Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Bought an APC power conditioner; help please.

Hey guys, I just picked up this APC surge protector (the main reason I bought it is for its AVR technology) and I was wondering if any of you have the same unit or one similar?

Is it easy to set up? I have a separate 20 amp circuit that I will be plugging into. I'm assuming that I should just plugged everything into the corresponding outlets on the unit? There are four different outlet categories on the unit, so it seems to be fairly straightforward. My main question is will the 20 amp circuit be able to handle my subwoofer, separate amp, receiver, TV, DVD player, CD player, Blu-ray player, and media player?

Thank you very much,
Cam

If you plug this into your separate 20A circuit, you will lose 5A. The APC unit has a built in breaker to trip at 15A.

Thanks, Steve, I didn't know that.

The best I can tell ya Cam is to add the usage wattage of all components then divide that number by 120 to get the amps being used.

Example. 1000 watts/120=8.3 amps.

Most likely you'll be ok but it doesn't hurt to check.

Thanks, Rick. Great suggestion; although it might take a while, I do have some free time .

Can someone please help me calculate what my approximate draw would be. I've posted below what the manual states for each component. I really don't understand how to measure the draw of my subwoofer or RPA-1., with the subwoofer being 500 W output, and the amp capable of 300 W X2 at 4 ohms.

I couldn't find the power consumption of my plasma TV (or my satellite receiver, but I imagine it's fairly little) in the manual, but a quick search states that 350 W is average for a plasma TV, does that seem right?

cd player -25 w
denon-7.2Amps- 864w
blu-ray - 35 w
dvd player -25w
amp-600w
ep500-500w
tv-350w

Thank you very much again guys.

Amplifiers are not 100% efficient, in that if they can drive the speaker with 500W, they'll be pulling more from the wall and turning that to heat. But you'll also not ever be driving all amps at their max at the same time. Everything but a Class A amp will draw less from the wall when they are playing at a lower volume.

Yes, the 350 Watts sounds about right for a plasma TV. My 50" Kuro draws 352 when displaying a completely white screen (power draw varies with screen brightness on plasma and CRT).

So lets go with the numbers you have there:

That's a total of 2399 Watts, divided by 120 Volts, gives 19.99 Amperes.

It's not a good idea to plug amps into power conditioners unless they're rated for it. Many of them (even this APC, I believe) do not respond well to the initial inrush of current as the amp turns on and attempts to fill its capacitors. If you plug the amplifier and the EP500 into the wall, and the rest of the stuff into the APC, you should be in good shape.

I have This APC battery backup. My 50" LCD RP, denon 3808, Xbox360, PS3 and DVR are all plugged into the battery backup outlets. I have my ep500 plugged into one of the surge suppression only outlets. The unit is set to turn on my ep500 and my cinema quest bias light behind the TV when my receiver is turned on.

If I have all of the components running I am pulling 550 or so watts from the wall (but am pretty sure that does not count the ep500 or light- only stuff plugged into the battery enabled outlets)

Can someone explain the benefit of dedicated 20 amp circuits over 15 amp circuits for home theater? I'm going to have multiple dedicated circuits, so would there be any point to any of them being 20 amp?

20 Amps just gives you 5 more Amps before the breaker trips. Since is it easier to avoid ground loops, if everything is plugged into one outlet, having that outlet be able to handle all the gear can be a plus.

If you're having new ones installed, there's not much reason to not install 20 Amp breakers. You may need a slightly larger gauge wire, and 20 Amp outlets have a the ability to take a plug which has one leg turned 90 degrees. This difference in price in the breaker and the outlet will probably be less than $10 for each pair. The copper wire might end up being the largest cost, if you need to go up a size. For short runs you won't even notice that.

Thanks for the explanation. I figured I'd have a dedicated circuit on each wall just in case I change the orientation of my theater at some point. I think I'm pretty set in how I want it, but I have reconsidered things in the past.

Way to think ahead.

Cam, I have never seen my system pull any more than 6Amps(as seen on the Belkin PF60) even when cranking it up and that included my PB13U, but you do have the RPA1 which would add a couple more amps to the draw. I think you are OK to run as much as you want through the APC, if it trips then you know you need to adjust something, most likely the RPA would need to be plugged nto it's own outlet.

One of the main thing is always to make sure all your equipment is not turned on at the exact same time. That is typically OK if you turn them on manually or through a universal remote. But if you use a "master power control" on a power bar, all these devices starting at once can overpower a breaker.

