Yamaha A-1 Power Consumption

theokalat

Active Member
My Yamaha A-1 from the late 70's is currently hooked up to my panasonic dvr doing dual duty playing cd's and movie sound playback.

The amp is rated at 70w rms per channel according to the manual, so theoretically i assumed it would consume roughly around 140w of power.

Now the interesting thing I tried today just out of curiosity, I plugged the A-1 into the power monitoring meter and it reads power consumption as being ONLY 24-26w while playing a cd or watching a movie.
Mine is a 240v version being in Australia.

This has got me surprised and confused. Is the power consumption right or is there something wrong with my unit.

If it is what it is, then this is one very efficient amplifier. As soon as I switch it off, power consumption drops to zero.

Even my Sony LED TV, which is the latest model consumes 19w when switched off and on standby and between 48-54w when on which is also way below sony's rated power consumption of 120w for this particular model.

As far as I can tell, the A-1 is playing perfectly as it has always done and have not noticed any degradation in sound.

The only degradation I have noticed is my ears as I get older. Bugger!

I would like to get other peoples opinion on the power consumption and in particular the A-1 if anyone has a power meter they can test on this amp just for comparison.
 
If you crank it up to 70 watts per channel the consumption will be a lot more but now you are only using less then 1 watt per channel. You can almost say it is idling.
 
Sounds completely normal, irrespective of the model. (Something fully Class A notwithstanding.)


Back panel ratings are all over the board what they relate to, but never to they relate to idle or typical playback level. Generally you have to be playing really loud to flat out WFO to be anywhere near the back panel rating (Class A excepted as mentioned before).

Also, most AC power/watt meters typically show a pretty slow response time. If you had a peak reading power meter you'd see some higher numbers as bass notes or other transient sounds were hit.
 
Pretty much every amp draws about 25W on idle and casual listening (basically the same thing). It's totally normal.

The rating on the back is just the maximum allowed power consumption for the device. Nothing to care about.
 
The power consumption meter I used also has a function which shows the peak.

The peak maxed out at 73w even at high volumes with bass heavy tracks playing.

Its comforting to know that is normal then and nothing to worry about. I thought one or two output devices may have been faulty thus giving the low power reading.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Good luck to the Aussies in the 20/20 cricket world cup.

Who knows, maybe even the Socceroos may pull a few surprises in the soccer world cup later this year! Can't wait.
 
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