mulveling, I thought tubes didn’t like on/off cycles.
@inna Maybe, if you turn gear on/off a dozen times every day. Who does that? Or if your component slams full voltage on plates immediately, before heaters have a chance to bring cathodes to temp - but again, who does that? Most hifi gear has some kind of soft-start consideration.
Most small tubes are pretty robust and will outlive our interest in them :) A few duds will emerge, that’s just the way of these things. We audiophiles generally over-worry about tube life & care, IMO. I’ve stopped worrying about it so much, and just turn a tube component on when I want to use it. I have not noticed significant changes in warmup with tube gear (unless it’s a hybrid with transistors in there), but don’t discount maybe some cap or resistor might prefer to be toasty. But I think generally you want to minimize heat on those components - especially electrolytic caps (like 10-years OOP BlackGates)!
For all the concern over tube life, the great thing is you can always replace them! A high end amp using OOP transistors might be SOL unless your manufacturer stocked up well (and is still around to service). Transistors are far from immortal, and in fact they can be a LOT more sensitive than tubes to over voltage and overheating conditions.