being there" as I have with this thing properly wired and connected to my extra (guinea pig) cd player. I can't wait to get this thing fully tested and operational so that I can hook it up to my good system. First things first...

Sorry for the rant...

Occam · « **Reply #15 on:** 21 Dec 2005, 11:06 pm »

Audioferret,

Congrats on getting your Felicia working! Its really quite difficult to describe the subjective changes wrought by Felicia, and I usually just describe it as 'mo betta' and leave it at that. Given my ego involvement, I can only say that the benefits are immediately apparent when you hear them.
While I do prefer a seperate Felicia for each source component, you'll find she does work quite well powering multiple components. Not quite as well as individually powered, as you'll lack isolation between components that are sharing, but if you don't tax the power constraints, it still quite effective.

Which brings me to your 'homework' assignment. Because we've two transformers in series, the normal regulation of the transformers -
R% =100*(Vnl-Vfl)/Vfl where Vnl is the measured voltage under no load and Vfl is the output voltage at full load
is no longer approximately linear, but rather exponential.
The net result of this is that the ouput voltage of Felicia drops off rather rapidly with increasing power draw. While this is usually moot with components with switching supplies such as dvd players (which are low power draws anyway), with some components, their internal low voltage shutdown mechanism will do exactly that.....

As you are the first to use those Marlin P. Jones sourced transformers, would you do the following?

Get 25, 40 and 60 watt incandesent light bulbs and a lamp to plug them into. Power the lamp with the different bulbs and measure the voltages feeding the lamp (accross the output lines) for each while under power.
(Note!!! a light bulb socket's outer contact is neutral, but when fed balanced power, that outer socket part has 60vac on it. This is why you would NEVER normally power an incandescent lamp with balanced power, so when changing the bulbs for this test you MUST unplug it!!!)

The measured voltages will now allow you to make some calculations. Ohm's Law gives you Power = (V^2)/R, so we can calculate the nominal resistance of the bulbs.
For a 25,40 & 60 watt bulbs we have
25 = 14400/R(25)
40 = 14400/R(40)
60 = 14400/R(60)
or 576, 360 and 240ohms respectively.

We can now do a first order adjustment and calculation of voltage vs. power for the Felicia with these specific transformers. I characterize this as a 1st order adjustment as the actual resistance of the lightbulb will be lower, as they'll be fed less than their specified 120ac voltage and be running at a lower temperature.

So given the measured voltage powering a specific bulb we calculate the power draw as (Vmeasured)^2/ Rnominal for that specific bulb.
This will allow us to get a handle on how much power this Felicia can provide before its output voltage drops below some arbitrary point.
It more complicated to describe than carry out.....

Many, many thanks in advance,
Paul

[Edit -
Will- I realize doing measurements is incredibly boring. Its far more exciting to build additional Felicias and see how they effect your system, and simply sit back and enjoy your improved system. Sooooo,
no hurry, but the additional info would be helpful.]

audioferret · « **Reply #16 on:** 22 Dec 2005, 02:28 pm »

Last night, Don Henley and the Eagles came over my house with three hundred of their fans and played "Hotel California" for my wife.

Watching her jaw drop was worth it.

audioferret · « **Reply #17 on:** 27 Dec 2005, 03:18 pm »

I have finished the project and posted my results to my web page. Now, I need to refine it. I have a list of comments from Occam that I need to add (such as crediting the original designer, John Rish). I also need to add an index page overview and a pictoral parts list. Last, I will add navigation buttons to make surfing easier. For now, just change the number after 'felicia' from 1-8 in your HTML browser.

I need input from other readers as well, particularly ones who are not familiar with this kind of project. While this is not a project for the uninitiated, this is something that can be pretty tricky. (I learned the hard way)

As time goes by, I hope this web site serves as a good reference to help others.

http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia4.html
http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia5.html
http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia6.html
http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia7.html
http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/felicia8.html

Christopher Witmer · « **Reply #18 on:** 28 Dec 2005, 03:22 pm »

You've been a naughty ferret, going off and starting a separate thread while clueless me was left wondering why the main constructor's thread wasn't being posted to recently. (I just wasn't paying attention, I now realize.) Your pages are a great addition to the knowledge base, thanks a million. As people who have been following the main constructor's thread know, I have accumulated a bunch of unusual transformers of various sizes -- some real gems and no doubt some total duds (as far as this application is concerned) -- but until just the other day I did not have any of the trannies that have gotten the official thumbs-up from our Facilitator. I wanted to cut my teeth on the original Felicia before trying out some of my other transformers; that way, at least I could obtain a common frame of reference before embarking on tests and comparisons of Felicia variants. Anyway, the other day I got in about a dozen Signal A41 Series and 241 Series transformers, as well as some exact counterparts made by Stancor. I'm now in the middle of getting ready for CES (I'm going to help a new Japanese manufacturer of fullrange drivers exhibit there for the first time) but later in January I hope to start building and eventually to be able to set up a page that might augment yours, reporting on what worked and what did not as regards some of the different transformer types and combinations that I can come up with. I’ll start from the more conventional stuff and work my way toward the more unusual . . . anyway, thanks again for your efforts. You have made my work considerably simpler!

audioferret · « **Reply #19 on:** 29 Dec 2005, 07:18 pm »

I am working on doing more, check out the new site WITH NAVIGATION BUTTONS!!!

http://www.geocities.com/ghaunadaur99/audio/diy.html

Now I'm getting dangerous.