Electric Bill

I got the Goldcard from them and when I visit them, I always get serviced by 3L (Long Legged Linda) the Hot Rod among their secretaries. I love Class A units.

There was an article and following discussion about leaving audio gear on all the time at Audiophile Review recently (under Tubes). The premise of the article was that tube life is negatively affected by heating and cooling the elements every time you turn your unit on and off. The fire hazard of a failed tube was also discussed, along with other factors that tend to be political.

I can attest to Oldtex's statement about tube life being negatively affected by heating and cooling the tubes' elements every time you turn your unit on or off. I use a tubed preamp with fairly good NOS (new old stock) Mullard tubes. I have left my preamp on 24/7 since I bought them. I just replaced the tubes with a new group of 4 tubes. The orginal tubes lasted 6 years. I think this proves that leaving tubes on 24/7 can extend tube life in atleast 1 selective case. I would say that leaving tubes on will not negatively affect tube life in my setup.

I'm going to continue leaving my preamp, and class d amp, on mainly because it sounds good immediately instead of after a 1-2 hour warmup. The class d amp requires zero warmup but I leave it continually on due to convenience and the fact it uses so little juice.
Of course, YMMV.

Tim

I worked out at the railroad yards my first summer starting college in 1976. I walked into a radar shack one day. This building had a radar that read the speed of the railroad cars and applied braking to control their speed. The whole thing was done with an analog computer. This analog computer was two long banks of cabinets full of vacuum tubes. There had to be a thousand tubes in all in those cabinets. An operator sat at a desk at one end and there was a small meter at the other end by a window showing speed in miles/hour. This was some cool 1950s technology. A large bank of wet cells was sitting in an adjacent room. I asked this guy if he was kept busy changing tubes all the time. He told me he hadn't changed a single tube in 15 years because it was never shut down. That impressed me. Still, I don't leave my stereo on all of the time or I wouldn't get anything else done around the house.