When to power off a tube amp?

I own a Lyr and love it although it's had about 8 hours of use since it was new. I let it warm up for about 3-5 minutes. You can't hurt the tubes by listening immediately. If I'm getting up to prepare dinner and plan to continue listening later it stays on. If I'm not going to listen for another hour and a half I shut it off.

I personally would not run this headphone amp with extremely expensive and rare tubes. I'd do that with say a high end all tube unit, but not the Lyr. No reason other than why spend half of what the unit costs on tubes? I'm sure there's plenty of great sounding tubes that aren't as rare or expensive. I still run stock only because I barely use the Lyr to justify owning it.

Highroller, whenever this topic comes up there is disagreement. I haven't seen one of these discussions come to an agreement anyway.

Personally, I think the preponderance of the evidence indicates that you should turn your tube preamp off if you are not going to be listening to it within the next two hours.

You want to avoid turning it on and off several times a day also, but to let the tubes burn for hours while not listening is just using them up with no benefit. Turning them on for 10 or 15 minutes of listening doesn't make sense either. If you want to listen for a few minutes use your computer.

If you are using inexpensive current production tubes, leave them on all day and have a spare set handy. Put the new ones in every once in a while and when the new ones sound better than the old ones, leave them in and order another pair.

That's my opinion. I would call the people at Schiit and ask them what they recommend.

Highroller -- good question ... good questions all. Let me summarize the opinions given above. Let's see ... uuhhm, exploding tubes, out-of-control tube oscillations taking out speakers, fire hazards, shortened tube live if tubes are turned on and off ....

I finally get it. Boy am I dumb. If you own tube gear, the best way to avoid all of the these hazards and perils is simply not to turn on the system. Or, ... dump the tube gear and get a Phlame Linear 400, or just plain ole' SS gear. Anyone looking to buy ARC ref level gear??

:( :( :(

This thread gets my lowest rating. 3 unhappy faces.

Cheers,

Bruce

I had a NOS JAN Philips 12AT7 flame out in my Jolida last year...harmed nothing, replaced both 12AT7s under warranty (thank you thetubestore) with nice matched CV4024 Blackburn Mullards, and have been living happily ever after. I don't leave the amp on when I'm out, and turn my entire system off at the end of the day or if I'm gone for more than a few hours. The NOS Mullards do provide an entertaining flash on startup, and I don't think new (current repros from New Sensor) ones do that...at least the 12ax7s I have in a guitar amp.

@almarg on the issue of leaving or not leaving equipment powered up, are you suggesting that there is no sonic advantage to be gained from leaving any equipment on except those containg a DAC?  While I have not empirically tested the assumption, I have a sense from experience that leaving gear continuously turned on or at least on standby (all SS until very recently) yields more satisfying listening than shutting all down and starting cold.  This of course comes at some expense both in electric bills and presumably life of equipment.

Also, relevent to this thread, I recently purchased a little hybrid tube phono pre and have been wondering about the logic of warm up as it applies to both tubes and solid state circuits in the device.  My experience is that longer warm up for solid state devices and cable looms yields more better listening to a point, but advice here says for pure tube devices 10-15 minutes should be wholly adequate.

Any insights appreciated.

kn