To turn off or not to turn off

Some people worry about their electric bill go high. In reality it is not that high at all. When amp/preamp idle, it is like having a 60W bulb on all the time. Couple bucks a month.

With a tube gear it is NO-NO since they may overheat and tubes life will be very short.

Dan, it is up to you if you will turn them of or not. If you have never done it, try it for a couple of weeks. The big plus on doing this? Many modern SS equipment take several days or even more then a week staying "on" to get to the best sound, even if they have "stand-by" mode or fully broken in. If you hear no sonic improvement, start turning them off. I never do.

My blue circle dac did not come with an on/off switch. If it is plugged in it is on.

I have a Hafler 220 that I built from a kit in 1979.About 6 months after I built it, the power switch quit working,leaving it in a power on condition. I got a new switch from Hafler but have never installed it.The amp has been on continuously ever since and it sounds great.
I would say that this supports the theory that (for ss amps) keeping temperature more constant makes for more reliable electronics.
My Audio Alchemy DLC preamp has been on since 1993.

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That is to be correct and I even more verified that SS equipment idles at very low power and need not to be turned off unless there's threats from power surges. Tube equipment is the best to turn off since the worm-up time is much faster than with transistors.
On my VTLs tube life drammatically increased since I started to turn them off. I would turn off the power especially when I leave or to the degree that I would only run them on when I play music. When something's happening I would immediately hear and take actions on time. Despite the figures stating that tube life won't be different if tube equipment is always on, the life of DC capacitors will be and the ones that go bad or off the normal operation scale will shorten the tube life so quick that it's enough to realize that buying more and more tubes becomes an issue. I'm speaking from my own experience with my tube amps that I analytically examined with open PCB what's realy happening and why my tubes blow so fast... As I mentioned above, DC caps in some tubes drained the voltage too low outside of bias adjustment tolerance or too high and after some time of idling biasing was not possible. In the result I recapped the units and NO MORE I keep them on without listening.

You can get a Kill-a-watt and see how much energy your equipment draws. It may be illuminating. As for the cost of leaving equipment on, you can compute the draw from your rate schedule, usually published in your utility bill. 60W x 24 hours x 30 days = 43200 watt/hours or 43.2 kW/hours. Here in southern California, the summer rate at worst case (301%+ of baseline) adds up to about 42 cents per kW/h. That is over $18. My Gryphon amps used to draw 500W each at idle; my Lamms drew 300 x 2. My bill was scary plus I was probably using up a lot of water (if a coal plant) which is bad news as we have a water problem as it is.

I have no idea what my carbon footprint is but I imagine it is not good, which is why I try to keep things off, use energy saving light bulbs, turn off lights in rooms I am not in (which is what I learned as a kid).

I have even tried LED bulbs - they work okay but now that two have died before 100,000 hours (or since I have 5, stochastically, 20,000 hours, which is not, however 4 months) at $30 a pop, they are a no go.

All of which is to say that stereo gear can easily cost $50/month or more just on idle. The Lamm pair of amps alone would cost $180 to leave on all day (600W constant).

I do leave my current setup on standby and can stand the $30 or so it costs me for the privilege.