Creative T20 standby mode

[dinker99]

I`ve just bought some Creative T20 Series II speakers and have found to my annoyance that they go into standby mode after a few minutes without audio. This means that you lose the first few seconds of audio when they start up again.

Anyone know how to disable this "feature"?

 

[Hugh Jass]

I assume these are the ones you are referring to -- http://www.amazon.com/Creative-GigaWorks-Multimedia-BasXPort-Technology/dp/B001RNOHDU

I have those and do not have that issue. Don't believe that is an intended "feature". Why would speakers go into a "standby" mode anyway?

As long as the power/volume knob is turned on and set at a decent level they play sound immediately just like any other speakers.

Sounds to me like you may have faulty speakers or something faulty in your audio setup.

 

[dinker99]

I have those and do not have that issue. Don't believe that is an intended "feature". Why would speakers go into a "standby" mode anyway?

Sounds to me like you may have faulty speakers or something faulty in your audio setup.

Thanks for your reply.

I have three other sets of 2.0 speakers which do not exhibit this behaviour so I assume the issue is with the T20s.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Thanks for your reply.

I have three other sets of 2.0 speakers which do not exhibit this behaviour so I assume the issue is with the T20s.

No problem...and yeah...if other speakers work then you must have some defective T20s.

 

[Jumpman23]

Sorry for bumping old thread, but I have these speakers too and they do indeed go into standby and will come out if it detects sound being played. I was searching if there was a way to turn that function off. If anyone knows anything...

 

[Hugh Jass]

Sorry that happens to you two but you are the first and only two that I have ever seen mention this as a problem with these speakers.

Mine are on all the time when my PC is on...which is most of the day and night every day and night...and when I play music they immediately start playing music no matter how long they have been sitting quiet beforehand. As I said, a "standby" function is NOT a "feature" of these speakers...that is info direct from Creative...it's not the way they designed the speakers to function. The reason you come up empty on a search for turning that off is because it doesn't exist as a possibility seeing as it is not a "feature" that Creative added to these speakers.

So again I say it has to either be something in the setup you guys are using or defective speakers. Sorry...but y'all need to look into your sound card/onboard audio/media player/OS settings or talk to Creative about their RMA procedure.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Also, are you both sure you're using the Series IIs and not the original T20s?

Maybe the original T20s had a standby feature...I wouldn't know as I have the Series IIs.

These are the originals: http://us.store.creative.com/Creative-Labs-GigaWorks-T20-2.0-Multimedia/M/B000PHX68G.htm

And these are the Series IIs: http://us.store.creative.com/Creative-GigaWorks-T20-Series-II-2.0/M/B001RNOHDU.htm

 

[annwares]

I have the same problem with my T40 series II, and I just found others who are experiencing the same sleep mode. When there is no sound for a short period of time about 10 mins, my T40 goes into its own standby mode with LED slightly diminished, and it takes about 3 seconds to wake T40 up by playing music or something. Yes, I love the earth and want to save energy, but this feature is somewhat annoying.

 

[TintinX]

I've read similar threads to this elsewhere and someone always says 'I've never heard of this issue before. You must have defective speakers'.

They are NOT defective. It is an intended (and incredibly irritating) intentional 'feature'.

http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=12873

In keeping with EuP regulations, your Creative speaker will go into Standby mode if it doesn’t detect audio input after a specific amount of time.

If you want to hear brief alert sounds from your system it renders these speakers useless as the sound has come and gone in the time it takes them to come out of standby. This is a big mistake on the part of Creative.

Update: As quoted in the statement, this only effects speakers sold in the European Union (EUP) which would explain why others don't experience the issue. Assuming Creative are forced to include this, it is more a mistake on the part of EU.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Guess that's why it doesn't happen to mine...ever.

I bought mine in the good ol' US of A.

 

[garrus]

I have the exact same problem.

It does it, if you listen to sounds or music at very low volume.
When I want to listen to music in a quiet environment,
I use only a little bit of volume. Then, after 15 minutes,
the speaker system turns off, and I have to pump up the volume
with the switch, then when I hear the "scrunch" sound,
I pull back the volume again.
It is very annoying.

Is there any way to remove this feature using a screwdriver and a soldering iron ?

 

[Strix]

Living in Europe, this has been bothering me too. Yet today, I have finally found a workaround! It may seem a bit complicated but it WORKS and I made it as easy for you as possible

1) You need to download and install Free Alarm Clock. Run it and be sure to enable "Run at Windows startup" in the Options menu (should be on by default, but anyway...).

2) Locate the program's folder (probably "Program Files\FreeAlarmClock") and extract this sound into it (click "Download file -> Download slowly"). It's a split second of a brown noise set to very low volume, so it's barely audible (as the name suggests ) but it should still be recognized by your speakers when played. In case it's not (unlikely, but can happen), I also provided two slightly louder versions of the sound you can try out (unzip the sound from a ZIP file named +3db or +6db - this is to maintain the sound name which must be "Barely Audible.mp3" for the alarm set (as follows) to work) - you will find it in your "FreeAlarmClock\Sounds" folder).

3) In FreeAlarmClock, click "File -> Load from file" and use this file (click "Download slowly" again). It's a set of 720 "alarms" that are run each day (which has 1440 minutes), resulting in the sound above being played every 2 minutes. It's almost unnoticable (unless you set really high volume) but it does it's job of preventing the speakers from going to standby

4) Finally (unless you want the alarm bubble to pop up in your system tray every 2 minutes ) turn off all notifications for FreeAlarmClock - just set it to "Hide icons and notifications".

That's it! Hope you found this useful. And feel free to let me know if any of the links is down - I'll gladly reupload it for you.

Someone might say it's a bit overkill as it requires you to have an app running in the background, but it's free, quite light on system resources (doesn't affect CPU usage and uses only 5-10 MB of physical memory (RAM) on my machine) and once set and configured to run at system startup, it's a complete solve-and-forget solution

 

[UsandThem]

Hey strix thanks for the fix looks great, looking forward to putting it to the test, you think you re-upload the sound file seems the file is no longer available

That user has not been here in over 5 years (the date of the last post in this thread), so odds are you're not going to get a response to your question.