Leave system on or power everything down?

It's environmentally irresponsible to even own audio equipment. Sing to yourself.

I hold a traditional belief that electronic components are subject to wear and tear, potentially shortening their lifespan if left turned on continuously. However, frequent power cycling can also stress certain components like relays. My first integrated amp, Harmon Kardon avr25 ii, has served me well for 28 years and still performs admirably. However, the relay may need replacement in the future to eliminate the minor, yet annoying, pop noise it produces when initially powered on.

While I don’t believe this pop noise will harm anything, I’ve adopted a temporary solution to avoid it. I disconnect the negative terminals on both speakers and reconnect them after the amp is powered on.

I would recommend leaving the system on if you use it periodically throughout the day but consider turning it off when you’re done for the day.

I turn off all my equipment when I am not using it. I remember the phase, "I don't work for the electric company".

ozzy

@kingbr Was just hoping to get a consensus here rather than making 4 calls.  Consensus?  This is Audiogon 🤣  Last thought.  We are talking about turning your equipment on/off once per day, not many times.  In that case, heat will do more dsmsge to you equipment over time when its lust left on.  IMHO  

Given some later responses I’ll share my experience with my McCormack amp I’ve owned for about 30 years.  Unless I was leaving for a week I left my amp on 24/7 and had no problems except one blown fuse over that time.  I recently had my amp upgraded at SMcAudio and they said I probably extended the life of my amp significantly by leaving it on — pretty sure Steve McCormack knows what he’s talking about.  I think they mentioned that the constant warming and cooling of electronic components is not desirable and can shorten their life over time and that it’s much better to leave them in a warm steady state.  They believe this so strongly that when they upgrade amps they basically disable the front power switch so that it’s just a dummy light to let others know the amp is on, and to turn the amp off you have to physically unplug it.  Thought my experience and the info from SMcAudio might be of interest, and hope this is helpful.