Living room system: class A or AB amps?

The louder you play a high biased class-A the cooler they run. The trick is to switch it to low bias when it's idle and not playing music.

Cheers George

Class A amps do sound good very quickly after fire up,

Because they (at least mine do) reach around 80% of their "A" bias straight away, the other 20% takes a bit longer once the heatsinks get warmed up.
This is why I always recommend "if you have the money", the Gryphon Antllion, as when switched to low bias everything is on, but it's only 5w bias, kind on your power bill, but warm enough so that when your ready to listen, you press 100w high bias and it gets there much quicker. Or you leave it at 5w for parties, background music, etc There is a 50w medium button, but I don't know what you'd use that for.

Cheers George

robert1976 OP The low bias button is like a "stand by" button.

No, not stand-by because that means the amp is not on, but a low biased high wattage Class-A/B amp that you can just leave as a warm up or use for non serious listening, eg: parties, dinner parties, background music etc etc. No heat or big Class-A power bills.

Then if you want to listen seriously you just press the medium or high bias buttons, and there’s no wait time involved to listen to great Class-A sound.

Cheers George

robert1976 OP

Robert I gave your answer to leaving it on all day with low heat and power consumption. Yet still having Class-A sound when listening.
https://forum.audiogon.com/posts/2078150

robert1976 OP Would it make more sense to get good class AB amplifiers, which can be switched on permanently without drawing huge amounts of power? I wouldn’t want to warm-up an amp first before getting good sound.

Get an Gryphon Antillion, (switchable Class-A Bias) that way you can switch up the Class-A only when you listen.

Leave it on in low bias all day, then when your ready just switch it up, and remember when you listen to a Class-A amp up to a point the louder you listen the cooler they run.

Think of it as the water pressure behind a tap washer, the pressure (is the amp heat) the more you let the water flow (listen to music) the less pressure there is behind the tap washer, turn of the tap (music) and then the pressure (amp heat) is at it’s greatest.

This is why when you listened to the massive classic Mark Levinson ML2 monoblocks, they ran cool as a cucumber, stop listening and they got very hot, even though they were only 25w full power at 8ohm, but that 25w was all Class-A.

Cheers George