The only thing enabled by the "Master Power Control" is the ep500 and cinema quest light. This makes it so that my ep500 amp isn't on at all times and I don't have to get up to flip on my bias light behind the TV

Thank you very much everyone for the help.

Just one more question-seeing that the APC will trip at 15 amps, allowing an extra 5 amps of dedicated power to say the second plug of the outlet, do you think that 5 amps would be sufficient for my RPA-1? Just thinking ahead in case I run into any problems.

I don't think that It would limit the second plug to 5 amps.

5 Amps at 120 Volts is 600 Watts. The only problem is the APC may draw up to 12 Amps when re-charging its batteries after an outage. I've seen that happen at work. Plug two UPSes into one breaker, all the equipment behind them presents less than 15 Amps of load, but after an outage both UPSes end up pulling 12 Amps to recharge and the breaker trips.

But as long as you're not playing at max volume right after the power comes back on, you should have enough power to spare.

Regarding the plugging of high draw devices into a power conditioner. It's not the conditioner which breaks. After a large inrush, for some reason they often over volt into the device, and either trip it's protection (blow the fuses in a sub or amp), or take out their power supply. I don't recommend you try it unless you know for a fact that the conditioner is well designed to handle high draw.

Hmmm... so you don't suggest I plug my components into the APC unit referenced in my above post?

I thought you were not using the conditioning port, just the switched one. As long as you don't use the battery backed port, and only the surge suppression it'll be OK.

The battery back up outlets are powering my denon 3808, lcd rp, ps3, xbox 360, and dvr. not all components are usually on at the same time.

The only thing plugged into the surge suppression ports are the ep500 and the cinema quest light.

am I at risk of frying the power supply for any of the items plugged into the battery outlets? Should I move anything off of the battery outlets and onto the surge only outlets?

Thanks.

The Denon is border line, but if it's been OK, and never faulted it or the APC on power up, it'll be OK. Everything else is fine.

The problem has to do with the power supply design of the equipment and the size of the capacitors inside it. Large amps, which try not to limit current, and have a big capacitor bank are the problem. They have a massive inrush at start, and I don't know why, but many conditioners play with the voltage level in order to keep up, and then over-volt the PS, and then bad stuff starts to happen.

Well this is all rather frustrating. I bought the unit to protect all of my equipment, as it's supposed to do, and has separate inputs designated for various devices, and now I find out that three of them possibly won't operate safely, or even malfunction.

ERRR

I am not that familiar with the APC units but assuming it has inputs specifically designed for high current amps, that should be OK " as long" as there is delay on/off timing functions for certain inputs on the power conditioner so you are not having to power everything on and off at the same time. The delay functions soften the power draw and help prevent speaker pops from the power amps.

If there aren't any on/off delay capabilities, then you could have a problem.

Here's a link to the manual. It does state something like you mention, but if you guys wouldn't mind taking a quick look, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Cam

Interresting. I have something by Monster that is similar. Buying this caused me to examine my house wiring because my outlets are only 2 wire, without a ground. Today I had an electrician install a new circuit breaker (edit: breaker box) and new breakers. In my living room I had a heater that would always flip the breaker when I put it on high. He had some gizmo that clamped to the wire at the breaker and noticed my heater was drawing just over 15 amps, so he used a 20 amp breaker there.

I told him about what I had planned for HT and he said that sound equipment didn't draw very much power. So, in the same room as the heater on high, I started up my computer, turned all lights on, turned on my tv and receiver and played something really loud. This only increased the amp draw from 15 to 18 amps.

For my Pf60 I hook the 3808 and sub up to the high draw outlets and the rest to the specified outlets, display, digital etc. It looks like the APC is similar, you should be OK.

Cat,
Did your electrician check the existing gauge of wiring in your house? I'm going off the top of my head now, but I think the National Electrical Code identifies that 14 gauge wire ampacity is only 15 amps, while 12 gauge is rated for 20 amps. If you have 14 gauge wire (or smaller) in the circuit, it could lead to the cabling overheating and possibly a fire. You should check.

Cat,

I just checked the code, and the numbers I stated before were correct for a 3 conductor cable. Check to make sure that the circuit with the 20A breaker uses 12 gauge wire or larger (larger would be 10 gauge).

You are not wrong, 20amp circuits require at least 12/2 wiring.

