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Post by jmilton on Feb 21, 2018 16:30:21 GMT -5
I’m playing with an Audio Research LSi75 tube integrated amp. It has a 40 sec mute upon firing up. Just enough time to pick a disc. It’s worth the wait, too! 🙂
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motsu
Minor Hero
Posts: 18
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Post by motsu on Feb 23, 2018 16:57:18 GMT -5
Easy! get a projector!
now you will be amazed by how fast the xmc turns on compared to the projector warming up
(in all seriousness, 30 seconds isnt bad to boot up and initialize custom hardware... especially for all the features the xmc has)
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Post by jdmusante on Feb 24, 2018 12:42:22 GMT -5
I received the XMC-1 I purchased from a Lounge member last night. After reading this thread I was interested to see what the boot time was like. While it is not instantaneous, it didn't seem very long to me. Certainly not something that would make me look for ways to speed up the process. After listening to it last night for about 4 hours, the sound quality out of it more than justified the boot time.
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Post by monkumonku on Feb 24, 2018 13:02:32 GMT -5
I received the XMC-1 I purchased from a Lounge member last night. After reading this thread I was interested to see what the boot time was like. While it is not instantaneous, it didn't seem very long to me. Certainly not something that would make me look for ways to speed up the process. After listening to it last night for about 4 hours, the sound quality out of it more than justified the boot time. Well now you just got that unit. Mine takes 45 seconds to boot up. Just wait until you have had to endure days upon days and months upon months of having to wait 45 seconds each time for it to be ready. There are 86,400 seconds in a day so each boot up takes a precious .05208 of 1% (.005208) of your day!!! That's .05208 of 1% of your day you will never get back. So after you've endured this with your fine-sounding but snail slow XMC-1 for a month then come back and tell us what you think. Edit..Okay, I went back and did some reckoning. I got my XMC-1 in April 2015 so I've had it nearly 3 years. Assuming I used it once a day (which I haven't, but then that's offset by days in which I used it more than once), that adds up to 47,430 seconds of my life I will never get back (assuming I sat there and stared blankly at an empty screen waiting for it to warm up although on day one I was entertained by the Emotiva logo appearing while waiting, but that quickly wore out its welcome) - that's more than 1/2 a day wasted that I could have been watching YouTubes or been on Facebook.
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Post by wilburthegoose on Feb 24, 2018 14:55:30 GMT -5
First world problem. For me it's worth it to save the power.
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alee
Minor Hero
Posts: 22
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Post by alee on Mar 1, 2018 20:23:54 GMT -5
Ok, so I’ve been busy with other work, but I’ve finally been able to get to work on figuring this problem out. I also realized that, as someone pointed out earlier, I was being stupid. There’s no point piping TV through the XMC-1. Just let the TV speakers do their thing. So, to that commenter: you were correct, sir. I should watch out about replying too quickly to comments.
Anyways, to work! So, after opening everything up, I found a system organized fairly logically. I tested everything on the scope and determined, yes, it’s 30w in standby. The reason is two-fold.
1) the main power supply board powers everything, analog and digital. That being said, the low noise transformer used in the XMC-1 is shockingly inefficient at maybe 60-70%. I build mass spectrometers, so we deal with higher current stuff, but that seems really bad at first glance. We’ll get back to that.
2) even in standby, despite the fact that analog out is disabled, the board is still on and the power supply, including the super inefficient low noise transformer, is on. The analog output board consumes (5V at 2A) 10+ watts by itself. The power supply board seems to consume 15W to supply 10W to the analog section.
3) *all* the digital boards (HDMI, DAC and microcontroller) use less than 5W!
4) there is an auxiliary power supply in standby mode that merely powers the LED on the power button and the micro controller that is activated by the button. I think they added this in the XMC-1 because they used one power supply for everything. Thus, when in full standby (off) they needed something to turn the system on.
So, there are a couple items to do some further work, which I plan to do next week. 1) if I turn the analog board off with a relay triggered by the standby signal, would that do anything bad? What about waking it back up? 2) if there’s no ill effect from that, can I then get rid of the auxiliary board with a new power supply board which would supply separate power to the digital boards (might be able to find something commercially?)
If so, then I can keep the digital boards on, shut down all the analog stuff including the power supply, and run on standby at maybe 5W or less. *thats* worth trying. Total cost can’t be that much, but there’s the question of why the analog board is on at all times.
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alee
Minor Hero
Posts: 22
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Post by alee on Mar 1, 2018 20:30:47 GMT -5
Ultimately, the reason the XMC-1 is bad with power consumption in standby is because they wanted to use one low noise power supply for all parts of the system (except apparently the microcontroller and the button).
That’s an efficient way to do things, but had they done one power supply for all of the digital boards and one for the analog boards, and shut down the analog section entirely in standby, then it would be better at saving power in standby.
