Amps

It is a NAD M25 behind a Torus AVR Elite 20 on its own dedicated line.

Here’s a fun anecdote. I always left my McCormack amp on because it didn’t burn a lot of electricity and it was always warmed up and ready to listen to whenever I wanted. Also, I noticed that light bulbs tend to blow out mostly when I turned them on indicating that the stress of turn on/turn off wasn’t a good thing. My amp, that I bought used in 1998, worked fine until 2019 when it succumbed to a known defect in the input board, and short of that the amp would probably still be going strong. Fast forward to now when I decided to have SMcAudio repair/upgrade my amp, and as part of the upgrade they turn the on/off switch into a dummy switch that only controls the LED light on the front panel and nothing else just to let the “significant other” know the amp is on. Basically, whenever the amp is plugged in, it’s on. They do this because they firmly believe that turning their amp on and off greatly reduces its longevity, and they said my light bulb analogy is an apt one. Take this for what it’s worth, but when guys who build damn good amps tell me this I take it seriously, and my own personal experience bore this out. Unless I’m running tube amps or Class-A solid state amps without a low bias switch I’m leaving my amp on 24/7 unless I’m leaving for a week-long vacation. Just my $0.02 FWIW.

I leave my tube preamp and tube dac on 24/7 along with my solid state amp

What about a tube pre?

I have a van Alstine ss power amp and van Alstine tube pre with 2 6dj8’s in it.

They both sound best when on for hours

id like to leave them on for the most part, but the advice is to plug the power amp into the wall and all the other equipment including the pre into the power strip with protection. 

Maybe a waste of energy, but if not full class A biased it could actually give a longer lifespan.

It's a waste of lifespan and energy. 

It’s a bit of a tradeoff. Really depends a lot on the amp.

Tubes age much more quickly than solid state. The inrush current for an amp can be detrimental to the supply caps and rectifier, son in that sense leaving a SS amp longer can be best. 

Generally speaking though for tubes, no, don’t leave them on all the time. For SS depends. I have Class D amps that take days to warm up. Best left on, consume very little power. My A/B Luxman integrated is ready almost instantly. No reason to leave it on.

This question comes up every three or four months.

Use the search field above.

Simple answer, yes, if solid state and you have some surge/spike protection.

Turn off, if you are not listening for a week, or more.

Yes if they are SS since the caps take awhile to really sound good so leave the SS amps on and the tubed amps off but let the tubes warm up for at least 30 to 60 minutes for best sound.

Forgot to mention the Mac amps were tubed! This guy had them stuffed under a bookcase or someplace he couldn't get to them so he just left them on.

op

it depends on the amp - what amp are you talking about

@dweller 

+1

I have left most of my solid state gear on for twenty years without failure… actually preferred. Some amps like Pass have a switch which reduces the power… but keeps them “warm”. Hence preventing the shock of startup.

My Audio Research tubed equipment slowly increases the power over a few minutes to reduce the impact of tube turn on. 
 

So, yes to @dweller 

Solid state, O.K.

Tubes, No

However, I saw a YouTube about a guy (a New Yorker) who left a mono pair of McIntosh amps turned on for something like 35 years!