AUDIO-VISUAL: Which whole house audio amplifiers are most efficient?

As homeowners, many of us will use our home remodel as an opportunity to ?upgrade? our existing home audio and visual equipment such as televisions, amplifiers, satellite/cable box, DVD players, whole house audio, video games, etc. 

With these upgrades, you have an opportunity to reduce power consumption in your home ? making your home a greener home.  Further, if your new equipment is an addition to your power consumption, then there are products that are better choices than others relative to energy consumption. 

Today, we want to talk about the whole house audio category, and innovation which is occurring in the whole house audio market.  Whole house audio is sound that is piped to various locations in your home, and you hear it through speakers in your walls or ceiling.  You select a source (DVD, iPod, Pandora, XM Satellite) in the room you are occupying, your amplifier recognizes your selection, and then delivers the sound/music to your location. 

A key component of whole house audio system is a multi-channel amplifier.  Suppliers of multi-zone multi-channel amplifiers are company?s such as Knoll Systems, Russound, Xantech and others.  Most are installed by system integrators, or home theater installers.

Up until now, amplifiers in home audio systems consume significant power in standby mode.  Essentially if you have a computer for internet radio, a DVD player, a receiver for radio, a television, XM satellite, and Sonos connected, your amplifier is supplying power to run those products at all times — 24/7!   Whether they are being used or not, your amplifier is consuming power ? obviously extremely wasteful!  This wasted power is often referred to as ?parasitic power?. 

GetWithGreen.com recently sat down with Richard Hanson, Director of Marketing for Knoll Systems.  Knoll Systems has been supplying audio and amplifier products to the home theater market for over 10 years.  Kevin Knoll started, and has run the business for 24 years.  We wanted to learn more about what Knoll is doing to reduce power consumption, and make whole house audio less of a power pig when you?re not around.

In March Knoll Systems announced a revolutionary new circuit design for several of their multi-channel amplifiers.  Trademarked ?Eco-System circuit?, this new innovative patent-pending technology turns off any channels that not being used by a homeowner.  The Knoll Systems amplifiers are not in standby mode, they are not in mute mode, their amplifiers are completely shut down for channels not being used! 

Hanson tells GetWithGreen, that not only are you going to do better for our environment, but calculations show a savings of $100-150 per year for the typical homeowner in electrical costs.  A typical amplifier without an Eco-System circuit uses 14 times (40 watts) more power than an amplifier equipped with an Eco-System circuit.  A Knoll Systems amplifier equipped with an Eco-System circuit uses less than 4 watts when in idle mode.

The savings in dollars and the environment goes even further, Hanson tells us, because the Eco-System circuit shuts down channels when not in use — it generates far less heat!  Thus reducing electricity (e.g. fans) required for cooling your equipment while you are not around!

The products from Knoll that you want to check out are the GS8 eight Channel Amplifier (List: $1,178), the GS12 twelve Channel Amplifier (List: $1,238), or the GSZ67 seven source six room Controller Amplifier ($2,199).  All three are equipped with Eco-System circuit technology.

Knoll products are not found on the shelves of Best Buy or Circuit City.  You can purchase them from a network of Knoll distributors across the US and around the world.   Similar multi-channel amplifiers for your whole house audio system are available from Russound (Model: CAA66) and from Xantech (Model: MRC88CTL), but neither offer the energy saving technology of the Knoll Systems products from what we could tell.  Knoll Systems is working now to license Eco-System circuit technology to amplifier providers.  Let?s see who adopts them!

               

Finally, Gordon van Zuiden of CyberManorasked GetWithGreen.com as we were writing this article if the Knoll product had a latency when turning on a source.  Richard tells us that there is zero latency, and they prove it by using the amplifier to run their paging system at Knoll ? which must have zero latency to operate properly. 

So before you go out and purchase that new A/V system, please take some time and look at energy saving alternatives, such as amplifiers that contain Knoll Systems Eco-System circuit technologies.    

 

 

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