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

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)