Monday, December 30, 2013

Which Power Sources Are Suitable For Wireless Surround Sound Systems?

By Mike Heller


When adding rear loudspeakers for your home theater system, you have got several choices. A lot of people simply hard-wire the loudspeakers to the AV receiver. Yet, some people choose to eliminate the cable mess by using wireless transmission. Many vendors are selling cordless speaker products which are able to change essentially every loudspeaker into a cordless speaker. The wireless receiver of these systems comes with an audio power amplifier that needs to be powered. The power sources for the wireless receiver should satisfy certain prerequisites. In this editorial, I am going to emphasize some of the most crucial requirements.

Wireless surround sound kits consist of a transmitter unit which connects to a home theater receiver together with one or more wireless receiver parts. While those kits do away with the feared loudspeaker cable, they are not really cordless mainly because both the transmitter as well as receiver have to be powered. There are various choices which provide the wireless receiver with power. One of those choices is to employ an exterior AC adapter or wallwart which plugs into a mains electric outlet. An alternative choice is to utilize a power source which is fully incorporated into the wireless receiver.

Through working with a wallwart, the wireless receiver can be a lot smaller in size. One other type of wallwart has an IEC kind power connector. This jack attaches to a mains electric outlet by employing a power cord. These kinds of AC adapters are quite similar to those used by notebooks. From the viewpoint of a designer, combining a wallwart offers certain advantages compared to an integrated power source. First of all, determined by what region the wireless system will be sold in, a unique wallwart can be bundled that is compatible with the local mains voltage and electric power plug. Secondly, wallwarts are simpler and less expensive to safety approve as compared to complete products. In addition, in case a power supply becomes defective, it is less difficult as well as less costly to change just the power supply compared to the complete product. Cordless receivers which integrate the power supply are usually bigger than models that have an external supply but are easier to put in.

Next, I'll talk about which requirements the power source needs to satisfy. Safety factors are crucial. Consequently, the power supply has to comply with the safety regulations that apply to each nation that the item is marketed in. The regulations are created to make sure that there is plenty of safety in order to avoid harm to humans in case of line fault situations. The insulating material from the mains voltage has to meet strict requirements. On top of that, the power supply cannot overheat during normal operation and also have ample protection in case of an overload. Power supplies that have passed safety screening generally bear a UL or CE logo. If the power source is built-in into the wireless receiver then the receiver bears this logo.

A further crucial requirement would be that the power supply supply adequate current to the built-in wireless signal receiver and also power amplifier. The power amp is essential to drive the loudspeaker which is attached to the wireless receiver. Most power sources for music amps were made to supply a constant current sufficient for the amp to satisfy the RMS rating for 10 minutes just before getting too hot. A bigger factor than the continuous current rating is the peak current rating. Audio signals rarely possess a constant energy envelope. Instead, music has a great deal of spikes. So the power supply should be able to maintain a pretty big peak current during brief time bursts. The music performance of the cordless receiver additionally is dependent upon how clean the power is that is provided by the power source. A great deal of voltage noise as well as ripple may result in the music performance to deteriorate. As a result voltage noise and also ripple are a few additional essential prerequisites. Linear power sources usually have the lowest amount of noise. On the other hand, linear supplies tend to be fairly heavy and large. The internal components ordinarily work from various supply voltages. For that reason lots of power sources provide several supply voltages. Lastly, the power source needs to have adequate overload as well as over-temperature safeguards in order to keep everything secure in the event of a fault of the power amplifier.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment