Korg Forums

To those of you that plug your Kronos into a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) or battery backup, I'm looking for feedback. Considering the Kronos takes 2-3 minutes to reboot, I don't see any need for a bigger battery that will give you power for 15-30-60 minutes. But I wanted to hear some thoughts and rationale from those of you who have purchased them. I am considering all options from cheap to expensive, so let the games begin ... and thanks in advance to those that contribute.

You should get UPS, specially if using live. There's plenty of feedback you can check:
- UPS - live use? How many?
- UPS
- UPS Advice
- UPS
- UPS for kronos??
- Which UPS?
- UPS
- A couple of questions...
- Are you using a UPS (with a Kronos)?

What's your primary use?

For live applications, I'm figuring if power's down for more than a minute, then we're breaking anyway til things are resolved, so a 2 minute startup's no big deal. I'm more worried about a sort dropout like a loose plug or power sag or something. So I picked up the smallest "power strip" style UPS I could find from APC. It has 3 battery backed outlets, and 3 normal. Even being small, I once ran my Kronos and a QSC K10 outdoor for a wedding rehearsal off of it not even plugged in when the park didn't turn the pavilion power on for the rehearsal and it made it through a few run-throughs.

If you want to really PROTECT your Kronos, you want something that does true AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation). This actually corrects over and under voltage and supplies a clean sine wave, as opposed to just switching to battery backup when power is lost. Good ones are pricey. Tripp-Lite includes insurance to cover your gear.

A wish list for a future Kronos version (hardware, not software version):

Beefy power supply capacitors - not a UPS per se, but enough to last maybe 5 seconds...long enough to stay powered up though a glitch. To go along with that - if power drops, display immediately goes out until power is restored. That would conserve power and give indication there was a dropout.

Just a thought.

I have several APC Back UPS XS 1500's. They cost about $200. This model is more than you would need for a Kronos but it has a lot of room for a few additional pieces of gear and some nice features. I always like to have room for expansion and this model allows plenty of room for me. I highly recommend APC and they also make smaller and less expensive models if you don't need that much.

In addition to backup it provides power conditioning and surge suppression. This is especially important when gigging since you never know what you will be plugging into.

As I write this the display is showing a load of about 85 watts and estimates 60 minutes of run time. The Kronos is 60 watts.

FYI - just looked at mine, it's the APC Back-UPS 350

Don't remember what it cost, but not much and plenty of juice for my keys and rack. I plug my powered speaker into the non battery backed outlet, but like I said, even running the whole rig on battery, it lasted way longer than I would need it to during a power outage situation at a live gig.

Also FYI, midiinut, I'm "J. Dan" over on the KC

I appreciate the links. I had read most of them but did find a little new information. I am in the US, and a lot of the posts were from Europe or Asia and a lot of links that were provided were not available in the US. I gather that APC is a good brand and CyberPower is almost as good. I can find both of those brands here in the US.

I think the thing I am most confused about is the "simulated" sine-wave versus "pure" sine-wave and what difference does it actually make. One of the threads mentioned that it is hard to make recommendations without the specs for the power supply in the Kronos. I don't recall seeing anyone from Korg jump in and tell us what those requirements are or might be.

I'd like to get two UPS's, one for home and one for my live rig. Also, things change over time. I remember when people started upgrading their SSDs and memory. I'm sure we wouldn't recommend those same SSDs or memory today. I just felt like it would be nice to get a fresh perspective.

Many of these guys (manufacturers) are notoriously bad about specs and in many cases misleading. Every UPS will in backup mode generate a sine wave power. Most don't do anything more than a regular power strip to the power when NOT in backup mode. Some do - those are the expensive ones.

Pure vs simulated is in a way subjective. What is pure? Analog is I guess. What if it's 16 bit digital? Hell, what if it's 4-bit? Does it matter after the power supply makes it DC? I wouldn't get too hung up on that. But generally, I tend to trust the folks who give lots of raw specs more than the ones who just publish marketing fluff.

Thanks Dan, that was most helpful. I think I get what you're saying about the sine wave thing. I am considering that if the power does go off, I don't care so much about the ability to continue playing as much as I want to be able to shut down properly without screwing up my Kronos.

Also, this AVR (Automatic Voltage Regulation) ... not sure what that does or whether I need it or not. I'm planning on getting a Furman M8-LX Power & Light Module and I believe it does AVR (or maybe it's line conditioning). Those are two terms that I have no idea what it does. If you take it for face value, I would assume it means it regulates or conditions the power to be constant or steady and not fluctuating. But then, if I knew I wouldn't be asking.

A true AVR is a different animal. Most of them work with multitap transformers. So say from 105-125 volts, they do nothing. If it dips to 90-105, it switches to a tap that puts it in the 105-125 range, etc. It might have 5 taps to cover different ranges. A UPS will switch to battery if the voltage is low. An AVR will take 90volts from a bad generator at an outdoor gig and give you correct voltage indefinitely by stepping it up.

The even more expensive AVR's more or less ditch the incoming power - they convert it to DC then run through an inverter to give you a perfect sine wave 120v all the time. I think that's overkill. Some ups's are also true AVR's but most that call themselves that are only doing it when running on battery.

Simply put there are basically 3 types of UPS.

Standby - This just provides backup and surge protection. It switches to battery when power drops.

Line Interactive - Similar to standby but adds AVR as described in the previous post.

Online - Always running on battery and providing continuous "perfect" power.

Most APC UPS's being mentioned are Line Interactive. Online UPS's can get expensive.

Well, you can have line interactive AVR without UPS. So that would correct voltage within a range....say down to 85v or something, but no battery backup. But that's NOT a UPS. So yes, if you are strictly talking devices that across the board qualify as a UPS, I would say what you stated is pretty accurate, within the confines of the BS some of them put out there. Trust specs.

The APC Back-Up ES700 is great and reasonably inexpensive. You get 4 connections surge and battery protected and 4 connections surge protected only. It comes in various country-specific guises. Besides providing battery backup and surge protection, it also provides multi-pole noise filtering

UK version



French version



I use one with my computer system, printers, scanner... but I know people who use it with their keyboards, on stage too, with great effect.

Also, I selected this model rather than the APC 1500 or similar due to the fact that the connections are for normal plugs and not kettle type leads. But for use with keyboards. you may want to get any APC model that offers IEC type (kettle) plugs.

see a link in info below.
Pure Sinewave is much better for computer systems which a Kronos is. I had a cheaper unit and it gave me some grief.

APC Smart UPS 450 - I power ALL my keyboards and rack devices from it.

I bought it because it is a rack mount and not an ugly floor box...and it fits in a rack!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/APC-SC450RMI1U- ... rt+UPS+450