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Apparent power consumption of whole audio system during daily audio listening sessions: how SDGs-friendly is it? (not the idle power, please.)

dualazmak

dualazmak

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Now that I believe I have (almost) completed the setup of my PC-DSP-based multichannel multi-SP-driver multi-amplifier fully active audio system (ref. here #774 on my project thread), today I measured apparent power consumption of the whole audio system during my routine/daily music listening session while I was playing full orchestral fff Tutti quite loudly (almost maximum volume/gain in my listening room environments); the power consumption included one audio dedicated PC and its LCD monitor. The 55-inch OLED TV was not connected/powered-on.
WS00006957.JPG

The measurement was done after about 20 min warming-up of the whole system.

In Japan, our AC electricity is 100 V, and the total AC current for the system was around 2.72 A as shown above, so the "apparent power consumption" is around 272 W which is fortunately well below my expectation (or even my and my wife's a little bit of fear) for the multichannel multi-amplifier setup.

Just for your interest and reference, details of my latest audio setup can be found here #774 on my project thread, and the total physical setup is shown in this diagram; in daily audio music listening session, I do not connect/power-on my 55-inch OLED TV Panasonic TH-55Z1800.
WS00006940.JPG


You would please find the daily standard start-up/ignition sequences for my audio listening session here #776 on my project thread.

As you can easily guess, the main power eaters are four integrated amplifiers Class-AB Accuphase E-460, Class-AB Yamaha A-S3000, Class-AB Yamaha A-S301, Quasi-Class-A Sony TA-A1ES, and the L&R active subwoofers Yamaha YST-SW1000. I have been speculating that these power eaters consume more than 600 W at maximum gain/volume load, but the actual power consumption by them is less than 240 W at peak. (This was confirmed by turning-off all of these five and showing around 40 W residual power consumption by other audio gears including the PC and LCD monitor, DAC8PRO, 12-VU-Meter Array, etc.)

In case if I also use my 55-inch Panasonic 4K OLED TV TH-55HZ1800 for YouTube and other audio-visual sessions (ref. here and here), it will consume additional about 360 W, but I seldom do it in my "mainly-audio-only setup", i.e. less than once for 2 hours in three months.

In any way, we (my wife and myself) are now relieved knowing that our daily standard music listening session using my multichannel audio rig consumes rather SDGs-friendly only around 270 W which is well less than our prior thoughts/fears.

How about in your audio(-visual) setup during your ordinary/daily music (video) listening sessions? Is it SDGs-friendly based on your personal standard??
 
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I have one of those pass through, plug in power monitors similar to this:

1707142402065.png

I haven't tried my current set-up, but I did with a previous system that consisted of two Hypex UCD700HG mono amps, linear power supply with a ~750VA toroidal transformer in each and a preamp. UK mains voltage in should be ~230v, but in my home it measures nearer 240v. Near-field, at my typical listening volume, I was surprised that it measured under 50w which suggest that I had a fair bit of headroom. :)

I'll try my current set-up a bit later.
 
On the UPS is shows power (Ws) going between 161 and 189. I think the TV draws depends on what is show, but not sure. Not much for 5.1
 
My entire system consumes 500mA from 240v mains, so 120VA. It makes no difference whether at idle or playing at even loud listening levels. I have to go to 'leave the room' levels for the consumption to go above 150 VA. If I switch on my turntables, power consumption goes up another 80 VA or thereabouts. Power amps are class AB, and I have 6 channels of amplification.

I use a mains sequencer to switch the system on and off in the right order to avoid switching thumps.
S
 
jbattman1016 said:
On the UPS is shows power (Ws) going between 161 and 189. I think the TV draws depends on what is show, but not sure. Not much for 5.1
Click to expand...
It does. Especially true with OLED and plasma that generates own light and not frem large LEDs. My own plasma was ~200 W avg. but white screen over 300 (!)

I haven't any clue what my amplifier draws. I know I've clipped a 340 W power amp before but that's peak values. I think it only is possible to measure accurate with fast logging device averaged over some time to get the peaks included properly. Like 30 minutes playing and reading the kWh value instead.
 
The important thing is the price of electricity which is soaring in NATO countries.
Good to see a system entirely from your country (except the immovable Behringer which is Chinese).
 
