Uniti Atom - Power in Standby

I haven't noticed any warmth from my Atom when it's in standby mode, with or without a USB drive attached. It does seem odd that it powers a USB drive when it's in standby, though.

Do you have server mode enabled ?

My Nova runs very slightly warm to touch even when powered on for days or playing after a few hours.

Note i measured my Nova, IIRC 30W on and playing and with server mode off standby was pretty much zero.

my nova is warm when in standby when i either just power off by the remote or it turns itself off after the preset time. I tend to manily listen at weekends so put it into a deep sleep sunday night and its cold to touch then. i wake it up on fri am and then its warm for fri eve with a beer and tunes...

re server mode - do you need to have that on? - i use my with an innuos zen as the roon core and the inbuilt hard drive has all my discs on..nothing else connected

If you have a usb drive connected it keeps it powered in standby, that’s why you hear the relay click when you connect. I’m guessing this is to ensure that all the music on the drive is available immediately when you switch on otherwise it could take several minutes to load depending on how many albums are on the drive 

Cheers! I’ll turn it off then.

Mercky posted:

If you have a usb drive connected it keeps it powered in standby, that’s why you hear the relay click when you connect. I’m guessing this is to ensure that all the music on the drive is available immediately when you switch on otherwise it could take several minutes to load depending on how many albums are on the drive 

MERCKY - i have no USB and the in and out off standby relay always clicks.

I recall when i used a thumb USB drive it would constantly be warm/hot, moving to SSD no issue, but then i decided i didn't need either.

hifi-dog posted:

re server mode - do you need to have that on? - i use my with an innuos zen as the roon core and the inbuilt hard drive has all my discs on..nothing else connected

Server mode only needs to be turned on if you use the server that's built into the streamer to serve files from the UPnP input. With either Roon or an external UPnP server, you can ignore it.

Mercky posted:

If you have a usb drive connected it keeps it powered in standby, that’s why you hear the relay click when you connect. I’m guessing this is to ensure that all the music on the drive is available immediately when you switch on otherwise it could take several minutes to load depending on how many albums are on the drive 

I think you are right, the USB drive is powered to save having to wait for it to be read again every time you wake the streamer. I have a cheap bus powered WD HDD connected to mine at the moment, and after plugging it in, it takes a few minutes for it to index the 400 albums on it before you can play them.

Obsydian posted:

Mercky posted:

If you have a usb drive connected it keeps it powered in standby, that’s why you hear the relay click when you connect. I’m guessing this is to ensure that all the music on the drive is available immediately when you switch on otherwise it could take several minutes to load depending on how many albums are on the drive 

MERCKY - i have no USB and the in and out off standby relay always clicks.

I recall when i used a thumb USB drive it would constantly be warm/hot, moving to SSD no issue, but then i decided i didn't need either.

yes thats correct but if you do connect a usb drive the relay will always be armed and there will be no click when you switch on from standby - try it yourself and you'll see

Thanks all! This helped, also in triggering my own thinking processes.

I've taken the hints and did a bit of experimentation on the Atom; I'll try to summarize the results in the original post. (For easier reference.)

 <- Okay, I learned I not only cannot edit my OP. Also my edit of the previous post took too long (>15 minutes; I was still testing and typing as I went).

Any more comments? Did I miss something? I would expect Nova and Star to behave the same?

Summary:

I'll be using deep sleep from now on (most of the time).

There's 3 primary power modes, also according to the FAQ:

1. Normal operations, "on". Reacts to both remote and app control.
2. (Network) Standby. Reacts on both remote and app control.
   1. Variant: With more power consumption. You don't hear a relay "click" when going between standby and on.
      Atom might feel "slightly warm" to the touch.
      Is triggered when either a) Music Server mode is active or b) a device is plugged into a USB port (front or back).
      Reason seems to be to either provide the services to other network devices via UPnP or to keep the USB device (stick, HDD, SSD) powered to be immediately available and indexed, when Atom is awoken.
   2. Variant: With less power consumption. You hear a "click" when machines goes on/standby.
      Atom should feel "cold" (it's metal, isn't it).
      (By the way: connection via WLAN or LAN (cable) does not impact this mode.)
3. Deep Sleep. Does only wake on pressing the power bottom on the Atom. Is entered by pressing the power bottom 3 seconds.
   This is independent of the mentioned features being used.
   At power-on a "boot-up" is needed, which takes more like a minute than seconds from standby. (So it's a kind of "soft power-off" in PC speak.)
   After boot-up, the internal media server content is directly available; so it's saved during the deep sleep.

Note:

• Unplugging the USB device saves power in standby; but the Atom needs to re-index when you plug the device back in.
  So it's seem to be faster to use deep sleep + boot time vs. re-indexing time (with my library and an SSD).
• Aside: The USB-Interface is available without delay when plugging in USB (like simple file browsing), but with much less comfort than with the inbuilt/local media server.
• It's a pity, that the USB device has this impact; I thought it a good idea to have the library local. I don't have a NAS and I try avoiding getting one (various reasons, power consumption being one).
  I also don't understand, why after deep sleep the library is there (with the USB device "off") but for standby the device needs to stay powered-on.
  But then, deep sleep seems like okay. (Only learned during research, there was something like this.)

It’s waaaay to complicated for a humanist!!

With the Atom in standby mode, its server is still active. So if you are using it with other devices, they can still access the music on the USB drive via UPnP, which is the way it would work if you were using a separate NAS/server. For this, I guess the USB drive has to remain powered up when in standby, as well as to avoid delays when waking the Atom while it reads the drive again. 

The power used in standby I measured is negligible.