Hi there guys.

I used to work in Venezuela with the great HS80M from Yamaha, those were the greatest thing I have ever used, however I left my country years ago and I had to start over again.

I recently moved to Europe and I'm planning on buying professional gear again. Said this, I'm having a question about the power consuption of the new (not so new) Yamaha HS8 or even HS7, since this is something to consider. Back in Venezuela, the electricity bills were almost free, In Europe it is something really big to consider.

My question might sound silly but, is the actual power consuption always the same whether I use low or high volumes on active monitors?

 

It's not a silly question at all - I think a lot of people are unsure about this!

The simplest way to answer it is basically the harder the monitors are working (ie the louder you're listening) the more power they consume.


But tbh they're not especially power-hungry - even running HS8's flat out to the point they're distorting and limiting, you'll only be pulling maybe 200W from the wall.

 

Thanks, mate.

 

I sometimes fall asleep when I'm working, early in the morning, and I leave everything turned on. I do wonder how much my Dynaudio BM12A consume. The cooler at the back is always pretty warm. I guess they do consume at least about 30W as the coolers feel almost unpleasantly warm. I don't know about Yamaha HS8's though. Are their coolers warm to the touch? Actually, I don't think they have coolers like BM12A.

I am referring to BM12A's when they sit idly, of course.

It means Yamahas are cooler I suppose.

The thing is, Dyns use old school Class-A FET amplifiers which can get pretty hot, but they are great amps. Most of the monitors use Class-D digital amplifiers which are also great and consume much less power, but some people say they don't sound as good. Ah, people... I'm sure my Dyns would sound as good with Class-D amps and consume far less power.

 

Last edited: Jul 28, 2022

HS8’s do have heatsinks on the back, and about 2/3 of the rear panel is aluminium which also dissipates heat - they’re always fairly warm when they’re powered on, but this is pretty much standard for any active monitor.

Most monitors will consume somewhere between around 30-60w at idle - my Neumann 2.1 system consumes 55w at idle (and up to around 800w when playing loud) and the rear panels are always slightly warm.

if you wanna feel a piece of gear that stays super toasty pretty much all the time, put your hand on a UA Apollo Twin next time you’re around one - I can use mine as a hand warmer / mini radiator on chilly winter days haha!

 

Last edited: Jul 28, 2022

Thanks for comforting words, Lube Bag! So actually my monitors aren't too warm at idle in comparison. Glad to know that. I'm not into a habit of touching other people's... errr monitors! So I don't know what they feel like even though I've heard and worked with loads of diff monitors.

So maybe Yamahas have Class-A amplifiers in them. Hmm, I'm actually favouring Class-D amps because they're incredibly efficient and linear.

p.s. oh yes - most UA equipment is pretty warm to the touch. They must think the warmer the equipment is - the warmer the sound. :lol:

 

Last edited: Jul 28, 2022

I've never thought about it but I suspect that typical studio monitors could indeed be a bit more energy efficient than they usually are, as they're powered on most of the time.

 

Modern monitors, as in last decade? at least most of them have a standby mode, even Dyns just 1 gen newer than mine, and they consume far less power when they enter standby mode. I wonder if your Yamahas have that. It should be in the manual. My Dyns don't have it.

 

A clamp meter could clarify all our questions regarding power consumption at idle or full blast. I have the clamp but no monitors yet haha. It would be interesting measuring all this for the sake of science

 

By th end of the year it's said the average uk energy bill will rise from around (roughly) £1900 to around £3200 per year. It really is something to consider.

 

I can't remember exactly, but my Kali Audio 3-way IN-8 pair with 12" WS-12 subwoofer consume around 35-38W in total playing music in room at decent volume, despite being "rated" 780W (140+140+500W) in total,

anyone do correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no expert in this matter,
but to my knowledge, advertised power consumption of speakers is rated at full sustained volume (without distorting),
every 3dB up doubles the power usage,
10dB up doubles perceived loudness and requires 10x more power

 

it's not unlikely to rise by 3x by the end of year, being effectively £5700

 

I love this chart. Mind if i steal it? I'll steal it anyway, thank you.

 

sure it's not mine anyway

 

This is always a bit of a minefield, because different manufacturers will quote these figures differently, so it's important to figure out how they're actually measuring.

You'll often find that with a lot of consumer / prosumer, and lower-end 'pro' gear, they're actually listing either a peak output figure (ie: response to something like a 100ms transient, which is way higher than sustained output) or they're quoting a figure at something ridiculous like 20%THD.

You'll see this with stuff like cheap (and even expensive) soundbars, etc - where you're looking at something that has maybe 4x 3" drivers in it, but it's rated at something ridiculous like 150W (until you look at the small print, and that's specified as the "peak output power").

Monitor manufacturers seem to be getting better at quoting better, more truly representative figures nowadays, but it still pays to double check.

The same thing often happens with frequency response (esp low end) - it's generally most useful in the real world to know the -3db or -6db point for low end cutoff, but I've seen manufacturers quoting the -10db point before, to basically just try and trick customers into thinking they're getting something they're not.

 

In the current economic climate I would buy a good set of headphones and not bother with monitors, things might get a lot worse and even if you do buy a decent set of monitors in the future the headphones will be useful regardless.

 

we will go acoustic and we will like it.

 

i dont know what kind of power consumption you guys have.
But i saved around 1/3rd of my power bill by using no standby, and everything has a switch.



Like this for (all) studio Gear!

"Modern" Notebook for most of the Media consumption.

To get to the Point:
Your Desktop PC is Probably the Power-hog (besides old Tube Gear)
Next are Lights if they are not LED.
Oven for fries / Pizza is the next big item.

Be sensible, shorter Super Hot showers, warm is fine.
Check prices and switch providers if you can, that's for all kinds of providers

 

specialists in the field say that! you should keep your boiler temp at a good level for you when NOT mixing is cold water.

as far asa cpus are concerned i read that newer and more poewrful cpus consume much more energy than my old i5.

 

So dose anyone know anyway where the average power consuption is listed for any monitors? as I think we're going off topic and an answer to this question would probably help alot of us.

Unfortunatly since showers have been mentioned all I can think of is this clip from the movie hotel Paradiso (11 second in)

but more importantly I'm shocked active speakers are getting hot!

Any electrical equipment producing heat is a sign of inefficentcy. Normally you'd balance your speakers with the amp to stop any phase disturbance withing the electricity. it's refered to as power factor correction in electrics. We plug 8 ohm speakers into the 8 ohm output on the amp to acheive this with seperate amp speaker systems, as the amp has 8 ohms worth of capacitors built in on that output to counter act the 8 ohms of impedance the speakers generate. If you used 6 or 12 ohms worth of speakers you'd expect the amp to get hot.

If the manufacturer's aren't even capable of this much, the rest of the speaker's design and construction really should be questioned.

 

Last edited: Jul 31, 2022