Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Ep600 Low Power Mode doesnt save power

Hello
I am on a power savings kick and hooked up a 12v trigger to my EP600. Also have a current monitoring system attached to breaker box on each circuit to see power usage in real time.

The EP600 light will turn from green to red when the receiver is turned off. However the power draw does not go down at all, well maybe a watt. If I turn the EP600 off the consumption drops by about ~20 watts.

Is the trigger really set to save power or is it just basically a mute circuit ? the manual leads me to believe otherwise.

Note I may have an older version of the EP600

thanks

from the manual. emphasis mine.

TRIGGER: Use of the trigger input is an optional hook-up. If your A/V receiver or A/V preamp-processor has a 12-volt trigger
output, you can run a 3.5mm connector cable to the subwoofer trigger input and your subwoofer will power on and off with your
A/V receiver or A/V preamp-processor. When the trigger signal is in the “off ” mode the LED will change from Green to Red and
the amplifi er will be switched to a low power consumption standby mode. If you have multiple subwoofers you can run a 3.5mm
connector cable from the trigger out on the first subwoofer to the trigger input of the second subwoofer.

Jim, I strongly recommend you turn your gear off. This will save the most energy and extend the life of your gear.

there has been a few conversations on this forum about the power being used, standby and the whole nine yards.

its very true that low power mode for electronics is a bit of a joke. I know that standby mode doesn't mean a whole lot to be able to get the energy star logo on the package. There are a few items that i have found in the quest to get the most out of my system without paying a fortune for the power costs.

first thing that i have found is the some of the smart switches are very good in providing a better standby option than i can get through the actual equipment. For some things its a bit harder as it stripping away the power consumption leads to more aggravation and chance for things not to work seamlessly (reduced WAF)

I currently have my FireTV, Anthem AVR and TV plugged into the wall full time with their standby as I haven't figured out any way to get the functionality I want with automation to power everything on and off in a controlled manner with these devices also being on a smart switch and themselves being powered off.

I have however gotten all my external AmpOne and ADA1500 amps sitting on a smart plug along with the EP500 and Active DSP for the LFR speakers. What I did find however in the process is that i require the EP500 and ADA1500 to also use the 12v trigger cables to first put them into the standby mode before I shut the power off otherwise I will get a nice loud pop sound from the speakers. Not what you'd want. But using some smart automation I have setup a 10 second delay for the power down on the smartswitch to allow the units to safely get into the standby mode with the 12v trigger before I cut the power off. I have also put into the automation the order that the units will power themselves back on so that the amps can turn on back into standby mode and be ready powered before the AVR gets turned on by my FireTV Cube and the 12v trigger comes back on. it really is a good method all around.

Thanks for the reply. I guess that is what I am finding out. I have been using some https://shelly.cloud/ shelly smart relays in other places. However the TV and Receiver are networked so I can use https://www.home-assistant.io/ Home Assistant to control them. hate to add a relay just for the sub.

Overall <20 watts for the EP600 idling isnt bad. I just had expectations that the 'low power consumption' mode would do something besides change a light from green to red. maybe red uses less watts. haha

I'm pretty much doing a 180 . Always wanted everything ready to go. Now with energy/all costs up I am revisiting my desire for instant gratification.

I coulda swore my earlier EP500 went into power savings without a trigger. The current manual shows a trigger. I got the EP500 new around 2006 and had to have the electronics replaced around 2011. It went out again in 2021. Thats when I got a used EP600. So yea Mojo, maybe could extend the life of the device but manually flicking the switch aint gonna happen.

seems pretty dead around here. My brother was able to sell his 2008~ axiom setup recently after selling his house. It was m60 / ep500 / vp-150 / 4@qs8 . He had the real wood veneer. got around $900

Pre-v3 DSP subs auto-mute and use less power when there is no signal.

This is one of my areas of interest. Luckily, I have a few projects in the works which I can extend to power up/down the axiom amps and subs. Note: the need to coordinate power down with the triggers to prevent transients. Also one needs get a handle on any shortening of components life (and how to mitigate it).

That said, it's best if Axiom incorporated this thinking into future products (minimizing standby power).

The question is "are you willing to pay for it" ... as the engineering and added complexity costs would need to be spread over the number of units they sell. That may be a significant number ...

With the global focus on sustainable practices, i.e. ESG, I don't think companies can avoid this any longer.

The product design is actually quite simple.

Instead of the present two-position, on/off rocker switch, a three-position switch can be used. These positions would be off/on/stand-by.

