Leave Your Amp/Audio system on 24/7

[HDTV Forum]

After reading the very interesting post on speaker wire I thought I throw out something about warming up your system and never turning it off. If you leave your pre-amp and amplifiers on 24/7 365 your audio sound will be better. Significantly better. A friend of mine is an EE and a audio/videophile and he told me to try this and see for myself. Try this test if your equipment is high end. Leave your pre-amp and amps on for a full seven days, play a good CD with some decent music on it and play a certain cut over and over so the sound is well in your head. Then turn the equipment off and come back an hour later and turn everything back on and play the same cut on the CD and you will hear a very inferior sound compared to the sound you heard prior to turning the equipment off. I know people who never turn their equipment off. I don't follow this rule but I do turn my equipment on several hours ahead of listening.

Hugh

[HDTV Forum]

I know people who never turn their equipment off. I don't follow this rule but I do turn my equipment on several hours ahead of listening.

I am Guilty!

The main reason I leave it on is because I will forget to turn it on if I turn it off and it takes about 4 hours for everything to get back to where it was. Recommended for the hardcore only. This can be tough on the equipment and your electric bill depending on what kind of amps you have.

Richard

[HDTV Forum]

Hugh,

I leave my system on all the time, in fact my Pass Lab preamp does not even have an on/off switch. Back when I was using tube amps, I would turn them off when I wasn't listening...darn tubes are so expensive.

Richard, if you read this, sonics aside, isn't there less wear on a solid state if you run it 24/7 rather than turning it on and off?

Mark

[HDTV Forum]

It is true that most electronic components go through a brief period of chaos when turned off and on, when the voltages and such arent balanced, its a prime time for things to break and components to wear, however... you have to balance that against the cost of the electricity, and the type of equipment.

If you turn your equipment off religously between uses, you can save a couple hundred bucks in electricity over the course of its lifetime. And if none of that equipement breaks due to Power-on issues, then your ahead of the game, economically speaking. And there IS A very good chance that nothing will break, especially with transitor-based stuff. And, if something breaks after 4 years, is that always a bad thing? Electronics do tend to improve over time, so replacing an item that breaks can bring joy as well.

Also, if your equipment is stuck in a poorly cooled enterainment center, it could wear on your equipment more to leave it on. Also, you have to factor in other economic issues, like in the wintertime, Im less concerned with turning my equipment off at night, because its a heat source. In the summertime, I turn it off quickly, because its a heat source.

Then theres the subject of the western world using way too much energy and contributing to global warming, which i will merely mention.

JohnR_in_LA

[HDTV Forum]

Concerning wear and tear there are certainly good theories based in logic for leaving the stuff on. On the other hand I have not found it detrimental to solid state products to cycle the power in all these years. The engineer that I work with has stated that it is good to cycle the power now and then for the main caps so they can fully discharge and recharge. I have forgotten all the reasons behind it.

Richard

[cooky560]

can I do this with my integrated amplifier (Pioneer A-400) and get the same benefits?

[Richard]

sure...

[regman]

Most modern amps have relays and time delays to allow all of the caps and power supplies to be fully functional and charged before signal is allowed to the speakers so there is no "chaos" or thump. Most modern solid state amps, although tolerable of being left on wil tend to run more "class A" which means they are drawing current and generating heat. So there is a risk/benefit. wearing out the on/off switch and maybe popping a fuse every 5-10 years or paying a ton of dough on your electric bill and also risking heat damage, resistors in particular, like to change their values when exposed to heat over long periods of time. I have never heard of turning off and on an amp to "recharge the caps". The caps perform 2 main functions in an amp: 1. they act as filters to smooth out the ripple from the power supply and 2. Act as a resevoir of extra current to handle peaks in the audio output. (there are other functions for caps as well, coupling, rf traps, oscillator circuits, etc. but I'm refering to the big boys). I have a Sencore capacitor analyzer that allows me to "reform" dried out caps. If you own vintage gear run it often to keep it healthy and the caps from drying out. For safety purposes most large filter caps have bleeder resistors to slowly discharge them when switched off (otherwise there would be a lot of dead techs). The caps will always charge to the voltage levels provided by the power supply. Solid state amps can be up there in the +/- 70V or higher range.

Tube amps can have 500+ volts or more and can be quite dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. You can easily get killed working on a tube amp.

Tube amps are another matter. If you leave them on all of the time the "getter" will dissipate and lose many of its "free" electrons and the tubes will wear out or lose their "mu" or gain. Anyone who has purchased tubes lately will know how costly that is and unless you can find NOS you will be buying somewhat inferior Russian or Chinese made tubes since there are none in commercial production in the US anymore. The filament on tubes typically heats up slowly and they last a very long time. My 1964 Hammond B3 still has all of its original tubes with the exception of the 122 Leslie which I replaced the 6550's with a matched pair (but the pre and driver tubes are original). I had a 1959 Hammond C3 and it had all of its original tubes as well.

The AC mains voltages are equally dangerous on both types of amps.

[Richard]

If I am ever in San Fran I would love to get together with you!

I have never heard of turning off and on an amp to "recharge the caps".

This is only a concern if you leave it on all the time. It had something to do with them losing their efficiency over long periods of time and one should turn off their amp for like 10-15 minutes so they fully discharge and then turn it back on. The in rush current snaps them back to life. Something about them getting a memory so to speak and holding back on their full current delivery when asked for it; unable to dump the charge as quickly. This is audiophile speak related purely to how something sounds and has no bearing on everyday electronics...

[allchemie]

If your friend is a real EE he would have a scientific explanation, not some mumbo jumbo that is impossible to verify.

Non-Tube sytems get rectified in milli-seconds--and in a worst case a few seconds.

While tubes take longer, who wants to shorten the life of expensive tubes by keeping them on for long periods of time without listening to music? As your EE must know, heat is the enemy of electronics.

I would only trust such an experiment in an ABX double blind test. Your ears and mind are great at being fooled.

Greg