Hey Audiophiles and Music people, I need some guidance here.
I’ve got these stupid Logitech Z407 speakers that seem to automatically turn off when they detect no sound after about 15 minutes. Some of my automations include playing spotify when I come home, but there is a silence gap until the speakers turn on.
I was thinking of setting up an ssh shell command which connects to my desktop in order to play a “digitally loud” mp3 sound, so the speakers can wake up while I’m on my way home.
Has anyone encountered something similar? Does such a frequency exist?
Is it not better to remotely switch on your speakers rather than playing a sound for waking them up or preventing them from energy saving by playing something?
Cant you connect your speakers to a smart plug/ switch, which could be used in an automation? Depending on your presence detection method it would also be possible to switch them on when you are close to home so that Spotify can start playing music right away.
Those frequencies do exist but it depends on the range of the speakers whether sound is generated. In your situation, it may not matter, you ‘may’ be able to send an audio signal that is outside the range of the speakers and that may be enough to keep them on since they are getting an input. That would probably be a better way to go, so that your speakers are on but not wasting more energy generating sounds that no one can hear.
Yeah, that was the idea, I just have no idea how digital frequencies work.
Think it’s too big of a hack honestly, I should just be looking for better speakers.
I’m trying to build a multi-room, spotify enabled audio system.
For that I’d need a bunch of RPI Zero’s which would act as a Snapcast Client, and some quality but not so big satellites that could connect to that RPi Zero. Any recommendations on those?
I’m also looking for regular desktop speakers, which should be better quality, obviously with no auto power-save features. And my Desktop could also act as a Snapcast Client. Then everything could be nicely orchestrated within HA.
In regards to the original question: the human ear has a typical range from 20 Hz - 20 kHz. But the older you get, the less you can hear the higher frequencies. In my case I can’t hear a sine wave above 14 kHz. But my ears are rather bad. If you have kids, they’d freak out if they would constantly hear that.
So just for testing, I’d suggest to create a 20 kHz sine wave with a tool like Audacity for whichever duration you like, and check if this triggers the speakers to turn on. Or a lower frequency, with a low volume so it doesn’t bother anyone.
Danielperna84 list correctly the often said range for human hearing, but a good hifi 3 way speaker can often only reach 18khz and a Logitech speaker is rarely 3 way and pretty bad compared to a HiFi speaker, so no chance to even reach close to those 18khz.
Trying to push a speaker to the limit or over it might also kill the speaker by ripping the membrane.
Imagine my amusement when I learned there are commercial products available that generate high frequencies to discourage loitering (by the demographic able to hear the high frequencies).
Beware of this method, if you or your closest neighbors have pets. Dogs and cats will get crazy, as they hear much higher range of frequencies and it is getting harder inside their head.
As mentioned above you could make a .wav file, like this (post 5)
Play the file every few minutes before the speakers shut off, and if it makes noise on start or stop of the file, look into fade in, fade out. Might work for you, I tested the code posted in Python3, it works.
