Power Up the System - What Do You Do?

After 25 years of being careful I accidently touched speaker cables together last week. Immediately blew the amp fuses but hurt nothing else in my Aragon 8008BB which is quite bullet proof. Nobody is perfect all the time - connecting live eqipument will eventually result in dead equipment.
Gammajo

As a couple of others mentioned, this sounds like a truly bad idea (to me). A lot of dealers will say almost anything to justify whatever they're doing at the time; I've seen audio salesmen destroy cartridges, power amps, etc. because of ignorance or carelessness. If you really enjoy doing this, go ahead, but if I were you I'd read Fatparrot's advice about 10,000 times before doing it again.......it's exactly the thing you shouldn't do--sooner or later your fingers will slip on the speaker cables or "something" while doing this & you will be a very sad guy........

>>The dealer switched out the cables without powered down the system. He told me there is tremendous surge of force into the speakers when flipping the amp switch of high current amplifier that can damage speakers.>>

I bought my armaco variac in a garage sale for $20.its good for 20 amps and attenuates very smoothly.built it into a test panel with voltmeter ammeter and dc output as well as the 0-120 volt sockets.Its handy for first tests of projects as well as firing up newly discovered vintage equipment where inrush current can damage old discharged caps etc.you can slowly dial up the volts and watch the amperage at the same time dialing it back down if you see disaster looming.its a handy tool for troubleshooting especialy for those who take liberties with ohm,s law.

Now for something completely different. I buy some older/vintage equipment which should "be powered up with a variac slowly". Well the problem is I don't know where to find this particular piece of equipment which I can only assume is an variably atennuated power source. How slow is slow?
BTW I like to go through the front end to amp start up, but leave my equipment in idle when my Mother's voice isn't saying "make sure you turn off the.... you'll have a fire and poke your eye out."

My system never popped the speakers. As a matter of fact, I have never tried to powered up the system with speakers connected so I don't really know. I have Krell Amp, 400 watt per channel pushing Wilson Audio Sophia. I learned this technique from Hi End Audio in Atlanta that used to sell only Krell Electronics. During A/B test between two set of speakers - priced over $20K. The dealer switched out the cables without powered down the system. He told me there is tremendous surge of force into the speakers when flipping the amp switch of high current amplifier that can damage speakers.

Sd2005gt, then you've been lucky for years...don't push it! Why is you're system "popping" the speakers, anyway?

Fatparrot, I have been doing it this way for years without any problem. Of cause you have to be very careful not to let the negative and positive on the speaker cables touch each other or you will have a short either on the amp or on the speakers.

well, i hit the "primer bulb" a few times to get some gas moving, then grab the cord and give it a good rip. Usually takes a few pulls before it does any more than sputter, but once it starts going it has a nice sweet purr. LOL

Sd2005gt, you're playing with fire! No decent system should "pop" the speakers when turned on. Speakers should NEVER be connected when an amp is powered up. Short out your amp output or speaker terminals on a hot amp, and you're asking for a world of hurt!

Also: I make sure my integrated is muted when I turn it on/off.

sd2005gt: I'm not totally sure, but I don't think that's a good idea. It seems like connecting the speaker cables when everything's on could cause some serious pops, etc.

I think the classic way is to power up the front end, then the preamp, then the amp. Turn everything off in the opposite order. So the front end is first on, last off.

If I'm playing something off my recording console, I power that up first; then the preamp, let the preamp tubes warm for a minute, then the power amp last, of course. I leave the CDP powered up. The TT of course gets turned on and off regularly.

I unplug my system if I'm leaving for any appreciable time.