Need understanding on amperage

LL

Your 20 amp circuit supplies continuous current to the receptacle. Your amp can output 60 amps "peak", very briefly. The duration of the "peak" 60 amps depends upon how much electricity is stored in the amplifiers power supply capacitors. Transformers unlike capacitors, do not store electricity.

The specs on your power conditioner state: Input - 15 Amp capacity required and Output - 11-15 Amps RMS (maximum, all outlets combined - continuous). The 45 amp rating is the peak current rating for the conditioner output which, just like your amplifier, depends on how much electricity is stored in its capacitors.

Adding the power conditioner will make peak current available to all of the components plugged into the conditioner. However, since your circuit is 20 amps and the conditioner input is rated for 15 amps, you are not getting the benefit of your 20 amp circuit.

You don't trip your 20 amp circuit breaker because the input of the both the amplifier and conditioner are designed to limit their current demand to 15 amps.

Greg

Thanks for your responses. Makes complete sense, thanks for using small words:)

To clarify: The 60 amps figure of the amplifier is not how much current the amp can produce driving the speaker. If it were, we could apply the power formula, which is that Power equals the current squared times the resistance of the load.

So if we give the amp the benefit of the doubt and use a 1 ohm load, that means that the power output of the amp is 60 amps squared; 3600 watts! Obviously the amp can't do that, what this 60 amp number represents is how much current is produced when the power supplies are shorted out for 10 milliseconds, something that you would never, ever want to do!

So this has little to do with whether the amp can make a lot of 'current' when driving low impedance loads. I know of several tube amps that don't make nearly the same power than tout the same figure.

To further clarify.

When you look at a "current rating" spec you need to know at least two things:

(1) At what voltage is the current being specified.

(2) Is the rating CONTINUOUS or transient.

The ratings on wall power are usually continuous maximums (in root mean square or RMS) and are at your line voltage of 120 V AC.

The 60 amp rating for a power amp like the Parasound are TRANSIENT, good for only a very short time and at a voltage much lower than your line power levels.

Make no mistake, if that A21 tried to output 60 amps for more than a few milliseconds, fuses would blow.

In the old days, manufacturers were required to avoid transient power/voltage/current specs because they can be so misleading for consumers. Only RMS continuous specs were allowed to be published.