Always ON?

Everything, tube+ss, incl. fm tuners, on 24/7

Except:

Amps off when not in use - even toobies warm up in 30min, don't burn foreign oil! Do you believe those who say SS amps sound even better after being on for days, or months?
Do you believe their amps haven't been checked in years? Do you believe they clean their ears every day? Do you believe they're heavily invested in alternative energy research? What do YOU believe?

TT, cassette decks, any non signal-processing accessories.

I also turn off my desktop at night. Do you have any IDEA how much energy we'd save as a nation, if everyone did that?!

Nsgarch,

Let me ask you a question, what will our nation gain by saving electricity?

I like to chop down Saguaro cacti, and then let them dry out, because their internal skeletons make great firewood! So have I found a great alternative fuel source, or what :-)

I turn everything off for some of the reasons Nsgarch states plus my system warms up in about 30 minutes to the point where I can no longer hear a difference.

Chuck

System is off (phono stage always on since there is no switch) while I'm not listening, which unfortunately is too much of the time. However, before I listen I turn everything on and let the system warm up for 15-30 minutes and then enjoy. My amp in particular sounds much better after cooking for about an hour. On the occassional weekend with lots of listening time, amp is on all the time.

I was always sceptical about leaving the eloctronics on for the extended periods of time, until I accidently left my Aleph 3 on for 24 hours. Holly $#!%! It was like listening totally different rig. My system sounded better than ever.

Ari, are you saying that as a nation, we should go on squandering our resources, because (pick one)

a. It's a good thing (just ask Martha)

b. It's not going to make any difference anyway (oil is going up to $9/gal. no matter what we do.)

I always leave all my equipment on .Some of my amps especially the yba passion 1000 and the gryphon antileon signature (can also be used as room heater in the winter) take hours to equilibrate.Most electronic devices are subjected to a voltage surge when turn on which can lead to failures.Solid state devices like to operate at steady temperatures and to avoid fatigue failure due to thermal cycling which occurs everytime you turn your equipment on or off.I have very little tube equipment and cannot speak to the best options there.

My last solid state equipment lasted 20 years before I grew tired of it and needed to upgrade. I turned it off after every listening session and it never failed once because of thermal cycling.

Chuck

My experience (with my amp) is the same as Chuck's, except I haven't upgraded it yet.

Tubes I turn on 1/2 hour to 1 hour before listening.

I leave my phono preamp on all the time.

I have a Sony XA777ES that I leave on all of the time because it has been modded with black gate capacitors, and they take hours to warm up. I'm talking about 12+ hours.

I don't know what's best for the equipment, but I know leaving them on sounds the best.

Change in sound over time is common in speakers. The problem is acute with lower cost drive units.

Heating of the voice coils while playing music causes thermal compression. This reduces the dynamic range audibly and can cause drifts in the way the crossover performs in passive designs. It is partly the reason for blowing speakers at parties...volume goes up until it sounds good and loud....after half an hour the speaker voice coil gets very hot....sound levels/dynamic range drops due to rising coil resistance...so volume gets cranked up again to compensate...speaker coils get even hotter...=> eventually leading to failure even though sound levels may be no higher than when you first switched it on!

If you find that your system sounds better after half an hour of playing, it could be that your speaker manufacturer may have designed for your speakers to run optimally at a certain voice coil temperature (when warmed up)....or you may simply not like the uncompressed bigger dynamics when the voice coils are cold.

Large profesional studio monitors deliver some of the biggest dynamics available on the market but people who have only been exposed to consumer audio often find this too startling and not to their taste.

I leave my SS int amp (Plinius 9200) on 24x7 and I've found that it clearly sounds better vs. not leaving it on. My TT and tube phono stage take two LP sides to warm up, and I can clearly hear further improvement through 3 LP sides.

I also like to turn the tuner on and at volume for 30 min to an hour prior to LP listening because I've found that it helps to warm up the system with some current flow rather than just being "on" -- perhaps this is speaker warm-up as described by Shadorne above, but I think its the amp as well.