Is it dangerous? [switching off power strip at wall]

Thank you for all your thoughts about this topic.

In my case the powerstrip only powers my three electron’s devices, the rest of my studio hardware is turned On manually, amplifiers at last. :slight_smile:

So I will continue powering my Electron s using their exclusive powerstrip, I know about the spark and the a tension rise, but in this case is just a few amps on this powerstrip so I think they will be just fine.

Thanks again!

No problems here.
The modern switching powersupplies have a slew when turned on.
No heavy peaks whatsoever.

But turn down all volume related (monitor) systems.

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I Have Just put all my gear on 2 separated power strips.
One for my computer, audio interface, monitors, hubs.
One for my synths including elektron.
I switch everything on and off with the power strip’s switches.

I asked the technical support team for every piece of my gear in order to be sure that it is safe. The answer was “yes”, by design most of the power buttons on our devices are actually brutal on/off switch.

For me there are 2 things that need reflection.

1/ your devices probably need to “request” a lot of intensity in order to power up. Trying to power them up all at the same time may cause a “peak” of activity in your electrical system.
you have to check if your power strip can handle it, as well as all your electrical supplying system (wires, circuit breaker…)

2/The other thing that may be interesting is to have a tension/voltage stabilizer, but this is not related to using a power strip or not.
If the voltage provided at your power plugs is momentary higher than expected, you could burn your ac/dc adapters and maybe damage your devices.
Here in Paris voltage is known to be quite stable so I am hesitating on that matter…

This is my personal point of view, I am no electrical specialist!

Cheers

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I just kill the switch on my power conditioners and have done so for 20 years with 0 problems.

My RNC1773, Evolver and Sherman FB2 don’t even have power switches so they definitely do not mind. :wink:

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One thing I forgot to mention, I have a LCD power meter in the outlet, then a bunch of power strips networked from that (in parallel not serial/daisy chained) was quite surprising when I first checked the amperage, all of my gear draws less than 3 amps, I expected it to be a little higher.

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Hi,

Will Elektron equipment (and synths and audio interfaces) take damage from being switched off by cutting power rather than switching them off on the equipment power switch?

Thanks!
Julius

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Would love to know that also…

I asked Elektron a while ago cause I always do so.
I was told this was not harmful.

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An interesting topic! In case you would like to avoid cheap power switches in your studio: what would you buy? Most expansive stuff you can get for your rackmount power distibution is basically working exactly like these cheap stuff from the supermarket. On some point comes the power off switch that switches everything off. So what´s the deal with a professional power supply?

Well, I guess that a quality switch will avoid arcs when switching, which I heard that could lead to momentary variations (transients) on the electricity properties. Anyway I guess that Elektron’s AC adapters can handle those variations. I guess you can test your power strip switch by plugging a lamp on it and listen to your speakers for line noise while powering your power strip on/off?

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Had the same questions. Asked for my gear
to the manufacturers, including elektron.
Aswer pas always the same : it is fine to switch everything on and off with a power strip (also ok for my monitors).
I think that the power consuptions indicated on our gear is a mean value, not a peak value, so it is important to keep that in mind when you choose a power strip that can handle the correct amount of power.

Only thing that could be interesting to improve safety is a filter if you think voltage supply is not stable (but it is independent from our question wether using a power strip or not)

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I have a number of Elektron boxes together with a couple of other synths all hooked up to a single power strip. All of these devices have power switches on the back. Would it be safe to keep all of those power switches on all the time and only turn on and off my machines using the switch on the power strip?

The reason I’m asking is that I did this for a while and experienced a problem with my Syntakt not powering up for a while. I have no idea if it was related, but it scared me enough to stop doing it.

i would think that it would be fine. the machines seem to loose power instantly with the switch, there should be no difference between loosing power at the switch or at the supply if your using the factory power supplies.

That’s my thinking as well. However, when I turn on the machines with their own power switches, I’m doing so in a serial order rather than having all of them come on at once.

are you using a surge protector or a power strip? some surge protectors hold something like a residual charge as part of the fail safe mechanism because it’s usually for a pc which can lose data if it’s improperly shut down. I don’t specifically know how it would affect your current situation, but elektron devices don’t have a shut down cycle, they have an off switch. even if they come on at the same time unless there is insufficient power delivery I can’t imagine it would change anything in the load process…

This sounds right to me. In contrast to the rocker switch on the Digi boxes (and the flagships, I presume) the Models have a little “shutting down” thing that happens when you hold the power/volume knob; I wonder if that’s actually doing anything (like saving the current device state) or if the progress bar is just to show that you need to keep holding the knob to turn it off.

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:thinking: I also wonder

It’s a power strip with a surge protector built in I believe. There’s a small red button that you have to reset if it ever activates.

I think the solution is power down the syntakt first before you turn off the power strip, power on the syntakt last in the start up after turning on the power strip if that’s the only one which is affected by your process. don’t make trouble where there is none, right?

That’s exactly what it’s doing. It’s saving the most recent state of the loaded project. So if you have made changes on multiple patterns or changed the project config, and you have not saved those changes, removing the power wipes out the changes, whereas the proper power down preserves those changes so they get automatically restored on power up.

Catches people out all the time.