And even here, a frugal standby mode at the EU's mandated 0.5 watt consumes even less. 15 watt at 24/7 still adds up to over 100 kWh a year.
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idle power consumption class–a vs class–d
- Thread starter SkipperGW
- Start date
I'm American and I dry my washing on a rack. It has wheels. I roll it outside in good weather, and roll it back to a covered patio room when it rains. In the summer it can take a couple of days to dry due to the humidity here, but in the winter everything is dry in two or three hours. When I lived up north I dried everything on a rack indoors in the winter. I'm sure that many Americans dry their wash on a rack or a line outside. Otherwise why would stores stock those items (most home goods stores as well as that giant online retailer do stock them)?
Back to the topic at hand. I have a pair of Buckeye eight channel 252 power amps. They use around 57 watts at idle, and about the same when playing music. I have a Rythmik sub which I believe uses an A/B power amp. I don't know what it uses at idle, I can't find my meter to measure it, but it doesn't really matter because I have it on a power strip and I shut the power down completely when it is not in use.
Actually, I shut the power down completely for any audio gear not in use. I have a Tripplite strip with individual switches for six outlets. Whatever isn't active, gets no power. Incidentally, Buckeye power amps have an actual, real, power switch on the back so they can be powered off completely without using a strip (though I find the strip more convenient because as seems the fashion these days, power switches are in the back, a design flaw, in my opinion.)
This gives a better result than the European standard. My equipment uses zero power when not in use.
I do. Measuring is done in seconds maby some minutes till the device is entering idle mode.
Most power consumption in our house is done by the wife. Thats why we bought a new tv, dishwasher, dryer an washing machine last few years.
Measuring did cut > 30% in power consumption. Audio gear compared to above (when shut off after use) is harmless imo an measurement.
Another piece of audio gear that makes here happy is a Bose Wave II it consume basically nothing an sounds in our acousticly horrible living quite good. Audio Mancave is off limits.
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This is what I also do for most gear. My Quad 606-2 power amp does not have a standby function, and the on/off switch is at the back, so I switch it with a sensor power strip. My RME ADI-2 has very low standby power consumption, so I leave that on. The subwoofers are on standby because walking around them every time I turn on the system is a bit of a hassle. The Plasma TV is switched off completely, if only to reduce the fire hazard. Anyway, nothing is kept on at levels above low standby consumption. Until some time ago we had a Samsung set top box for the TV, and that used 75 watt 24/7. It needed a noisy fan to keep cool.... Fortunately the cable company then changed it for a more frugal unit. Since then, we moved to fiber, with an even more frugal decoder.
In general, it pays to investigate power consumption of all gear that is on 24/7. As an example, we have floor heating, with two pumps to circulate the warm water. I had a look at their consumption, and they used 75 watt each, for a total of 3.6 kWh a day. When we had a heat pump system installed last February to heat our home and provide hot tap water, we also ordered new and modern circulation pumps. They only consume about 10 watts each (technical progress does exist). Few people are aware of such hidden energy wasters. Compared to these examples, audio gear is really frugal as long as you don't go the class A and tube route.
Changing a laptop 1TB HDD for a 2TB SSD did cut power consumption quite a bit.
HiFi Technology Flatlined Last Century
HiFi is pretty much a solved problem. speaker HiFi is pretty much a solved problem. With the exception of speakers
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Same with my Lenovo laptop I5 processor 2014 used as audio media center. It draws around 30 a 40 watt screen on an using the old HDD which encourage the fan to cool. With the fast SSD, screen on fan is practical not active any more which cut power consumption considerable to around 16 watt most of the time.
Mark S.
Active Member
Just used a kill-a-watt on my 12 year-old TA2020 and 13.5V brick;
1.4-1.7W idling
28-29W just short of obvious clipping with a bass sine, nominal 6 Ohm speakers so should be in the region of 12+12W. ETA >> bookshelf speakers with ports at 80Hz, I used a 24Hz tone where they will likely be very close to the nominal figure.
The amp's case is absolutely tiny (not much bigger than a fag packet), measured its temp this AM before playing anything, 7°C warmer than ambient (27.2°C vs 20.5°C) which will presumably be the temperature inside the case, but whatever is producing the heat will be a hotspot at somewhat higher temp.
ETA >> occurs that I should have measured with Foobar's attenuation at 6dB down from max to get a number for roughly 50% output.
1.4-1.7W idling
28-29W just short of obvious clipping with a bass sine, nominal 6 Ohm speakers so should be in the region of 12+12W. ETA >> bookshelf speakers with ports at 80Hz, I used a 24Hz tone where they will likely be very close to the nominal figure.
The amp's case is absolutely tiny (not much bigger than a fag packet), measured its temp this AM before playing anything, 7°C warmer than ambient (27.2°C vs 20.5°C) which will presumably be the temperature inside the case, but whatever is producing the heat will be a hotspot at somewhat higher temp.
ETA >> occurs that I should have measured with Foobar's attenuation at 6dB down from max to get a number for roughly 50% output.
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The Genelecs I currently listen to are something like 26 years old, and still working great.
