Do you leave your components on 24/7?


Lately I've been leaving my components on all the time, on the assumption that a) they'll be ready when I want to listen, and b) the on/off cycle ages the equipment (tubes, anyway) faster than leaving everything on. Is the latter a reasonable assumption?
128x128cmjones
Paper ... You may claim thermal switching is B.S. but several manufacturers of equipment I own as well as my long time dealer tell me that leaving things on reduces brake down rate , Iv'e followed there advice for many years and have found this to be true. What do they no eh . Do you no a manufacturer of S.S. equipment that states otherwise . Class A amps that run very hot may be the exception .
And as far as a sonic difference goes , my own ears as well as other well respected audiophile friends have tested the affects of turning off large power amps and the results are consistent , etched sound for hours to days , one of the few things we agree on . Have you done such tests for your self , Or are you a theoretician .
The link to a post Almarg pointed out covers the way it is IMO. Some electronic components (semiconductors) do not like the big thermal swings, and may fail sooner. Others may settle, and break in to the on always operation since they stay hot all the time. With this case, those semiconductors may break when they shrink during cool down, since they have never been allowed to contract during a cool down, and expand during warm up, since this is what they have become accustomed to. Think of it as a super miniature bridge without expansion joints, for thermal change, while others may handle the temp swing like a bridge. That one poster is an engineer(Almarg link) that specializes in this. And like he says, it varies from component, to component. I'd have to agree with that. It makes sense.

For those of you worrying about going to hell... Maybe one of those inventors of those little magic things that change the sound so much your jaw will drop, may figure out how to
air condition hell.
The day of reckoning is coming. I warned you and don't pretend that you are not afraid. You are.
So the simple solution is this: Use gear that sounds GREAT the moment you turn it on, and once it warms up a bit it sounds greater. Actually...I think I have that already. Still, nobody has mentioned what the supposed "more likely to fail" failure rate might be (any tests of this?), and I know if my amps are off they can't fail.
Still, nobody has mentioned what the supposed "more likely to fail" failure rate might be (any tests of this?), and I know if my amps are off they can't fail.
Wolf_garcia (Threads | Answers | This Thread)

We are fortunate enough if we get a good accurate review on the sound of a piece of gear, when the reviewers "sounds great" statement matches what we hear, and are happy we bought it. I think Consumer Reports would be the only one to test something for the cycle rate failure. I doubt we'll ever see that at the price of audio gear. It would be interesting though. We have two compact fluorescent lights in a couple of different kitchen light fixtures. Those things use about 9 watts only. Being they use so little, we just leave them on 24/7, even when cleaning them. In the daytime, the light from the skylights overpower them, and we always forget/forgot to shut them off. We decided to change the other ones to a different color temperature. During the bulb change, we shut them all off, first time after several years of 24/7 always on, one failed at start up, the other is still running 24/7, 6 months to a year later. I guess that's about a 50/50 shot? That made me wonder if the failure rate would be similar with a pair of twin SS preamps after this post? I'm guess something SS failed in the one. This comparison may be way off too. I still shut all of my gear down. It cost a lot more than the bulb.