In off and stand-by, this design would draw zero quiescent power. I wouldn't even use an LED to indicate stand-by.

When the stand-by is externally triggered, the circuit would draw no more than 1W at 12V. That 1W would be used to power an electromechanical relay.

The stand-by circuit could be designed to trigger and de-trigger off 12V but then latch and unlatch the relay from 120VAC. This would unload the trigger circuit from the constant load. I'm not sure though if this would be beneficial.

Edit: Not sure there's even a need for the off position.

My subs are behind screen wall. Im fucked.

Trevor, wiring both a power switch and trigger in front of your wall is just cabling

Was watching/testing the HT yesterday… besides turning off the pre-amp, fire box, ultraDVD,etc … I need to walk the whole room to shut down 4 ADAAmps (2 in back 2 in front), 2 DSPs (front), 4 subs (one on each wall), and a projector … haven’t calculated/measured what I burn if just triggering down but I’m sure its north of a 100 watts.

i am interested in how your power setup is going to work. I have gotten mine with two $26 smart plugs with controls tied to my Alexa FireCube working quite well.

I am thinking for me if I wanted to upgrade the setup any more to pull the Anthem AVM60 off the mains/standby and have it also powered off, I will need to figure out how to make my own 12v trigger cable that plugs into a USB port. they do make many usb 12v-1a cables that come with a 5.5mm barrel plug at the end, but I haven't found one that has the needed 3.5mm AUX type connector. If I could fine a 3.5mm aux male to two connector screws then I'd gladly make my own and call it a day. My smart powerbars all come with multiple usb power ports on them so getting an easy 12v trigger that can be turned on and off is easy. Just the cable bit is the difficulty.

If i could get them done, then i would just need the Alexa FireCube to stay powered on as that is sort of the controller that is used. I could then power on the AVM first, then the TV, before i send the command for the FireCube to send the power on and channel commands through the HDMI cable that would force these two devices to the correct input/output channel ports so that you can watch anything on the screen. It seems a bit complicated but its all part of getting the more foolproof WAF so anyone can use it.

I have also determined that the Axiom ADA1500 do need to have a powered fan to keep them cool. Without them I get all sorts of noises coming from inside the units. With the dual 120mm computer fans (usb powered) the ADA stays cold to the touch and even running for 20min at -10db output levels.

HI. the conversation about this is good.

I am wondering if my EP600 is defective related to low power mode. ??
I did use a stereo cable for a trigger but it did change the LED from Green to red when the trigger was activated. I also bought my EP600 second hand.

I have a hard time finding the search function for the forums, in fact I cant find it at all. I know it has to be there. Originally I looked at another ubb forum and copied the url to here and it worked, but the results werent helpfull. https://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php/search Does seem to work

I'm looking for something along the lines ' I saved XX watts when my EPXXX subwoofer goes into standby ". Yea I know I am asking a lot and with all the different revs and models It probably wouldnt apply anyway.




LOL . I thought Axiom already did the engineering and added complexity / costs and that it was paid for when the unit was purchased.

Like I mentioned in the original post. <20 watts isnt bad. I already got most of the savings from turning off the receiver / 60 inch screen and pc when not in use. Now turning my attention to my music room

Axiom engineered a low power mode but it is not of the minimum power design I described in my last post. The trigger on the Axiom subs shuts down the amp - not the linear power supply. This means the huge transformer's primary winding draws power in stand-by not unlike your phone's charger.

Axiom has said this stand-by draw is about 10W - and this spec goes back to v2 product. I can't explain why you're measuring 20W.

Regarding the stand-by design, my sense is it grew organically at Axiom rather than someone sitting down and thinking it through logically from first principles. And when Andrew designed the v4, he likely didn't realize the implications of the existing design or ignored it because he was focusing on making the DSP subs sealed and more robust from a warranty perspective. He also re-worked all the ported subs in a big way. It's possible given the goals he had of making the subs sound better and be more robust, the trigger slipped through the cracks.

P.S. Yours may be drawing more because the capacitors are old and have higher ESR (i.e. they are leaky).

I just ran a quick test on a circuit with two EP600s a ADA1000 and a ADA1250 all in stand-by. These are all fairly new units.
Roughly, I'm seeing a 50+ Watt draw. The other circuit ... 2 EP600s, 2 DSPs, 2 ADA1500s will be more. I suspect in the 60-80 watt range ,,, I'll check it when I get some more time.

