Everything You Need to Know About Home Theater Power Manager

 

The idea of ?? home theater is to recreate the cinema experience right in our homes. For this, we include large displays (TVs or projectors), hi-fi surround sound systems, Blu-ray or DVD players, streaming devices, nice and comfortable recliner seats, and more. Different people have different definitions of home theater. Some use their living room and upgrade it with a good sound system while others dedicate a special room, the home theater room. Regardless of the setup, every home theater setup should give top priority to the power supply. This is where Home Theater Power Manager comes into play.

What exactly is Home Theater Power Manager? Do you need one for your home theater? In this beginner's guide, let's learn more about home theater power managers, their uses, and other important things.

Introduction

Everyone loves a good home theater. It takes the movie-watching experience to a different level, right from the comfort of your home. But to get this experience, you need to invest in expensive electronics.

These include AV receivers, multi-channel surround sound speakers, floor-shaking subwoofers, projectors, TVs (or screens), and many other devices.

If you plug these hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of equipment directly into a regular electrical outlet, you're in for a "shocking" surprise.

Why is it such a bad idea to plug expensive electronics directly into outlets? Our household electrical outlets can be subject to overvoltages and under voltages every day.

If the frequency of occurrence of these events is high, it has a significant impact on the life of the electronics inside the device.

In addition to these everyday occurrences, there are occasional electrical shocks and power surges, either from lightning strikes or similar extreme sources, that can seriously damage your equipment.

Noise in electricity and dirty electricity

Any unwanted signal is noise. We usually hear this term when we talk about sound. But electricity also has noise. A source of noise in a household power supply is the switching power supply.

Small and medium electronic devices like computers, laptops, smartphones etc. require DC power supply. Nowadays, we usually convert AC supply from mains to DC supply by using special devices, called switching power supply.

While they replace the mains AC supply and provide DC supply to various electronic devices, some inefficient power supplies introduce noise back into the home electrical circuits.

Some other sources of noise in electricity are radio signals, EMI (electromagnetic interference), weather, and many other external sources.

If the electricity we get from our outlets is too noisy or if it is unreliable, we call it dirty electricity.

In addition to internal sources such as EMI, switching power supplies, etc., external sources such as voltage fluctuations, power surges, spikes, and surges can also contribute to dirty electricity.

Regardless of the source, dirty electricity is a problem and can cause significant damage to electronics inside appliances. When we say "devices", we don't necessarily mean home theater-related devices, but all kinds of electronic devices and appliances.

What is Home Theater Power Manager?

A home theater power manager is a special electronic device that protects expensive audio, video, and other home theater equipment from dirty electricity. It does this by converting "dirty" electricity into clean, pure, stable, and noise-free electricity.

This further improves the performance of equipment (especially sound systems), increases the longevity of electronic components, and ensures reliable output from all equipment.

The Home Theater Power Manager smooths out any irregularities in the incoming main power supply. It also filters out voltage surges, spikes, and dips. Additionally, it can clean the power supply from EMI.

As a result, home theater power managers are also known as home theater power conditioners.

If you take a look at some popular home theater power manager modules, they look very similar to DVD or Blu-ray players. But if you turn it around, you'll see several outlets, where you can plug in different devices.

These outlets are isolated from each other (at least isolated in banks) and can protect against spikes, surges, noise, and other anomalies that are normally harmful to sensitive equipment.

Modern power managers have many safety features but automatic voltage monitoring or AVM is very important. It continuously monitors the incoming AC voltage for overvoltage, Undervoltage, momentary spikes, etc., and automatically controls the voltage.

If the power manager considers the voltage to be "unsafe", it can disconnect the device and connect it only after a safe voltage level returns.

Benefits of Power Manager

The first and most obvious benefit of a home theater power manager is that it protects your expensive electronics from dirty electricity. Be it surges, spikes, blackouts, noise, EMI, etc., Power Manager provides a clean and safe power supply for your electronics.

As a result of "safe" power, electronic components inside devices or appliances experience less stress and can last significantly longer.

With noise reduction, amplifiers do not amplify unnecessary noise. This will increase the performance of the sound system.

With decent home theater power managers, you can control at least 8 devices. If you want to protect more devices, you can add an additional power conditioner or buy a slightly better one that can handle more devices.

Since the power supply to all these devices comes from a single source (which is the power manager itself), wiring, cabling, and managing these cables becomes much easier.

We've already reviewed some of the most popular home theater power managers you can buy. Check out this guide for more information.

Do you need a Home theatre Power Manager?

Home theatre Power Manager This is a difficult question. How can someone not recommend a special device that protects other electronic devices? Before answering the question, let's take a look at the average price of a typical home theater power manager.

Popular brands like Panamax and Furman have a wide range of power conditioners that start at $200 and go up to $5,000 or more.

Protect from dirty electricity

Tech Centeral Now, coming back to the original question, most users generally don't need a power manager. If your home has a high-quality electrical installation with all good quality components and appliances, you can go without a power conditioner.

However, if you live in an area that is prone to frequent lightning strikes, power fluctuations, or surges, we recommend a good home theater power manager.

In such a case, the power conditioner becomes a basic necessity rather than a luxury.

Surge Protector vs. Power Conditioner

Is a surge protector a good alternative to a power manager or conditioner? A surge protector, as the name suggests, protects equipment from sudden voltage surges, which usually result from lightning strikes.

It does not protect devices from other types of "dirty" electricity such as everyday over-voltage, under-voltage, noise from EMI, etc.

A power conditioner can prevent all the above irregularities. This is the main difference between a surge protector and a power manager.

Effect on Speakers

Another reason you may want to consider installing a home theater power manager is if you experience noise, hum, or interference from the speakers in your home theater.

Audio electronics are very sensitive devices. The amplifier can detect any low-level noise that travels through the power lines and in turn, reproduces it through the speakers, which you will hear as interference.

In such situations, the power manager can filter out all the noise and send clean power to the speakers and amplifiers.

But there is a problem with this approach. Sometimes, power conditioners can filter out too much noise and this can reduce the speaker's performance.

Confused? Many users encountered this problem when they noticed a decrease in speaker dynamic range after installing power managers.

When they plug audio equipment directly into the mains outlet, they can hear rich and dynamic audio. But with the power conditioner, the audio becomes flat.

So, if you want to improve the audio quality of your home theater, try to experience the audio quality with and without a power manager and then decide whether you need to buy one or not.

What about Computers and other Electronics?

Chances are you're already using a UPS with your computer that has several protection mechanisms. Also, most modern computer power supplies feature sophisticated power filtering, noise reduction, and voltage regulation.

As a result, you usually don't need a power conditioner with a computer.

Result

Building a dedicated home theater is a dream for many people. They spend a lot of money, time, and effort setting up the room with a high-quality sound system, projector, AV receiver, Blu-ray and streaming players, TV, and many other devices.

With such a setup, you can enjoy movies, sports, or gaming with friends and family and transform into a different zone.

All is well and good unless there is a power outage near your place or if your electricity has frequent voltage fluctuations. This is not good at all for electronic devices in your home theater room.

A home theater power manager is a special device that takes "dirty" electricity and turns it into clean, noise-free electricity. With this power, the expensive equipment in our home theater room will work safely and have a very long life.

In this beginner's guide, we looked at the basics of home theater power managers. Next, we looked at what causes 'dirty' power and how it affects sensitive electronics.

Finally, we saw some interesting answers to an important question regarding home theater power managers.