SMS-1 and brief power outages: A quick question

Posted by: Robert A. Fowkes

SMS-1 and brief power outages: A quick question - 06/01/06 02:23 PM

I've had the SMS-1 in my system for some time now and I'm loving its performance. It is so transparent that I even forget that it's in the system. Except for one situation. Whenever we experience a power outage (most of the time they are a couple of seconds or less) the SMS-1's display light (which I usually have turned off) goes on. If I hit the "light" button on the remote this turns off the display but a thought just occurred to me. Normally, when one powers down and then powers up the SMS-1 the display "remembers" what mode it was in (On or Off). However, since a power outage obviously is causing the display to light up on my SMS-1 I'm wondering if this power surge is also causing the unit to lose its calibration settings? Does anyone know if a power outage (momentary blackout) also clears the calibration settings on the SMS-1? Normally, I wouldn't think so since one can turn the SMS-1 on and off, but the strange lighting up of the display during brief power outages makes me wonder if this affects other settings as well. I'm hoping that this is not the case since I don't relish the idea of having to take out the calibration microphone after each of these incidents. And putting an UPS in the system is not very practical at this time and I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

Any takers on this?

Thanks in advance.
Posted by: gonk

Re: SMS-1 and brief power outages: A quick question - 06/01/06 04:53 PM

I've got a theory about this one, RAF. For a long while my SMS-1 left its light off even through power outages, but I recently turned it back on and since then it's been coming on any time there's a brief power outage. When I originally turned the light off, I'm 99% sure I was in the menu - and when I exited I saved my changes. My theory is that turning the light off while in the menu and then saving the settings causes it to remember the light mode as "off" even if the unit is turned off or loses power - until the light gets turned on again, at which point it appears to abandon that "light off" memory. I haven't tried turning the light off again while in the setup menu to see if it remembers - I'll have to try it soon.
Posted by: Robert A. Fowkes

Re: SMS-1 and brief power outages: A quick question - 06/01/06 09:52 PM

gonk,

Thanks for the comments. You are probably right about the display light situation and I'm going to try setting the display status via the menu option. However, this doesn't really address the more important question I posed. Does anyone know whether the SMS-1 retains the calibration parameters during such a power outage? I'm not talking about turning the power off normally, but one of those momentary things that happens during thunderstorms (we had another one this evening.) Obviously the SMS-1 retains calibration settings during normal power ON/OFF cycles (or you would have to recalibrate every time you powered down) but I'm wondering if the momentary loss of power - which is causing my display to act irratically by turning "on" during such an incident - might also affect the calibration settings in memory.

Anyone want to take a stab at this?


Thanks.
Posted by: gonk

Re: SMS-1 and brief power outages: A quick question - 06/01/06 10:32 PM

By curious coincidence, we had a power outage Monday that lasted over an hour. Afterward, my SMS-1's light was on. I turned the light off, and Tuesday or Wednesday night it was on again (likely due to a brief mid-day outage while we were at work). I just hopped into my SMS-1's System Response and System Setting menus, and all of my settings are intact. I think that the light status setting is just a bit flaky.