I use a Monster power 2500 and plug both of my amps into the high current plugs (both over 300 watts @ 4 ohm) . They are on a time delay and I also wait a little bit to get the system going. So far I've not had a problem.

Other things plugged into the same unit are a cd player, external dac, Outlaw icbm, preamp, and a turntable. My sub is plugged into the same circuit but in it's own surge protector.

Cam, it looks like yours is design specifically for Home Theater AV gear, as it is the AV line of the stuff APC sells so I am sure you are OK.

Mine is a top of the line model from their regular series of battery backups that are geared toward Home PC protection.

Neon, I have used this batery backup for several months and had no problems. According to the LED display there has been 2 power outage events as well.

With almost all of my components on I only get about 8-12 minutes of battery time though according to the LED display.

Thanks. I can't imagine an electrician doing otherwise, but I'll buy a piece of 12 gage wire and then compare it to what is in the box, and at the outlets, just to be sure.

Sorry Cat, I must have misunderstood. From your post I thought all the electrican did was change out the 15A breaker with the 20A breaker to stop it from tripping. I didn't know he also wired the circuits. If he did, then I'm pretty sure that he used the right sized wires as well.

I haven't checked the box out yet, but the wires where I plug in the heater looks to be 14 gage, not 12. It's slightly smaller in diameter than 12. The electrician is supposed to be back in a week to install the grounding rod. I'll bring this subject up when he returns and probably have him replace the 20 amp breaker with a 15 amp one.

Edit: No, he didn't wire the circuits, just replaced the breaker box and breakers. My old one was obsolete and didn't support a seperate ground wire.

Hey guys, I get the unit tomorrow and hopefully we'll be setting it up tomorrow also. It states in the manual that I'm supposed to connect all of my components first, then power on the unit, and then go through the setup process (I will be setting a 6 second delay which I'm assuming will be enough). I'm worried about a possible inrush that has been mentioned. Should I be concerned about this on starting it up for the first time? Do you think I should set the unit up first if it allows me to?

Thanks again

Edit-sorry guys, one more question. I'm confused as to how I'm supposed to use the unit. The manual states that it is recommended to leave the unit "on" at all time. If I do this, does it essentially just act as a power bar, and I can turn all of my components on via my Harmony remote as usual? If it is "on" all the time, won't the delayed outlets interfere with my Harmony remote timed sequence?

Or am I way off?

Yours is different than mine (Monster), since all I had to do was plug everything else into it, then plug it in. No setup involved. It takes it a few seconds after plugging it in before it provides power to everything.

I just spoke with Brent at Axiom, and he said that they don't recommend plugging any Axiom subs into power conditioners. Just thought I would pass that along to you guys.

I read a review of the H15 (basically the same as mine) at audioholics, and the reviewer was having problems with the subwoofer fuse blowing as a result of an inrush of current. The problem appears to be dependent on how the subwoofer is designed, because many people have posted that they don't have any issues.

I only ran my sub off the PF60 for a little while as I was curious as to how much Amps it drew. I usually run it straight from the wall.

It isn't even the quality of the subwoofer. It's just an amp design choice. If the amp has no current limiter, allowing it to play hard and fast, it can inrush. Some designs include a start-up current limiter, because that's when the capacitors will usually pull the most, and then disable it once it's up and running. Other amp designs always have a limiter in place (it is usually receivers that do this).

Normally even an amp without a current limiter will not pull more than what it's rated for from the wall (because of power supply design). They'll also have fuses set to blow if they try to. But as I was saying, some power conditioners behave badly when asked to deliver a large amount of power in a very short period of time. Rather than keeping the voltage at 115, they'll over-volt to try to make up for their lack of amperage. Hopefully it'll just blow a fuse on the amp, like Audioholics was seeing.

I only know of one power conditioner design which isn't current limited, and can actually provide more power than the wall via it's batteries. Those are the ones from PurePower. I'm trying to find out if the ones from Tripp Lite behave the same, as they are similar in their specs, but I can't find anyone to say one way or the other.

Looking at that APC, it's output will be stepped-sine (unfortunately pure sinusoidal regeneration isn't cheap). Stepped-sine isn't inherently bad, but can cause a different problem with high-draw devices. The hard "steps" of the sine wave produce harmonics in the AC, and can cause the windings of power transformer to "sing" or hum. You may even notice this on plasma displays, as they draw a lot and don't have room for big, well dampened transformers.