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

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.