Industry Standards to Turn Everything On/Off

[mtglass]

Good day,

I know a lot of Home Theater / Hifi Components have a 12V trigger to power on / off. Is there a similar "standard" for Pro Audio? One of my side projects is pre-amplifiers, and it looks like the same 12V trigger is sometimes used. My google-foo is letting me down. Have any of you come across an actual standard? It's a little bit expensive to integrate something like this on a PCB because it requires IO, and anything IO related means a bunch of environmental safety components, so I might just ignore it and use the old power switch. However my mantra is search, ask, share, so I searched and didn't find a good standard, now I'm asking. Have you come across anyone using MIDI or something to put things to sleep?

Search engines are awful anymore.

Best, and thank you!

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

The only concern with separate power amps is to turn them on last, otherwise turn on transients from the gear before them can cause thumps. By the same token turn them off first. HT AVRs do this by themselves, it's why there's a delay between when you turn on the power and sound is heard.

[Bruce Weldy]

Power amps (Powered Speakers) - Last On/First Off

Especially if using a Driverack....they will pop.

Also, in running live sound - always mute your channels before shutting down the board, that way there won't be any open signals happening when you turn everything back on......especially if you have any phantom powered mics!

[mtglass]

Thank you, great advice, and I agree.

I'm asking a slightly different question. People use things like this super expensive gizmo that puts out a 12 volt logic high / low. I was wondering if you've seen something like that in Pro Audio. Generally Pro Audio seems to be a free-for-all of competing proprietary specifications to drive vendor lock-in and thus sales. So if there was an open standard "IEC-something" to power appliances on / off, then I was thinking to adopt that in my circuits.

EDIT: Probably AES-something

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

It's for HT components that don't have an on/off switch.

[mtglass]

Ok, here's a scenario, tell me if it's useful or trash.

As a sound guy, I want one switch so that I can turn all my equipment on/off.

We've had a few gigs where the sound guy forgot to turn something on... Like the subwoofer amp rack... Seems like if that was part of the "audio network" then the equipment could turn itself on. Maybe it's not an issue.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

You'd need a power strip that will sequentially turn on/off the components, with the power amps last to go on, first to go off. If such a thing exists I'm not aware of it. Making sure everything is working is what sound checks are for.

[Marflinger]

I'd go for seperate curcuits that are switched on/off in the correct oder...lot of hardware has mute-functions to have it turning on w/o unhappy noises.

The "remote" switch aspect is as far as i know not used anywhere in that segment; rather data-linking like dante networks but not the powering part...

[Bruce Weldy]

I'd go for seperate curcuits that are switched on/off in the correct oder...lot of hardware has mute-functions to have it turning on w/o unhappy noises.

The "remote" switch aspect is as far as i know not used anywhere in that segment; rather data-linking like dante networks but not the powering part...

Yes, those are available and expensive. They are great for installed systems. I've used one in a church and a venue here in town. In both cases the amp racks are located quite a distance from FOH, so it's very convenient to utilize. But, because it requires a unit at each location and a signal cable in between, it really doesn't make sense for a live application that moves around.

There are some single units with timed power on/off, but if you have to go to the rack to turn it on and off....doesn't really justify the expense, since you are right there anyway.

Just teach everyone the proper order to do things. It just becomes second nature.

[mtglass]

Ok, thank you all kindly! I'll leave it as an eventual use case to integrate. I'm thinking in my designs that "Wake on LAN" which has been a networking standard forever, is probably where I will end up. I really don't want a separate logic network with logic, that adds too much complexity and more failure points.

You might know more about this than I do, but a "magic packet" is sent over a network, like Dante, and that wakes up the target device. The target device decides what to do with that information. So sequencing / intelligent devices wouldn't be too hard. I've a ways to go before I get there...

[Marflinger]

not sure what your range is when talking pro audio, but i personally would like to avoid having some highpower amps switched on or off when i am not there...they draw a lot of power on startup, in contrast to the hifi-amount...

All things like wake on lan have their usecase for sure, i send such pakets to my nas for backups. But i'd never want to wake up an amp like this.
But just my own thoughts, i'll look out for your reports on what you did in the end. Maybe i just don't get it :)