I took a video, and it sounds pretty cool when being slowly drained of power.
Any idea why the strobe didn’t drain all the transformer’s power when I cut the 120VAC to it?
Strobes use a capacitor that momentarily stores energy until it is charged and then releases the energy to ionize the xenon gas in the flashtube. The capacitor will drain the transformer, but won’t get charged up enough to flash.
I know. But why didn’t the capacitor drain the transformer quickly?
Exactly what are you using for the transformer? The A/V device operates on 24 volts DC. Just a pure transformer puts out AC voltage. So show us the entire circuit.
My transformer outputs filtered 24VDC.
So it is not just a pure transformer. It is a DC power supply which includes a transformer to step down the voltage, a rectifier to change the AC to DC, and a filter capacitor to smooth out that pulsing DC that comes out of the rectifier. The transformer in the power supply stops putting out voltage immediately when the input power is cut off. The effect you are hearing and seeing is the filter capacitor in your power supply discharging. Try the same experiment with a voltmeter monitoring the output of your power supply.
I don’t have this problem with other horn/strobes. Whatever, it sounds cool anyway.
The effect depends on how much current the device draws and what its cutoff voltage is. A device that draws less current will take longer to discharge the capacitor. A higher current device will discharge the capacitor more quickly.