Does anyone experience sound improvement from restarting power off and on of DAC?


Does anyone experience an improvement in sound from restarting the DAC every week or so by powering off for a minute and then restarting the power back on? I’ve noticed that with my PS Audio Directstream Mk1 that I get a lot of improvement in sound if I power off at the power switch at the back of the dac for a minute and then restart the dac. I find by doing this once every 5 days or so much improves the sound quality. Does anyone else experience this? I have been told on several occasions that this is normal and not to worry. 

mitchb

I had a Aurlic streamer that constantly needed rebooting to function. My DACS have not sounded different after power down and up. 

I have definitely heard improvement from restarting a dac, but this was in cases of very obvious distortion setting in for reasons I don’t understand. I can’t say that I’ve ever noticed more subtle improvements from a restart, but based on the extreme experiences I suspect more subtle problems can set in too.

Actually, come to think of it, in one of the extreme cases the problem was explained to me by the manufacturer as an issue with static charge building up. They recommended unplugging and then plugging the dac back in. It always worked, and needed to be done about once a week. In another case the manufacturer refused to acknowledge the problem, but a person on an internet forum suggested that the power supply they had supplied wasn’t providing adequate current. I got a bigger power supply and that problem went away.

The cases I don't understand involve sources that are not very good, like optical TV out, which has a lot of jitter in it. I know this because some better dacs I tried to feed with that signal wouldn't play at all unless I relaxed the DAC's jitter tolerance. Some of them have a setting for that.  I don't understand why it sometimes goes out of whack all at once and sounds highly distorted. But I suspect it has something to do with that jitter. 

I’ve had some unexpected power outages and if the power comes on fairly quickly, no, I hear no difference. 

@mitchb "I find by doing this once every 5 days or so much improves the sound quality” 

Wondering how PS Audio will respond to such observation! 

@markcasazza +1 "Every streamer is a single purpose computer and every computer operating system benefits from the occasional reboot."