Harmony "One" and Panamax MAX-5400EX

Well... good news and bad news.

Banks 1 and 2 in the Panamax are always on. Banks 3 and 4 turn on immediately when triggered on, and have a 10 second delay when triggered off. Bank 5 turns on with a 5 second delay when triggered on, and turns off immediately when triggered off. This ideal since I have the BFD plugged into bank 3 and the sub amp plugged into bank 5. So the way I have it set up, when I turn the receiver on, the BFD turns on immediately and the sub amp 5 seconds later. When I turn the receiver off, the sub amp turns off immediately with the BFD following 10 seconds later.

Beautiful... except for one small thing.

Bank 5 is designed for high current electronics (a receiver/amp and a subamp). Banks 1-4 are not for high current applications. In order for the receiver to trigger the turn on sequence and shutdown sequence, it has to have constant power. If plugged into bank 5, it won't have constant power. If plugged into either bank 1 or bank 2, it will have constant power, but it won't be plugged into an outlet designed for high current electronics (which might potentially limit dynamics). This seems like a design flaw to me. How can a receiver trigger the power conditioner's turn on and turn off sequence if the receiver is supposed to be plugged into one of the outlets that has to be triggered on? The only possible way to get around this is to plug the receiver into the current limiting banks 1 or 2. Again... it seems like a design flaw to me. I don't see a way around this .

Anthony... do you have a receiver or are you using separates? If you have a receiver... I take it you also have to have yours plugged into either bank 1 or 2. Do you get the sense that dynamics are limited? My speakers (other than the sub) have a high pass filter set at 80Hz so my thought is the potentially limited current will be less of an issue than if I were running my mains full range.

jagman said:

Well... good news and bad news.

Bank 5 is designed for high current electronics (a receiver/amp and a subamp). Banks 1-4 are not for high current applications. In order for the receiver to trigger the turn on sequence and shutdown sequence, it has to have constant power. If plugged into bank 5, it won't have constant power. If plugged into either bank 1 or bank 2, it will have constant power, but it won't be plugged into an outlet designed for high current electronics (which might potentially limit dynamics). This seems like a design flaw to me. How can a receiver trigger the power conditioner's turn on and turn off sequence if the receiver is supposed to be plugged into one of the outlets that has to be triggered on? The only possible way to get around this is to plug the receiver into the current limiting banks 1 or 2. Again... it seems like a design flaw to me. I don't see a way around this .

Click to expand...

I have a Belkin PureAV PF31. Not as nice as your power conditioner, but it suffer from the same problem. If I hook plug the receiver into the receptacle marked AVR on the power conditioner the trigger will turn off that off. Then it will not power back on. Definite design flaw. On the higher end models like the PF60 you can program which outlets are switched. So my alternative is to plug my AVR into a non switched socket.

So I did a bit of research and even opened up my power conditioners case to take a look inside at the circuitry. Each branch look identical. The fact that one says it's high current and the other does not doesn't appear to mean too much. What is high current anyway? Most AVR's are not going to pull more than 7 or 8 amps peak and typically sit at or under 1 amp.

So I switched the sockets and can't tell difference. Problem solved.

Edit: BTW I have a Niko Bluwave dongle. I had to re-organize some of the special buttons in the setup with my Harmony 1000 but other than that it works great.

I sent the following message to Panamax customer support...

"This is regarding the MAX-5400EX. I have a receiver, an external EQ and a sub amp. I want to use the remote trigger from the receiver to the 5400EX to sequentially turn the EQ on first and the sub amp second. As for the shut down process, I would like the opposite sequence to occur. This requires the receiver to be plugged into one of the outlets in Bank 1 or 2, the EQ to be plugged into one of the outlets in Bank 3 or 4, and the sub amp to be plugged into one of the outlets in Bank 5. That is easy enough, except for the outlets in Banks 1-4 are not high current. Only Bank 5 has high current outlets, but the receiver needs constant power to be able to trigger the turn on and turn off cascade. So, my question is... do the outlets in Banks 1 and 2 really limit the current more than Bank 5 such that it is better to plug the receiver into Bank 5 and not be able to use the d/c trigger? If so, why do you require the receiver and sub amp to be plugged into the same bank as the reciver is more often than not the electronic device that initiates the d/c trigger sequential turn on/off cascade (this seems like a design flaw)? I would think it better to have two high current banks... one with constant power (for the receiver as more people have receivers than pre/pros) and one for external amps... like a subwoofer amp. Thanks in advance for your answers... I'm perplexed!"

I'll post their response (if I get one).