That works out to $53/yr of vampire draw a year at 12¢/kWh (438 kWh over 8760 hours, more than most household appliances). A couple of smart plugs at $25 each would pay for themselves in a year.

I'm just playing the Devil's advocate asking if people would pay more ... I suspect it's only a $ or two in parts, perhaps a month or two of engineer time and perhaps some qualification costs. The cost could very well be buried in the current price ... it just depends on number of units.

20 Watts is an extreme threshold ... I'd like to see <300mW. Even then an active LFR would burn over watt in stand-by ... and my setup would burn 4-5 Watts. It adds up.

Thanks for the reply. This is what I was looking for.

I measured my power usage again in a different manner. Same result. This time I used the Shelly 1 PM https://shelly.cloud/products/shelly-1pm-smart-home-automation-relay/ . Previously I used the whole circuit measurement and did some subtraction using the Vue Energy Monitor https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CJGPHL9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Either way ti comes up to 17-19 watts whether in standby ( red led ) or idling (green led ) . When I played some music at a listening level it went up to 30 watts. Didnt want to crank some heavy bass as my nieghbors are having a Labor day cookout . :-) Yes I could have some leaking caps or other issues as I did not buy this EP600 New. The model is 'Axiom Stock EP600 Vertical V3'


Yes most of my power savings investments come out about the same payback . The Whole house monitoring clued me in to where I was wasting the most. Am spending nearly as much on my homelab servers as my heating/air .

I like to have local control based setups. Not cloud. Using Home assistant . Shelly relays. Venstar thermostat. Vue whole house ( I havent reflashed the vue yet for local control )

the part of the Axiom design just doesn't make any sense to me.

I have a set of AudioSource amps that I use for my surround speakers. they come with zero in the way of trigger control and are a pretty cheap amp, but for the use that i have them for it was just cost effective. But they pull quite a bit of power if just left sitting on doing nothing but making heat when not actively in use.

I also have one of the Anthem AVM60 pre-amps that come with a very pathetic 30mw 12v trigger. About enough to trigger a single sub woofer but good luck in actually triggering an external amp, and considering this is a pre-amp, it is mind numbing how this ever made it past the design testing stage and into production. (BTW, they don't sell this model any more and the replacement comes with a 3 x 40mv 12v triggers) So my solution to this was to make my own fix with a 12v-15amp relay, a 12v power supply and a 15amp plug. my own box takes the 12v trigger from the AVM60 to power the relay that will turn on and off the 15amp plug along with a 12v power supply to run 4 additional trigger plugs for my Axiom amps and SubWoofers. The AudioSource amps plug into the 15amp power outlet and turn on and off with the pre-amp.

All that said.. if you put a meter onto this relay that I made, it pulls no watts when the 12v trigger is not on. So why does the standby on the sub's and amps require any power at all? it could be easily take itself down to zero volts on standby. This is a mechanical relay job.

Now you can go into the soft power up and down. if the 12v trigger was moved outside of the current location to the start of the power switch, as the 12v turns on, it can power up the current power supply just like what we have now. No engineering change needs really to be made other than put in a relay between the power rocker switch and the line into the power supply. To allow for people to have the unit turn on without a 12v trigger, exchange the power rocker from being a two way, to a three way where up routes through the relay, and down direct to the power supply with middle being off. Now its a simple circuit to make a delay power down process through the relay by adding in a small capacitor for power and a timing chip that will count down how many seconds before it cuts off power to the relay. When the power from the 12v trigger drops off, the timer counts down and turns off, then resets once the small capacitor runs out of power. this will allow you to control the power down of the amplifier part of the circuit into a standby mode like we have now so no pops on the speakers, before the big power coils get powered down by the relay cutting off all power.

I am sure that Andrew has more than enough design experience to make the units pull no power in standby. Perhaps there is some other reason in the back that would make this not desirable that we non sound engineers don't know or haven't considered. I just don't know if he would come on here to explain the rational or reasoning behind why or why not.

Ok, I did some more exacting measurements ... looked up my current rates.
I knew my rates went up lately but man ... The costs in stand-by ... shocked me ...