I measured it once when i was listening at about 90dB (very loud in my living room) and my main system (ncore amps, minidsp flex, Intel NUC computer) drawed about 240v 257mA average, that would be about 62W, and a big part comes probally from the NUC. The NUC was operated in remote desktop from my laptop on battery as i have no power socket near my seat and the data comes from my NAS that is in another space (other side of house) so those were not counted. The speakers connected are about 88dB/1M/2.83V sensitive (diy speakers) so probally less than 3 watt is needed for the amplification itself with NCore amps that should be very efficient...
 
And also, even when you operate very inefficient high power tube amps and so, the electricity that you draw is nothing compared to what your fridge, washing machine or dishwasher draws. Those and electric heating (for cooking or house heating if you have that) are what drives up your electricity consumption and bill. And when you charge your electric transport, that even drives it up way more...

Hifi systems, ordinary computers (no big server rigs) or other media equipment is very low power in general, and is only a fraction of the consumption. I even ran a party soundsystem (2.4kW) for about 100 people from a sinlge standard 240V 16A socket (was the only availeble) without any issues last summer. I would have prefered to have two of those, but it worked. Lights and fridge were running from the other 240V 16A plug in that space (a garden shed away from the main hosue), and the lights did dim when the fridges switched on, but not the soundsystem...
 
Out of curiosity, I glanced at my energy meter in the hallway and noted a reading of 27W, with an additional 2-3W for the music. My setup includes a Denon PMA 300V from 1986, operating in deep Class B, which is why it doesn’t consume much energy. It powers an Audax HM130Z10 and TW025A20Mg via a miniDSP, starting from 500Hz or 40Hz, with a passive third-order Butterworth acoustic crossover. The bass chassis is an RSS315HF4, known for its extremely low distortion. The amplifier is a TPA3255 board, which costs 35 Euros and runs on 51V DC, delivering 2x250W. Naturally, it’s paired with a 600W power supply. The entire system is a 3-way setup, utilizing a third-order Butterworth filter for consistent power delivery and incorporating an all-pass filter.
 
dualazmak said:
Now that I believe I have (almost) completed the setup of my PC-DSP-based multichannel multi-SP-driver multi-amplifier fully active audio system (ref. here #774 on my project thread), today I measured apparent power consumption of the whole audio system during my routine/daily music listening session while I was playing full orchestral fff Tutti quite loudly (almost maximum volume/gain in my listening room environments); the power consumption included one audio dedicated PC and its LCD monitor. The 55-inch OLED TV was not connected/powered-on.
View attachment 347507
The measurement was done after about 20 min warming-up of the whole system.

In Japan, our AC electricity is 100 V, and the total AC current for the system was around 2.72 A as shown above, so the "apparent power consumption" is around 272 W which is fortunately well below my expectation (or even my and my wife's a little bit of fear) for the multichannel multi-amplifier setup.

Just for your interest and reference, details of my latest audio setup can be found here #774 on my project thread, and the total physical setup is shown in this diagram; in daily audio music listening session, I do not connect/power-on my 55-inch OLED TV Panasonic TH-55Z1800.
View attachment 347509

You would please find the daily standard start-up/ignition sequences for my audio listening session here #776 on my project thread.

As you can easily guess, the main power eaters are four integrated amplifiers Class-AB Accuphase E-460, Class-AB Yamaha A-S3000, Class-AB Yamaha A-S301, Quasi-Class-A Sony TA-A1ES, and the L&R active subwoofers Yamaha YST-SW1000. I have been speculating that these power eaters consume more than 600 W at maximum gain/volume load, but the actual power consumption by them is less than 240 W at peak. (This was confirmed by turning-off all of these five and showing around 40 W residual power consumption by other audio gears including the PC and LCD monitor, DAC8PRO, 12-VU-Meter Array, etc.)

In case if I also use my 55-inch Panasonic 4K OLED TV TH-55HZ1800 for YouTube and other audio-visual sessions (ref. here and here), it will consume additional about 360 W, but I seldom do it in my "mainly-audio-only setup", i.e. less than once for 2 hours in three months.

In any way, we (my wife and myself) are now relieved knowing that our daily standard music listening session using my multichannel audio rig consumes rather SDGs-friendly only around 270 W which is well less than our prior thoughts/fears.

