Electronic devices : How cold is dangerous?

[moodysky]

Hi there!

I'm renting a place right now which lets a lot of the cold get in. When I'm home the heat is on so it's not really a problem, but when I leave for the week-end it can easily drop to 55°F (and it'll be even worse in one or two months). Having some electronic devices I would like to know if anyone had an idea about the temperature at which it could damage them.

Here's my gear :

Adam A7X
FOcuscrite Isa 2
DSI PRophet Rev 2
Korg MS 20 mini
RME Fireface 400

Thanks a lot for your help!

[Folderol]

When unpowered temperature is not an issue. They can go well below zero. Powered electronics is usually recommended to be kept above 5 deg C

The bigger risk is condensation when the environment is warmed up.

[James Perrett]

As Folderol says, as long as you keep things dry you can store electronics at low temperatures. Most gear has an operating temperature range between 10 degrees C (50F) and about 40 degrees C so 55F won't be an issue.

[Arpangel]

When I lived in my flat in London, it had no central heating, temperatures in the winter regularly went down to minus 5 or more. My girlfriend at the time nearly died of hypothermia but I was used to it, and my synths were.
Don't worry, it's not an issue, most gear is designed to withstand high and low temperatures, unless it's extremely, er......extreme, like -40 or +50.
A friend has a studio in St Lucia, ad it's regularly +40 with no ill effects.
Damp is the killer, as long as you're dry, you should be OK.

[Wonks]

Rapid temperature change is bad. Easy to get cracks in solder joints if items are quickly allowed to warm up from near zero (or below) to room (or above) temperature (and vice-versa). Also condensation forming when going from cold to hot areas. So keep things in cases and let them acclimatise slowly within cases for a couple of hours or longer before getting them out and using.

[BJG145]

Electronic schmelectronic - I was dangerously cold earlier.


Time to break out that birthday voucher for Go Outdoors.

[moodysky]

Hey there!

Thanks a lot guys for your replies.
I don't think it will go below 5°C so it'll be okay concerning the temperature.
As for the humidity, it doesn't go higher than 60% these days but I'll be extremely careful.

Thanks a lot for your help, what I read is a relief

Have a good day

[ef37a]

Have you ever known your car radio not work even in the deepest freeze?
Not likely for anything remotely modern but I had an old Ford that would not work on Long wave until the car was decently warm!

I would guess the CPUs in engine management sytems are closely related to those in modern synths and AIs? One would expect those to work anywhere except maybe Antartica?

Valve kit of course shrugs off such problems. No, they WON'T crack the glass if used from below freezing! Car radios again, used to use valves and the power amp and supply converter was often installed in the engine compartment. Went on for years!

Don't worry.

Dave.

[Folderol]

Car radios again, used to use valves and the power amp and supply converter was often installed in the engine compartment. Went on for years!
Dave.

I had one of those! Lovely beast, with some cunning tricks like the synchronous vibrator, 200V DC via this and a transformer with no rectifiers and minimal smoothing. Covered long, medium and 3 shortwave bands.

Got put to one side when the van it had been in was scrapped, then somehow lost over the years

[Drew Stephenson]

Got put to one side when the van it had been in was scrapped, then somehow lost over the years

It'll turn up as soon as you buy a new one...

[James Perrett]

I would guess the CPUs in engine management sytems are closely related to those in modern synths and AIs? One would expect those to work anywhere except maybe Antartica?

They'd better work in Antarctica - otherwise much of the stuff that I used to design would have been useless. The biggest problem we had was the reduced battery capacity when cold so we kept the gear in a warm container until it was about to be used. Once running, the current through the batteries was high enough for them to stay warm.

[ef37a]

I would guess the CPUs in engine management sytems are closely related to those in modern synths and AIs? One would expect those to work anywhere except maybe Antartica?

They'd better work in Antarctica - otherwise much of the stuff that I used to design would have been useless. The biggest problem we had was the reduced battery capacity when cold so we kept the gear in a warm container until it was about to be used. Once running, the current through the batteries was high enough for them to stay warm.

I stand corrected James! I just thought I had seen 'run-of-mill' chips specc'ed down to -40C and I think it gets even colder than that there?

Dave.

[James Perrett]

I stand corrected James! I just thought I had seen 'run-of-mill' chips specc'ed down to -40C and I think it gets even colder than that there?

You are right - parts of Antartica can get much colder than the parts we worked in so I would guess that you need to take extra precautions if you are designing gear to work in those places. According to Maxim, their automotive and extended industrial parts go down to -40C while full Mil spec is -55C. Commercial parts are only specified down to 0C.

[MOF]

The self noise stat’s should be excellent in Antarctica, it could start a new trend - studios at -40C.

[Wonks]

Heated pop filters to stop you sticking to them with an icicle of frozen breath.

[ef37a]

The self noise stat’s should be excellent in Antarctica, it could start a new trend - studios at -40C.

