Ive had a couple of people ask me recently why their rooms with AVRs take a moment before the sound comes on.

These projects are a mixture of Denon and Yamaha AVRs

Do all AVRs take about 20 seconds for the sound to come on, or are some quicker, if so which ones ?

Usually about 10-15 seconds from power off.

There are multiple reasons for this. First, on power up the amplifier electronics require some time to stabilize. During this period the speakers are disconnected. Next, connected equipment (DVD, CD, cable box, ROKU, etc) may require some time to boot. Finally, an HDMI connection can require many, many seconds to authenticate and find a video format that is acceptable to all units. To some degree you can minimize the HDMI negotiation time by fixing the video resolution on all units. For example, you could fix the video resolution at 1080p for all of the boxes and the screen.

In days past, with only audio sources, it was 3 to 5 seconds before you had sound. Nowadays, you have that delay, which allows the power supply to stabilize, before connecting your speakers, plus the HDMI handshake, which does take significant time to complete. I don’t believe there are any quick starting AVRs nowadays.

Just tell them they should turn it on 20 seconds before they planned on turning it on and they will then be right on time.

Welcome to CE Power ratings, and HDMI Syncing. THings have to boot up nowadays because everything gets shut down except for the IR Receiver. then once its booted up, its got to sync the HDMI which takes some more time.

AV equipment has so many things in common with computers that it should be no surprise that you don't turn it on, you boot it up. Call it booting up. That might help.

Oddly, control systems may make it appear that things take longer than they should. That's because after they push the one button on the control interface that makes everything start, they don't get distracted by having to figure out which remotes to pick up, and turn on, in which order. Oh, and then go back to the AVR and select the right input. Things take longer when you have nothing to do but wait.

What if you just throw "ECO" out the window and leave the AVR on all the time? Instead of powering it off, switch it to an unused input. It might run warmer. It might use a trivial amount of electricity. It might even shorten the lifespan of the receiver.

There are people who claim that it is better for electronics to be powered on constantly vs. being turned on and off all the time. YMMV.

good grief, people will complain about EVERYTHING. My first instinct is "are you freaking kidding me? Get over it". My second instinct is "really? Get over it".

Oh. I totally forgot about that.

We turn off eco. We turn off power save. When the client wants the TV, he gets the TV. We don't wait for permission or the passage of time mandated by someone who's trying to tell us how to live. Neither do our clients.

The fastest ON AVRs in my experience are those that turn on when you send an input command. Skips the wait time between ON and INPUT.

Some receivers will pass through the the current input when the receiver is put into standby mode. This might be called a "standby pass through" mode. In this case the receiver is mostly dormant, not OFF -- the video circuits are still active. This will yield the fastest start-up time, assuming that the input is not changed by the user during this period.

When Sonos hit the streets, there was a local freinemy that programmed AVR’s to switch to CD (Sonos in) and stay on at a preset volume- with the off macro. Ergo, any AVR can be a “fast start” AVR... Heh, heh.

Don't count out switching to CD or TAPE2 or THEREMIN or whatever unused input you might have.

My own experience with switching to another input is this: my gf doesn't care for any remote more complicated than a DirecTV remote, and that cannot turn most AVRs on and off. Over the years we have used two different Yamaha receivers. Each one was on for about five years, except for power interruptions. I replaced the old one with an even older one and everything works just fine.

And yes, you caught it: you can't switch the Yamaha to another input with the satellite remote. We actually just leave it on, on the sat input, all the time.

My theater takes 40 seconds to come fully online and be stabilized at my most common input at the start (Tivo). I know why this happens (AVP startup, Power amplifier startup, projector startup, and lamp warmup, room light diming, shades dropping, main doors closing) The Theater is fully under the control of a PC so all of the operations are overlapped, with the Projector having the (controlling) longest delay. My solution is to tell Alexa to start the theater a few minutes before I am ready to watch.

If I want to watch a Bluray or DVD that only take 7 seconds from when I select it till it starts playing the main feature with no "Informational" notices without me leaving the couch.