I’m guessing cost was the significant factor. That’s not crazy, especially since so many users apparently don’t care about just turning the system off and waiting for the boot up.
Finally, the analog board probably can be deactivated (using a relay) but it’s a fair question of what the point would be *in isolation*? Going from 30W>20W isn’t a big deal. So why bother with a relay?
Again, the layout of the system is logical. But I think it could be modified and upgraded pretty easily.
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alee
Minor Hero
Posts: 22
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Post by alee on Mar 1, 2018 20:53:06 GMT -5
Finally, to be clear, I don’t think I need to power all the digital boards in standby, just the microcontroller and the HDMI board. If analog is off and the DAC is off (and the DAC is already off in standby) you should be able to basically run the XMC-1 as an HDMI switch. I think the overriding reason they didn’t put the HDMI switch on a separate power board like they did with the microcontroller is because they couldn’t or wouldn’t turn off the analog output board in standby. As a result, there wasn’t much of a point to shut off the main power supply, so they just left the HDMI switch on the main power supply.
With regards to hardware upgrades, we use a similar TI microcontroller in our mass spectrometer. It could be swapped out fairly easily with something else (a Xilinx microcontroller with an FPGA goes for $200 all day long) but without the firmware source, it’s not terribly useful to consider it.
For illustration, this is the basic board stack, from what I could see: XXX - HDMI board XXX xxx - micro controller and DAC XXX xxx - analog board and then “base board” or power supply board.
The LNT is all by itself and there’s a couple smaller boards (aux power and FM) here and there. Totally logical design. Space wasn’t an issue, so lots of pin outs and cables, but it’s good.
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klinemj
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Post by klinemj on Mar 2, 2018 6:13:39 GMT -5
Finally, to be clear, I don’t think I need to power all the digital boards in standby, just the microcontroller and the HDMI board. If analog is off and the DAC is off (and the DAC is already off in standby) you should be able to basically run the XMC-1 as an HDMI switch. I think the overriding reason they didn’t put the HDMI switch on a separate power board like they did with the microcontroller is because they couldn’t or wouldn’t turn off the analog output board in standby. As a result, there wasn’t much of a point to shut off the main power supply, so they just left the HDMI switch on the main power supply. With regards to hardware upgrades, we use a similar TI microcontroller in our mass spectrometer. It could be swapped out fairly easily with something else (a Xilinx microcontroller with an FPGA goes for $200 all day long) but without the firmware source, it’s not terribly useful to consider it. For illustration, this is the basic board stack, from what I could see: XXX - HDMI board XXX xxx - micro controller and DAC XXX xxx - analog board and then “base board” or power supply board. The LNT is all by itself and there’s a couple smaller boards (aux power and FM) here and there. Totally logical design. Space wasn’t an issue, so lots of pin outs and cables, but it’s good. So, are you planning to modify the XMC-1? And, if so - your original issue was the startup time. now, you seem focused on reducing power consumption during standby. Why the change in focus? Mark
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alee
Minor Hero
Posts: 22
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Post by alee on Mar 2, 2018 10:04:12 GMT -5
Reducing startup time is impossible without access to the microcontroller firmware source code (this would give you access to changing settings via the OSD, etc). I can see what they’re turning on, and I can see the order and the signals, but without the source, I can’t a) tinker with the boot process or b) swap out the microcontroller with something faster. Recreating a basic version is possible, but laborious. I was initially hoping they were using a computing platform like a raspberry pi or something, and accessing the firmware on that kind of platform is trivial. But these microcontrollers have special development tools, unique to each processor. Like I said, we use them for some of the items we make, but in others we use COTS platforms like a raspberry.
I would neither want nor expect the release of that firmware code. It would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath for it.
So, if that’s out of the question, I can speed up the boot process by using standby rather than turning the system off completely. And that - to me - means making standby more power efficient, because if you’re burning the same amount of power to keep it on as in standby...well, then just keep it on.
So, reducing power draw in standby means (for me) speeding up boot.
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Post by 405x5 on Mar 2, 2018 12:32:23 GMT -5
youtu.be/mrI2LEJ5DrAThe above link is for a FAR more elegant solution with regards to XMC boot time Bill
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alee
Minor Hero
Posts: 22
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Post by alee on Mar 2, 2018 13:46:51 GMT -5
youtu.be/mrI2LEJ5DrAThe above link is for a FAR more elegant solution with regards to XMC boot time Bill Lol. Yes, well, with the v3 HDMI board coming out, maybe some folks who are going to open up the system wouldn’t mind tinkering with other things. I can’t guarantee any success, but I’m hopeful.