Actually, if you do the math (Google calculator) you have to get a hell of a lot colder than that to make any real difference to component noise.

Dave.

[MOF]

MOF wrote:
The self noise stat’s should be excellent in Antarctica, it could start a new trend - studios at -40C.

Actually, if you do the math (Google calculator) you have to get a hell of a lot colder than that to make any real difference to component noise.

I never thought about the Maths Dave, it was just a flippant comment.

[ef37a]

MOF wrote:
The self noise stat’s should be excellent in Antarctica, it could start a new trend - studios at -40C.

Actually, if you do the math (Google calculator) you have to get a hell of a lot colder than that to make any real difference to component noise.

I never thought about the Maths Dave, it was just a flippant comment.

Yeah, sorry, I'm just a pedantic old fart!

Dave.

[Drew Stephenson]

But I think we can agree that -40 is dangerous, just maybe not to the electronics...

[Wonks]

It's the average radiant temperature of a clear night sky.

[Logarhythm]

The self noise stat’s should be excellent in Antarctica, it could start a new trend - studios at -40C.

Actually, if you do the math (Google calculator) you have to get a hell of a lot colder than that to make any real difference to component noise.

Dave.

In a previous life I ran experiments taking various electrical measurements in systems cooled to -273.12C (30mK) and can confirm this had a very positive effect on noise levels. Anyone want to invest in a new line of studio thermals so thick that they double as acoustic treatment?

[Martin Walker]

In a previous life I ran experiments taking various electrical measurements in systems cooled to -273.12C (30mK) and can confirm this had a very positive effect on noise levels.

You'd think that might put off some folk from buying some vintage tube-based mic preamps, wouldn't you?

Martin

[ef37a]

In a previous life I ran experiments taking various electrical measurements in systems cooled to -273.12C (30mK) and can confirm this had a very positive effect on noise levels.

You'd think that might put off some folk from buying some vintage tube-based mic preamps, wouldn't you?

Martin

The Pedant stikes again! Valves, triodes at least are pretty quiet themselves, it is the anode loads that cause the trouble. Everything else being equal a 100k typical triode load is 10dB noisier than the 10k or so you find in discrete transitor cirduitry.

Cheaper 'cashing in' valve pre amps tend to use the high impedance, high mu ECC83 when you really need high gm and lower circuit resistances. Techniques such as cascoding and bootstrapping can deliver low noise valve pre amps. Transformers help as well of course.

On cooling again? Looked it up. Get down to -196C, liquid N2 and you gain less than 6dB!

Dave.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Actually, if you do the math (Google calculator) you have to get a hell of a lot colder than that to make any real difference to component noise.

Quite so.

At a nominal 20C (and with a 20Hz-20kHz measurement bandwidth) the thermal noise contribution of a 150 Ohm source -- the nominal impedance of a typical microphone -- will be -130.9dBu.

So a perfectly noiseless mic preamp can never have an EIN value (rounded to) better than -131dB when connected to a real microphone. And since the electronics in the preamp will inevitably add a decibel or three of self-noise, the best mic preamps will typically have EIN's of around -127 to 129dBu.

If you ever see -131dBu or lower, the specs have been cheated in some way! Often by measuring with a dead short across the input, rather than a defined source impedance. NB. Some (particularly US) specs use a 200 Ohm source for the EIN measurement, in which case the theoretical thermal noise value is -129.6dBu (same temp and bandwidth conditions).

So what happens if you go somewhere cold? Well, the electrons don't run about as fast, so there's less thermal noise energy. As a result, the thermal noise contribution from the same 150 Ohm resistor at, say, -40C (with the same measurement bandwidth) would be -131.9dBu -- a whole decibel lower! Whoopydoo!

And if you went to -100C it would reduce further to -133.2dBu.

If you could justify the expense and the waste of a rare resource, bathing the studio in liquid Helium (-269C) would get the EIN value down to -149.4dBu, or using more affordable liquid Nitrogen would get it to -136.6dBu. Your recordings might well sound cold and clinical though...

But overall... temperature really doesn't play a very significant role in the self-noise figures when you're dealing with relatively low circuit impedances. It obviously had greater efect if the circuit impedances are orders of magnitude higher - -as they typically are in valve circuitry, for example!

In general, though, changing the source impedance has a far bigger effect, and if the EIN is -130.9dBu for a 150 Ohms source, changing that to a 50 Ohms source reduces the thermal noise figure to -135.7dBu... which is a far more dramatic change than any amount of playing with the thermostat could ever do!

[Rich Hanson]

If you could justify the expense and the waste of a rare resource, bathing the studio in liquid Helium (-269C) would get the EIN value down to -149.4dBu, or using more affordable liquid Nitrogen would get it to -136.6dBu. Your recordings might well sound cold and clinical though...

You'd need a good pullover or two, too