Protecting
your investment while maximizing performance is what customers expect from today's
power distribution products. Audio and home theater systems require a variety
of power needs that go well beyond the simple power strip and these new breed
of power conditioners offer consumers a wide range of useful features while still
protecting components from possible damage from the incoming power. We have used
Panamax MAX products for years to protect our electronics and have been very satisfied.
Their $5,000,000
Connected Equipment Protection Policy is the best in the industry and provides
consumers with the confidence they need for their large investment in electronic
components. The latest MAX® 5500 ACRegenerator™ from Panamax goes well beyond
any of their previous products. Build quality is certainly a notch above previous
MAX power conditioners. The front panel is attractive with analog meters instead
of the row of LEDs used in their earlier designs. The two analog meters monitor
line voltage and current and have a pleasant adjustable (optional off) orange/amber
backlight. Status indicators are provided for Switched Outlets, Voltage Trigger,
Ground OK, Line Fault, and Unsafe Voltage conditions. There's also
an XLR connector for the 5-Watt goose-neck light provided with the unit. This
comes in very handy in a home theater setting when a variable light source is
needed in the dark. The top of the chassis has a schematic diagram detailing each
of the filter blocks, relays and connections on the back of the unit, which comes
in handy when connecting components. Panamax has also placed a single outlet on
the right side of the front panel for quick power needs. This was a great idea
and we've used this numerous times for powering devices such as camcorders and
laptops. It's been so useful in our setup that it's hard to imagine life without
it.
Features:
The
MAX® 5500 design incorporates a Tri-Power Filtration System that consists of three
types of outlets on the unit. The first has a set of four fully isolated outlets
to prevent noise from digital sources from polluting the main power line. These
four outlets are truly isolated with a 500VA toroidal transformer. The result
is that none of the EMI/RFI noise can pass through to the secondary windings.
This isolated design has limited power capability due to the transformer size,
but does not have any problem powering the vast majority of today's digital products.
The second group of outlets consists of two pairs which use a balanced double-L
filtration configuration to eliminate EMI/RFI noise and is ideally suited
for sensitive analog sources such as preamps and electronics crossovers where
the noise floor needs to be minimal. Each pair of these outlets has its own filter
bank. The front panel outlet also uses this filter. The third and final pair of
outlets provides the delayed switching and are intended for high current power
amplifiers and subwoofers. Here the power is only limited by the main 15 amp circuit
breaker and other protection circuitry maximizing the instantaneous current needed
by the high current amplifiers found in today's home theaters. Current transients
produced by some of today's high current amplifiers can introduce problems when
used with noise suppression chokes. For this reason, Panamax excludes chokes in
the circuit supplying power to these outputs.
The SurgeGate Plus™ Circuitry protects components connected to the MAX® 5500 by preventing any of the outlets from getting voltage outside the 90V to 134V range for an extended period of time. Protection is also provided between Line/Neutral, Neutral/Ground and Line/Ground. The main circuit breaker is set to trip at 15 amps. There's also a 4 amp breaker to protect the toroid transformer used with the isolated outlets. This is why the isolated outlets should not be used for power amplifiers. Doing so will most likely cause the 4 amp breaker to trip.
Separate
gold-plated F-connectors on the back panel support cable television as well as
DSS. Cable TV (including terrestrial HDTV) operates in the 50MHz to 950MHz range.
The clamping threshold for cable inputs is set at 0.7V, well above the level of
the modulated video signal. The pass-through bandwidth for the satellite inputs
range from 950MHz to 2.2GHz with a loss of less than 1dB in signal level. The
clamping circuitry for the satellite inputs is set at 27V to handle the 13 and
18 volt control voltages used for the LNB. Finally, there is also a protected
phone line (RJ-11) connection on the MAX® 5500. Essentially they've included everything
to protect your entire DSS setup from Mother Nature's fury. We were also happy
to see a detachable power cord. So many heavy products lack this feature making
it difficult for the user during installation.
The MAX® 5500 has a 12VDC trigger input and output for remote triggering from a master controller. We used our Parasound AVC-2500u Preamp/processor to control the triggering of the MAX® 5500. Separate three position slide switches on the back of the unit sets the delay control for the high-current and isolated outputs. The high current switched outlets can be set to 0, 10 or 30 second turn-on delays while the isolated outlets can be set to 0, 10 or 30 second turn-off delays. The high current outlet are designed to turn on after the isolated outlets and turn off before them.
Panamax's
latest MAX® 5500 ACRegenerator™ meets the demand of the consumer by providing
a product capable of protecting the whole electronic system. The legacy features
of the earlier MAX® products are retained in this current design. The addition
of the toroidal transformer for the isolated outputs improves performance, but
does add cost to the design. In our opinion, the features, build quality, price
and warranty make the MAX® 5500 a tough act to beat.
- Kevin Nakano