i have an all in one streamer/integrated amp from naim that i leave on 24/7, and recently tested out a NAD c 3050 LE- noticed this amp turns off after 15 mins or so of being left on standby w no music playing, which i thought was a little weird. do you leave your integrated amp on or off? thanks
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Save that power it makes a difference
This seems excessively wasteful from a power consumption point of view.
Indeed. Leaving my 7.1 receiver on with nothing playing doubles my household electrical base load. Definitely worth investing in some remote control switches with power monitoring and plugging your AV gear into it. It’s quite the eye-opener.
Off.
dac ye, amp no
I bought my Rotel RA-931 back in 1997 and its been turned on every day since then, and still sounding sweet.
My mono block designer says to leave em on, so I have since owning em many many years now. The rest of my stuff gets shut off when not in use.
My sub amp has auto shut off that annoyingly #@%& shuts off if/when playing very low volume.
Leave DAC on all the time. Turn (tube) amp off when not using.
DAC and headphone amp always on (only because I’m using the magni pass through to the speaker amp)
Off except when someone forgets. Not religious about it but why would someone want their hardware on all the time?
I guess some want to keep it warm. Whether it helps on class AB and under is up for debate it seems.
Not sure about amps, but turning your PC on and off all the time is more harmful than just keeping it on all the time.
That is not true at all for PCs. Where did you hear that??
I had about the 8th edition ifScott Mueller’s Upgrading and Repairing PCs - he discussed the pros and cons of keeping them constantly powered.
At the time, I think his take was that the alternating heat and cooling-off on and off cycles would cause more wear than keeping them constantly on and warm.
I have a Sony AVR that’s been on most of the time since about 1993. Sounds and works great. Even after falling out of my closet to the floor in the '97 Northridge earthquake.
Yeah, keeping your PC on all the time causes less wear on the components. If you shut down your PC once a day, this will not cause any problems tho. It doesn’t really matter for a regular user.
Yes and no. It’s good to let it stay on for some time if it’s used sporadically, but a periodic off/on cycle is good as it helps “clear its head” if you will.
Nad, I leave in stand by. Sub amp, I leave on. Dacs, I leave on most of the time, Modi, SMSL Su9. The other SU9 I turn off. I have it connected to the theater.
My preamp and theater amp, I leave on.
I turn headphone amps and preamps off. (tubes). I don’t want the kids to touch them.Always on. Always ready to stream from my phone
My gear is always left on. I’ve got friends and family deep in the hobby and some of them have had their gear left on for more than 10 years. Only gets powered off when leaving for extended periods like for vacations.
Hey there. The C3050 manual goes into quite bit of detail on this but this is why:
Auto Standby feature is an integral feature of C 3050 that conforms to European ecodesign regulations
Thanks for this
Thanks for this. Gotta love our over consumption on this sub 🫠 Planets dying and we’re out hear leaving shit on for no reason wasting electricity
I don’t leave any of my gear on unless I’m about to listen.
Gear that is left on all the time requires Twice as much service.
Source:Serviced several studios for over 20 years.
No. There are benefits in turning it off – it offers some protection from voltage spikes and from premature aging of the circuitry, and saves electricity. It may offer protection from someone messing with the speaker wires and creating a short when you’re not around.
I design electronics. Any decent modern amp or preamp is electrically warmed up in tens of seconds, that is, further changes in temperature don’t make any meaningful difference in its performance – measured or heard.
Really ancient stuff? There could be a kernel of truth. Tubes have heaters that take time to warm up of course. Ancient solid state (like early '70s and before) sometimes had janky bias spreader circuits that weren’t well compensated for temperature.
In newer solid state gear, the output stage bias current should be within 20% of the final level within tens of seconds after power on. There’s enough feedback around the output stage that you’re not going to hear any difference while it stabilizes, and it stabilizes pretty fast, much faster than the temperature of the heatsink settles at its final level.
Don’t worry about warm up. Worry about what happens to your powered up gear when you’re asleep or away.
I was always warned about wear and tear from expansion and contraction when heating and cooling between power cycles. Is that old school and less of a concern with modern electronics?
Maybe? There certainly could also be longevity/reliability benefits of reducing power cycles. Mostly for the power switch I would guess. (Thank God for the triac mod that saves the power switches on vintage gear.)
I’m mostly saying there are no sonic benefits to leaving it on.
Triac mod?
Since you’re here, what’s your take on using a power strip to turn everything on and off? Assuming the gear has a physical switch to cut power at the main 110v and not a relay standby switch?
Actually a very good point. I guess this is highly dependent on the component itself. I noticed that leaving my tube gear on did wear the cathodes very quickly compared to their theoretical lifespan (they were used tubes but the glass became shinier visibly over time), so I just switch off the system considering the points of the post above. It does take a few minutes to warm up the tube dac but in practise that’s irrelevant.
I had a transistor with a cold solder joint on a Pioneer record player once, but it was an easy fix and I can’t say what caused it because I got the thing second hand.
If I had to guess I would say heat cycling causes the issue. I would also say it’s likely most modern quality gear won’t have heat cycling cold solder joints often…
Great information. And it makes me wonder about my 5 year old integrated tube amp. Would you leave that on 24/7?
With modern amps and DACs there is no benefit to leaving them on all the time. Especially amps like the c3050le, which is class D. There’s no benefit to modern solid state amps being “warm” or on at all times. In some older gear on/off cycles could shorten the lifespan of some capacitors, but modern components don’t wear out like that. DACs being always on has no benefit either. They’re generally made of solid state components which don’t need to charge or warm. And even if they did, this would happen within seconds if not milliseconds.
I wish this were always true. I’ve repaired LED TVs, powered monitors and amps that have blown caps. I’ve not talking about old stuff - I’m talking about equipment that’s 2-3 years old.
Equipment that’s protected with surge protectors or UPS backups rarely have issues like this, especially when they are left on all the time.
Much of the equipment I repaired died on startup, not while running.
The replacement caps were surprisingly cheap - like $5 for 20 OEM caps. Manufacturers could easily make their equipment more robust for only a small investment in components with higher capacities and built-in surge suppression.
Does that indicate it’s better to leave equipment on, or that they are using subpar components?
It almost sounds like “don’t drive your car, or you’ll wear the engine out”.
Its true the more you drive yur car the more it wears out.