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Post by 405x5 on Mar 2, 2018 14:06:07 GMT -5
youtu.be/mrI2LEJ5DrAThe above link is for a FAR more elegant solution with regards to XMC boot time Bill Lol. Yes, well, with the v3 HDMI board coming out, maybe some folks who are going to open up the system wouldn’t mind tinkering with other things. I can’t guarantee any success, but I’m hopeful. Tinkering with the warranty you mean...(I assume). I don’t know, I power up the XMC nearly every day, and my system is always ready to go before I am. Standby power usage on this unit is chump change. That being said I prefer full shutdown and a fresh start each session. Making such a fuss over a few seconds is hilarious.....but human nature being what it is people invariably need to find something to pick on. Bill
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KeithL
Administrator
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Post by KeithL on Mar 2, 2018 14:36:45 GMT -5
OK.... just to be perfectly clear on this.... There is NOTHING inside the XMC-1 which you can "tinker with" to make it boot faster.... Changing ANYTHING other than installing upgrades provided by us (like the HDMI upgrade board): 1) Will almost certainly NOT make the XMC-1 boot even a tiny bit faster. 2) Probably WILL cause your XMC-1 to stop working - partially or completely. 3) Will DEFINITELY void your warranty. youtu.be/mrI2LEJ5DrAThe above link is for a FAR more elegant solution with regards to XMC boot time Bill Lol. Yes, well, with the v3 HDMI board coming out, maybe some folks who are going to open up the system wouldn’t mind tinkering with other things. I can’t guarantee any success, but I’m hopeful.
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alee
Minor Hero
Posts: 22
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Post by alee on Mar 3, 2018 9:16:10 GMT -5
OK.... just to be perfectly clear on this.... There is NOTHING inside the XMC-1 which you can "tinker with" to make it boot faster.... Changing ANYTHING other than installing upgrades provided by us (like the HDMI upgrade board): 1) Will almost certainly NOT make the XMC-1 boot even a tiny bit faster. 2) Probably WILL cause your XMC-1 to stop working - partially or completely. 3) Will DEFINITELY void your warranty. Lol. Yes, well, with the v3 HDMI board coming out, maybe some folks who are going to open up the system wouldn’t mind tinkering with other things. I can’t guarantee any success, but I’m hopeful. Understood about the warranty. Absolutely, do at my own risk, especially on a corporate run/endorsed forum. And to be clear, I’m not looking at speeding anything up, per se. What I’m hopeful of is that I can rearrange which parts of the system are powered down in standby to make standby a little more effective. Curiosity killed the cat, etc. etc.
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alee
Minor Hero
Posts: 22
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Post by alee on Apr 3, 2018 12:40:54 GMT -5
Just a quick update. I haven’t been able to work on this project as much as I’ve wanted due to work.
So, powering off the analog board is not going to be as simple as attaching a relay. There must be a signal from the DAC to the analog board to turn on and off because pulling the power cord gets a little “pop” and plugging the power back in does not get audio. You need to reset the system, then everything works again.
The next step is to figure out the signal (and pins) during the startup and shut down modes and trigger the analog board on and off properly. Once that procedure is figured out, turning off the analog power supply is next and standby will be about as power efficient as possible.
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Post by wilburthegoose on Apr 3, 2018 13:42:54 GMT -5
You do realize you're spending more time on this than you'll save, right? If you spend 4 hours on it, that's a whole lot of 30 second delays
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Post by monkumonku on Apr 3, 2018 14:18:10 GMT -5
Just a quick update. I haven’t been able to work on this project as much as I’ve wanted due to work.
So, powering off the analog board is not going to be as simple as attaching a relay. There must be a signal from the DAC to the analog board to turn on and off because pulling the power cord gets a little “pop” and plugging the power back in does not get audio. You need to reset the system, then everything works again. The next step is to figure out the signal (and pins) during the startup and shut down modes and trigger the analog board on and off properly. Once that procedure is figured out, turning off the analog power supply is next and standby will be about as power efficient as possible. Maybe you can figure out a way to make work go faster.
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Post by 405x5 on Apr 3, 2018 16:05:34 GMT -5
“What I’m hopeful of is that I can rearrange which parts of the system are powered down in standby to make standby a little more effective. Curiosity killed the cat, etc. etc.” youtu.be/N-o-4txOiVE
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Post by 405x5 on Apr 3, 2018 17:51:04 GMT -5
Just a quick update. I haven’t been able to work on this project as much as I’ve wanted due to work. So, powering off the analog board is not going to be as simple as attaching a relay. There must be a signal from the DAC to the analog board to turn on and off because pulling the power cord gets a little “pop” and plugging the power back in does not get audio. You need to reset the system, then everything works again. The next step is to figure out the signal (and pins) during the startup and shut down modes and trigger the analog board on and off properly. Once that procedure is figured out, turning off the analog power supply is next and standby will be about as power efficient as possible. Joe homeowner pulling the XMC apart for any reason is frankly ridiculous. No one will care what comes out of this. Bill
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