In my area the cost of electricity: $0.354 / kWh ($0.192 / kWh is for the actual electricity and the rest delivery, fees, and taxes)

The Axiom actives (2x DSP/ADA1500) and 2 EP600 used 72 watts in stand-by. The other Axiom products in the HT (ADA1000, ADA1259, and 2 more EP600) used 54.5 watts. So, the HT Axiom equipment uses 126.5 watts in stand-by ... If I include the prepro, blu-ray player, Amazon Fire, Ethernet SW, and projector it's: ~144 Watts

Cost per year:
$446.55 to keep everything in the HT in stand-by
of which $392.28 is for just the Axiom equipment. $54.27 for everything else.
This is if I never use it and just use the tiggers to shut down.
Needless to say, this goes to zero if I shut off / unplug everything when not in use. I think I might have incentive here



Here are the approximate individual stand-by measurements: (averaging by eye ...)

Projector (LS12000): 1.2 Watts
AV8805 (prepro): 3.2 Watts
UB820 (Ultra Blu-ray Player): 7.2 Watts
Ethernet SW: 2.5 Watts
Amazon Fire (soon to be replaced with an appleTV box): 2.6 Watts

4 - EP600: 8.9, 8.3, 8.7, and 8.4 Watts, (Note when not in stand-by they use ~ 3Watts more)
1 - ADA1000-8: 25.3 Watts (this is surprisingly high ... too high ... I'm gonna email Axiom on it)
1 - ADA1250-6: 11.4 Watts
2 - ADA1500-5: 13.5 and 13.1 Watts
2 - DSP: 14.5 and 14.3 Watts (always on ... no stand-by trigger)

Yup. That's why I shut everything down.

The 1000 vs 1250 power consumption doesn't make any sense.

I'm thinking that one of the storage caps is defective ... my best guess without opening it up. I only have about two weeks of time on the ADA1000. Also it has a very low level 60hz hum when nothing is connected. Given that problem it could be a cap multiplier circuit if they have one or something after ... just throwing out possibilities ...

I'll have to recheck the ADA1000 again... seems the hum is no longer ... but I didn't let it warm up as I was just rechecking that the stand-by Wattage was correct before mailing Axiom ... it still is.

I did move some wires around .... So ...

Fukitol! I'm goin' fishin'.

Talked with Andrew F. who asked Andrew W. about the 25 Watts on the ADA1000 ... seems that that power draw is typical for an 8 channel 1000. Guess each amp must have some non-trivial current draw even when it's not switching. From the power difference my guess is that the 1000's amps must draw a lot more in standby than the 1250 or 1500 amps.

In any case, I think I need to build a quick and dirty (I.E. simple) way to automate startup and shutdown. Walking the room every time I startup and shut down the system is unacceptable. Think I can get something up in a day or so ... Should have all the parts (not sure about the 1/8 phono plugs). Just need to figure out when.

----------------

I also ask about the longevity issue. The answer is that the units will last longer if shut down with the switch in back ... which makes sense to me. For some reason I mis-remembered AndrewW's answer when I was investigating standby power way back. The post was pretty easy to find: Andrews Answer 4/2019

I'm sure I'll be hearing from Mojo on this ... let's see ... the old age excuse is over used .... so let's just say that one of my 3 brain cells must have kicked the bucket

I am always kind and respectful and would therefore never say anything like that to an aging geezer like you.

I knew you'd never do that ...

BTW, I see your only 52 posts from making Sharehold-in-the-making.
We will have to throw you a party ...

We can all meet at Slimpikins's place and avail ourselves of his Bryston Signatures, Anthem M1s and plethora of subs while we bask by the pool.

Either way this is disappointing. Obviously having the convenience of a one button push to everything on is an ultimate goal but lately i've been thinking about going more 'manual' and just shutting off the power switch on the power bar, at least for the media room components which are not used every day.
If i had the foresight in mind to add a second wall switch on the door side wall to flick the power on or off to the wall plug with the components, would have made things easy.

Paying electrical cost isn't my concern over wasted electrical energy.

Chess, a bar would be the simplest solution but there are a couple of issues.
Initially I was leaving the ADA1500’s front power switch on and only using the power switch in the back. Powering up in this case caused high in-rush … I think the in-rush limiter is engaged when the amp is not triggered and removed when it is (front power switch is the trigger when nothing is plugged into the trigger jack). On power down if you don’t trigger off first the ada may output a loud squeally noise to your speakers (mojo’s choking squirrel).
Just an FYI …

.

Unfortunately leaving a power bar out for view is butt ugly and more complicated for the family to know what to do to turn everything on (i.e., vs. using the remote control single button push presently).
The power bump and potential noise that follows is too disconcerting to consider.
If it were just me using the room i would say i could put up with the issues.
I'm not leaning towards that side of the fence though.