turning on power amp via pc -12v

[whats_this]

Been looking at this and thinking it is possible. My thought process is that a fan connector can be hooked up to the power amp 12v trigger and i can use a fan control program to turn on the amp.

two questions. Has anyone done this before? and can Anyone recommend a fan control program that i can operate via a remote?

i am running standard xp and hope to have the system fully automated via remote. problem is the power amp has no remote and none of my other equipment has a 12v trigger. USING A USB uirt and grider with x lobby at the minute, but may change from xlobby.

[DannyBoy73]

I always thought Power amps take a while to warm up before you get 100% out of them, and therefore never meant to turn them off??

[GaryR]

I've done this using a fan header and it works a treat with my power amp. Not using a fan control program though, just switches on/off with the PC. Can't help you with your other stuff, I only have the 2 boxes as my PC is my pre/pro.

[whats_this]

To get the best performance from a poweramp all the time it probably is best to leave it on. However my parasound 885a puts out rather a lot of heat and combined with all the other heat put out by pc etc i choose to turn it on and off when not in use to keep the room bearable.

Gary just wondering what cable you use from fan header to amp and where you got it from? Very interested in your set up particularly what sound card you are using for your pre/pro. do u have any external inputs eg sky,xbox etc?

[GaryR]

My setup is really quite simple, I have a Rotel THX 5 channel power amp connected via analogue to a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro.I don't have sky or other external boxes except an old Acoustic Research turntable that I use occasionally which connects straight into the phono stage input on the sound card. Internally I have a single Nebula PCI TV tuner. Externally I have Monitor Audio/REL speakers and a Yamaha DPX1 DLP PJ with a 6' OWL motorised screen, this has it's own 12v trigger from the PJ.

The 12v trigger for the amp is taken from a fan header on the mobo to a 3.5mm mono socket that I attached to the back of the PC by drilling a hole in a spare PCI blanking plate. I then made a short patch cable made of two 3.5mm mono plugs and some 2 core cable and connected PC to amp. If you haven't got an old fan kicking around for you to cut the plug off then you could get something like this.

A word of caution though, a major problem with this kind of setup is the power on/off popping that a lot of soundcards make, so research your soundcards well or you'll destroy your speakers. I'm happy to say that the X-Fi mutes the speakers during power on/off, unlike my old M-Audio.

The whole MCE2005 system now powers on/off and is controlled via the one MCE remote with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard tucked away for when we want to surf on the big screen.

[parody1]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I have just achieved this with a very simple £4 powerplug from EON, which has a master socket that turns slave sockets on when current is detected. i.e. when the PC is turned on.

My question though, is that I have an Arcam AVR300 receiver which has a 3.5mm remote control input on the rear, intended for use with an external IR receiver when the front of the receiver is hidden from view.

I use XBMC with an Ipod for remote control which works very well (with an XBMC app and its webservice). But I want to be able to control the amp with it too. It seems a very simple thing would be for some software on the PC to be able to "dummy" remote commands via a 3.5mm headphone socket out to the amp. Those commands can be generated by the Ipod via a server application, or even just keyboard shortcuts.

Some googling hasnt found me anything but this
UiRemote: The Universal Remote for iPhone with Infrared
which at least proves the thoery is viable using a 3.5mm headphone socket.

Anyone any insight?