Leave it on?


I just listened to Paul McGowan explain that turning SS equipment on and off degrades the capacitors from the tiny power surge and that leaving SS equipment on ALL THE TIME is best. What do you do? 

maprik

I have a large Pass XP-30 preamp and I can't find a way to turn it off other than unplugging it, and I'm not climbing behind my equipment racks every night to do that. My McCormack UDP-1 doesn't seem to turn off either. I leave my Hovland Radia Amp on all the time because it doesn't sound good for many hours until warmed up and I listen every morning. I have a Moon 280D streamer which I do turn off. I'm not sure where the logic is there. My ARC PH-7 has tubes, so it's off until I use it. I had a McCormack amp and McCormack told me to leave it on, that it's power usage was like a lightbulb when not listening to music. 

Like many, I leave ss gear on 24/7, unless i'm going out of town for some time. Tubed gear gets turned on for listening, then off at the end of the evening.

The only exception to this is the Aleph 2's I own. Those generate so much heat in my small listening room they get treated like tubed gear.

@audiodwebe Yep I turn my Aleph 1.2's off nightly after listening – the heat but also the electrical bill.

@au_lait “…. the heat but also the electrical bill”.

As @vair68robert said previously in the earlier days of this discussion…..

A single amplifier at the national average KWh rate, consuming just 85w powered on amounts to $166 a year.
 

Your Alephs draw 500w each. Good job you turn them off.

 

Hi.some of my equipment have manufacture shut off automatic.xconsult the manual and have fun

@thecarpathian 

"Do you hear any appreciable difference with your thermal magnetic switches in?"

The only physical changes were adding a thermal magnetic switch in the wall to the hot wire feeding each amp, and then removing the (pretty good - recent SR color) fuse installed by SMc Audio and replacing it with a1/4-inch, 99.9 percent copper rod that was burnished smooth.

To your question, no, I do not hear any appreciable differences that I would reliably attribute to changing out the fuse for a thermal magnetic switch.  I am not surprised.  However, I do get to turn my amps off without unplugging them or turning off the breaker at the main electrical panel so I am happy with the win. 

@mitch2 ,

I score it a win if it didn't degrade the sound, plus it was a cool things to do!

@grannyring wrote:

For those of you that leave your gear on like dacs, streamers and SS amps I have a tip to try.   Every couple of weeks or so shut them down for 5-10 minutes and then restart. While I don’t understand why, I can say it did something positive to sound quality. A couple of designers I respect told me about this.  

+1

While I shut down my class A/B SS amps overnights and used to let my DAC run 24/7 year in and year out, for some time now I’ve begun setting my new DAC on stand-by overnights as well - basically for the same reason and findings that you point to. I’m wondering though whether it’s better to leave on the DAC for a week or two, and then shutting it down completely for a little while followed by a restart, just like you propose.

There are indications that newer DAC’s, or at least some of them tend to be less in the need for days to fully stabilize to sound their best, but I’m not sure about that. What’s your (and others’) findings here - do newer DAC’s sound best after, say, a few days or so, or is it only a matter of mere hours or less before they’re firing on all cylinders, so to speak?

In other words, what’s the incentive to leave on the DAC for a few weeks before the suggested restart procedure - because it’s ready and sounding its best from the very beginning of an audio session, or that it takes time (i.e.: days) to be its sonically best?

You know this, some things can be left on all the time, and some things can't. I wouldn't leave any tube gear on all the time unattended, on the other I think solid state could benefit from being powered up for long lengths of time. It could be true that the act of turning SS on and off a lot with the in-rush of current could increase the risk of component failure.