Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Eqpt. selection, part 2: Powering everything

It's quite clear that the very ancient churches and other venues that the choir will be performing in may or may not have power outlets, and even if they do, I'd prefer not to shell out for a 240v power strip and drag an extension cord around. Thus it has to be battery power. 

Since everything runs on DC power once you get down to it, a single high-capacity DC battery seems to be the best choice. Since I settled on a computer-based system in an earlier post, I decided to simply supplement the Macbook's battery with a high capacity external laptop battery, and let it do the power distribution through USB and Firewire to the external hard drive and the audio interface. 

I bought a 130watt-hour external Lithium battery from Battery Geek (link), which in my testing lasts solidly through two sessions of mobile recording between charges, running the computer at full brightness with Logic open, recording to the USB hard drive from the Inspire with phantom power on for my two Studio Projects C4 mics that go in my backpack. 

Wait, what backpack? Oh right! How am I going to carry all this stuff with me onto the airplane and around Italy? Maybe next time...

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