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
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?