Power saving for CONNECT:AMP

You certainly can. It may lead to certain issues, though. The Sonos speakers are designed to be left on all the time. Turning them on and off regularly can lead to early failure of the electronics in them, as they go through the various heat and power cycles induced. In fact, each speaker is effectively a small computer, and so it will need to "boot up" every time you turn it back on, and once it's on, it will need to then connect to your wifi or router depending on whether it's wireless or wired. You'll also increase the potential for IP address conflicts, although that can be mitigated by assigning them reserved addresses in your router.

Just curious, do you also power down your router when it's not in use?

Here is how I manage this issue - zones in frequent use are left powered on, except when the house is closed because no one is at home, being out of town. Zones used less often than once a week are left powered off except when needed.

One tries to strike a balance between energy used in stand by mode and extended life obtained by leaving the unit on; after all, premature failure and replacement also has an effect on climate change. And on the bank balance.

My Sonos connect amp uses over 6 amps equalling 52.56 KWhours a year without listening to music.

6 Amps? Have you measured the actual power use of your Connect Amp when it is idle?

I don't have one here to test but my ZP-80 player uses far less than that, 3 or 4 watts if I recall correctly. For me that works out to about $0.11 per month in power use.

He means 6 watts. If it consumed 6 amps it would be a molten mass on the floor.

Thanks! You are right, I meant over 6 watts on standby. In fact, at https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/260/related/1
it states an extra 0.3 watts for connection by ethernet, adding up to 6.7 watts or to me a horrendously wasteful 58.7 KWh of energy per year. Seems I'm over a barrel: to ditch the item wastes a lot of embedded energy-of-manufacture. And as Airgetlam points out, our household routers and switches use a lot of energy round the clock as well and apparently also should not be switched on and off!
Can anyone suggest anything better than what Kumar suggests?
The relevant zone is indeed infrequently used, but NOT once a week, more like ONCE EVERY 2 DAYS....??
Zuts!! As they say, "it's not easy being green"

Leave it on and use it every day? Lol.

Can anyone suggest anything better than what Kumar suggests?
A lot of modern kit is designed to be left on, so just leave them on and don't worry about it.

I think the point is that this isn't a typical audio component; on standby these now usually consume 0.3W and can be left on with little burden. The always on radio drives the power consumption of Sonos units in standby mode.

A few comments...


1 - If you want to reduce your overall power consumption, I would think Sonos would be one of the lowest consumers and thus one of the last devices to turn off or downsize. If you look at your bill, I'd bet 50 kwh will look like a very small piece of the pie.

2 - I assume you aren't so concern about power consumption as you are about burning fossil fuels. Then perhaps you should look into alternative power sources. There is probably a company in your area that guarantees a percentage of power coming from non fossil fuel sources. You can also look into solar panels or geo thermal to generate your own power. If you're using alternative power sources, it's best then use a lot of power if you can afford it. The more these sources are used, the more the price will drop for everyone else.

3 - KWh isn't really as important as the KW in terms of use of fossil fuels. Power companies have to fire up generators to handle the load from their customers. The more demand at a particular moment, the more generators they have to fire up. Of course, more generators more fossil fuels used. So I'd argue that small consistent loads are less of a burden than occasional high consumption loads like your AC. So the best thing you can do is to turn off your AC and other heavy loads during the day, during peak, in favor of using electricity at night during off-peak. This is exactly why power companies over cheaper, sometimes even free, electricity at night. They must have a generator going, but have plenty of room for the load.

On #3, I did work in a conservation department decades ago, and could be off at this a bit. Don't take it as gospel. In general though, you can't be wrong by using electricity off peak as much as possible.

I was in the same situation as you. I own a lot of Sonos equipment, and I was looking for a way to reduce electrical use.

If your Connect Amp is hardwired via ethernet, you can save 2 watts by turning off the wifi link. It is easy to do via a web browser and is completely reversible. Do a web search, it is easy to find - "disable Sonos wifi"

Before you consider this, understand that Sonos do not support this configuration. Also, if your Connect Amp is part of the wireless mesh to other Sonos units, you should not do this.

Three examples in my setup:

Playbar and sub, both hardwired. Two Play Ones for rear surround. I shut off the wifi to the sub, no problem.

Connect in the AV cabinet in the family room, as a source for multi-room speaker system. It is hardwired with wifi shut off, no problem.

Ditto, a Connect I use as a source in my headphone setup.

I hope that one day Sonos make this a part an advanced configuration, but until then...

Hope this helps!