solid state gear- leave on?

When I drive my car, I don't turn it off at every red light and back on when it turns green. But if there's a major traffic delay and I'm just going to sit there awhile, I'll turn it off. Same with my electronics. There was an article in one of the Mags a while back where the author hooked up some monitoring device to his house electricity and recorded 100's of short duration spikes each day. Nothing that killed anything but could shorten their life over time. I'd say, if you're worried about it, look at your lifestyle and turn it on/off during the times you don't listen that much like during the week and leave it on when you do like the weekends. Ah, the comprimise

One issue that does'nt seem to be discussed is fire risk. I am told that one of the commonest causes for house fires is TV's left on standby and not turned off at night. Has anyone heard of fires started by Hi Fi gear left on. I would be worried by my Pass Labs Aleph 3 which of course runs pretty hot in standby, nevermind the 250 watts of idle power consumption. As others have mentioned, we do have to consider global warming and finite fossil fuels. Another point occured to me, if you do reduce your amps life expectency slightly by turning it off, how would that compare with years of higher electricity bills?

A Wavac burned my old house down, why do you think there amps cost so much now??

Just kidding :o)

The only time i've ever seen or heard of gear catching fire was with tubed gear. The higher voltages found in this gear can tend to arc, igniting other components in the path of the arc. SS gear tends to pull higher levels of continuous current when something goes haywire, which tends to blow the fuses.

If i was going out of town for more than a few days, i would shut down my systems. Same goes for leaving the house with very violent electrical storms on the way. Otherwise, i've got 12 SS amplifiers on at all times, along with the systems that they are connected to. Two amps are very efficient and idle cool as a cucumber. Two other amps are also quite efficient, but idle slightly warmer. The other eight are all high bias designs and idle at high temperature. Two of them are Class A up to 50 wpc, two are Class A up to 30 wpc and the other four are Class A up to appr 10 wpc.

The only system that used to get powered up and shut down regularly was my vintage tubed system. This system is currently "down for the count" as i sold my Marantz 8 a while back and am still contemplating which way i want to go with this system. I think i'm going to end up building my own tube amp, but that will have to wait a bit. Sean
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Well designed electronics are not "stressed" by turnon and turnoff. Fifty years ago my tube power amp had a "soft start" circuit. Actually it was just a wirewound resistor with a bimetalic strip with switch contacts on it. The resistor was in the AC power line, so that initial turnon was at reduced voltages, but when the resistor got hot the contacts on the bimetalic strip closed and shorted out the resistor so that full voltage was applied. Must have cost about 25 cents. Nowadays a "soft start" circuit is probably more sophisticated, but there is no excuse for the designer to completely ignore the turnon requirement.

My digital power amps have a turnon sequence which they execute, and it even includes diagnostic checks in the process.