I'm going to purchase a meter - WiTenergy - and I'll see what it's pulling for real

We would be interested, please let us know!!!!

Absolutely! That's a pretty low cost solution. If you find it woks well, I'll be adding it to my wish list.

Cheers,

T Cobe

I was waiting for one of our engineer forum members to answer this, but since no one has come forward, I will address.

Circuit breakers work on a time constant, normal music playback will never approach this time constant (if you want to pop a breaker, you'd need to play a sine wave or pink noise at very high volumes, for a while). I cannot speak to the other gear, but the Triton Twos (a pair) will show the breaker about 2-3 amps during normal playback. That's all. Typically, a full a/v system should function on a single 15 amp breaker, depending on the amplifier(s) used.

I received my WiTenergy device and started monitoring the power usage of my AV system.

Image 1 shows 153watts power draw. This is likely from the home theater PC, AVR, power monitor, UPS backup, 8-port gigabit ethernet switch, Slingbox and all the other electrical draw from all other components that are idle or off.

Image 2 shows 332watts power draw after turning on all amplifiers and the receiver. Playing any music at low volume doesn't seem to affect it at all.

Image 3 shows 1450 watts power draw using 7-channels driven along with the 2 Velodye subwoofers. I payed a song that I know has extremely high dynamic compression (Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows) during a part in the song that is pretty much a complete compressed mess).

Note: the plasma TV was off the whole time during this test. This is important, because the 55" Panasonic Plasma is the biggest power source in the system. I've measured with just it alone in the circuit, it can draw 600watts by itself. When I tried repeating the test above using a complete white background with the TV on, I tripped a power strip switch (but not the 20a) breaker.

Two images, one with the TV off, one with the TV on using a white background.