How about in your audio(-visual) setup during your ordinary/daily music (video) listening sessions? Is it SDGs-friendly based on your personal standard??
Click to expand...
That's called good work..lefty man :):)
Well done
 
Count Arthur said:
I have one of those pass through, plug in power monitors similar to this:

View attachment 347520
I haven't tried my current set-up, but I did with a previous system that consisted of two Hypex UCD700HG mono amps, linear power supply with a ~750VA toroidal transformer in each and a preamp. UK mains voltage in should be ~230v, but in my home it measures nearer 240v. Near-field, at my typical listening volume, I was surprised that it measured under 50w which suggest that I had a fair bit of headroom. :)

I'll try my current set-up a bit later.
Click to expand...

I have a similar device, my streaming / class A/B amp system consumed about 75W when playing as loud as I would ever use it. I measured my streamer separately and it measured about 5W.
 
I have a bunch of Emporia energy devices fitted to circuits in the consumer units plus a bunch of plugs around the house to monitor individual devices/appliances. We got them to monitor power consumption after we had our solar PV system installed.

There's a plug in unit on the powerstrip to the TV/Hifi. Power consumption includes a RPi4B Roon endpoint with touchscreen, Motu Ultralite Mk5, Intel N-100 fanless PC and six Hypex Nilai 500 amplifier modules, 4 on two stereo amps and a pair of mono amps.

At sensible listening levels, only 139 Watts power consumption:

Screenshot_20250131_195730_Emporia Energy.jpg
 
I originally installed a power meter because I wanted to measure the main refrigerator's consumption: just onder 1 kWh a day. At current prices this adds up to about 70 euros a year, so investing in a modern 1000 euro fridge with an electricity consumption of less than 100 kWh a year would save about 50 euros a year. Financially, that does not make a very good case for a replacement, but it would not be absurd either.
I have now started using the same meter on other gear, such as my desktop computer and some audio. My modern NUC I7 (without my big screen) uses only 5 watt when not in use, and around 15+ watt when I work, and up to 25 watt when it is doing any video. In short, not much. Next to measure: the screen, and also my wife's older powerful desktop and dual screens. These could both be quite power hungry. I shall see.
Finally, I decided to measure the audio gear in our living room. The combined consumption of a Chromecast Audio, my RME ADI-2 DAC, my Quad 606-2 power amplifier and the miniDSP 2x4HD is about 40 watt, with no music played (I guess I should disconnect the stuff and measure the units individually where possible). With sedate small ensemble jazz consumption went up to 50 watt, and with loud Bach organ music I measured 66 watt. So not that much in total, but enough to remind me to turn the system off when I am not playing music. I was also curious to see the consumption of my Quad 2805 electrostatic speakers that have to be on all the time: 2 watt each (with the leds in the logo turned off), so not much, but even so almost 100 wats a day, or 36 kWh a year.
For perspective, our total home electricity consumption is about 5500 kWh a year, for everything, including a heat pump for the heating (we no longer have a gas connection). We do have solar panels that produce about 4500kWh, so the 5500 kWh is net of those. We do not yet have an EV. The house is large and detached, but well insulated (EU A++ label).
Update: the largish vertical LG computer screen consumes about 30 watt. Subwoofers are probably next in line for measurement.
 
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And now the update on my subwoofers' consumption. I have three, equalized by MSO/miniDSPP 2x4HD: an SVS SB2000 classic with a 500 watt class AB amp, a Kef Kube 8b with a 300 watt class D amp of unknown origin, and a B&W PV1d with a 400 watt Hypex amp, for a total of 1200 watt. Playing the same Bach organ music about as loudly as before combined energy consumption of the three subs was 36 watts. In short, and with the same Bach organ music, playing the entire system pretty loudly consumes about 106 watts/h. Next thing to test is my wife's old but powerful desktop computer. It may well dwarf the audio system's energy consumption.
 
One thing that I am curious about is that it often seems that subwoofer amplifiers have a lower idle draw than their woofer/main driver equivalents. Anyone know why this would be?

ie I have two BK XXLS400FF active subwoofers. They have a 400W Class A/B amplifier which only draws 12W idle.

Definitely think that old PCs are particularly bad in this respect. Switched to passive mini PCs several years ago for this reason.
Also like the fact there's no moving parts. Silent, durable and good for the wallet/planet too!
 
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