Indeed. There are many urban myths about how much phone chargers etc waste over a year that might have been true in the early 90s but certainly aren’t now. Modern SMPS pull absolutely nothing when not connected to your phone/iPad/whatever as a wattmeter will confirm. Even small LPS pull close to zero in the 0.1 to 0.2w range.
A few months back I went around with a wattmater and manually profiled everything in the home. The conclusion was that running around turning off chargers etc was a massive waste of time that achieved nothing. Big rocks were, heating, cooling, TV and office monitors. Way down the list was LED lighting and at rock bottom were chargers and wallwarts. UV film on the windows cut the cooling bill and paid for itself in 1 month. Washer and dryer were expected to be big hitters but actually were sort of middling. Nothing close to heating and cooling.
A good question @Mike_S . Just reading thru this thread seems to show the amount of confusion around the actual power consumption in Watts of all the various Naim kit, (in use and on standby) plus various views on VA (i.e. does 1VA = 1Watt on large Naim transformers, or is it something different).
I might be going back to basics here, but perhaps in this energy / CO2 concious age perhaps Naim need to be up front and issue a list of actual power consumption in Watts for each of their components. This could be supported as necessary with a statement of what they think is the best non-use mode (i.e. off or powered up). Their various customers around the world can then input their electricity costs and figure out what is the best for them…is this a too simplistic approach / am I missing something obvious???
I strongly suspect the next generation of Naim kit will have more intelligent and energy conscious power supplies which magically don’t degrade sq despite it not been possible to date evidently!
Yes, I’m sure that will come in the next generation PSUs. The Type 2 and 3 Burndy connectors appear to support signalling between the head unit and PS to allow standby functionality. As others have noted, the latest generation streamers support the low power standby mode using the SMPS standby module, but this functionality isn’t quite the same when you attach an XPS / 555PS.
To be honest you don’t even need signalling. The toroidal transformers are passive so if you just add a power button to the head units that physically breaks power coming in from the burndie (or a subset of power) the main external PSU will resultingly draw less until it gets to near zero. A powered up Supercap connected to nothing mainly just draws for the LED and whatever the residual loss of the transformer.
If you look at other brands with external PSUs they aren’t doing smart ones. They are doing ultra efficient toroids with power switches on the head units or they simply claim no warm up is necessary.
I think there are massive power savings to be had out of the current PSUs with more selective power modes in the head units.
But when all is said and done, my hifi power consumption is nothing like the headache of environment controls or the home office stuff. That stuff I lose sleep over after the recent bills.
When most things are turned off, what sort of wattage are you drawing when most things are powered off? In my case with Naim still powered up and with just a light or two on, I draw between 180 and 300watts. I think I’ve done the big things
Not to worry anyone unnecessarily, but worth noticing the risk of fire.
Make sure to have some extra fire alarms around house, indeed if power is on at nights.
Once I had an amp (not a Naim though) which went on fire while I was having a cup of coffee in the garden, just two rooms from setup.
Anyway I was scared to hell, from that incidence on - ages ago - I always turn off everything, when out or at nights.
You probably want to play around with your menu buttons, but you should have a Now option which shows current usage rather than daily use so far. Of course you could actually be using over 1KW all the time, in which case I would advice further investigation as to what may be using it
On image, see value to left. Mine is 0 due to Solar Panels, but you should have a number here.
I think it is only a matter of time that these sort of issues with the power supplies will need to be addressed where it maybe possible to keep the head units. At least i hope that might be the case
I’ve got a SN3, nDAC and (non naim) “XPS and Hicap DR” PSUs with all mains cables made into a home made hydra cable. I was measuring something like 40W at idle which I felt was too much when I (regrettably) sometimes go for several days without listening to the system.
So,., I bought a TP-LINK KASA KP115 smart plug and plugged the hydra cable into that!
I have a schedule setup that powers the system on 1hr before I might want to listen to it and powers it off 1hr past the latest I would expect to be listening to it. The precise times depend on the day of the week.
So I’m sure there is lots of electrical noise polluting the mains and far from optimal electrical connections but at this moment in my life, I don’t care and the system sounds great to my ears. This arrangement is perfect for me as it’s actually quite difficult for me to get to the back of the devices to switch them on and off manually, due to my unusual shelving arrangements.
I was able to measure the 40W draw as the KP115 also has a built in power meter to show you how much power you are using.
Well that would be the basic model, but hold on - the creme de la creme would be the £6000 model. It would basically be a programable Mains block that you could turn off sockets in a particular order with a programable offset time - now who’s getting exited!
Or the £6500 WiFi enabled model, with support across all smart home systems, which would permit you to turn your HiFi on as you leave work so that it would be ready when you get home and also prepare the beverage of your choice.
A potential downside of this might be that the block itself might draw almost as much to allow the smart features to work as the devices connected to it.
Not just the old kit. The black series power supply switches are(were) prone to this. All my power switches and fuses were changed with the service last year. The new switches seem different to the old ones. I wonder if Naim sourced newer or more reliable switches recently (after 2004)
I suspect that the reason why the main on/off switch on my 2nd hand NAP300 stuck when i first had it, is possibly because the original owner did not regularly 'exercise ’ the switches by leaving it on all of the time.
Exercising switches forms a part of good practice in planned preventative maintenance routines.
