Leave solid state amps on? Or turn off everytime?

Solid state is too broad a category. My Pass Aleph 30 (class A) at idle used far more juice than my JRDG 102 (Ice Power) will wide open. If your Bel Canto amps are Class D as I suspect they are, there is no reason to even think about this topic. Just leave them on all the time. You can tell a lot by how hot your amps get. If they stay cool, don't shut them down.

Danyal711 - Ref 1000 idle power should be in order of 15W. Average power when playing music won't be much higher - usually few percent of peak power (maybe slightly more if you play heavy orchestral pieces)

Danyal711: I can give you an example of the measured difference in a mcintosh MC400 - on but with no signal applied it draws around an amp. Driving speakers on big orchestral pieces with peaks reading 400 watts on the front panel meters the draw goes to around 6 amps.

As to your question about power regulators. First, ripple is not something addressed by a power conditioner. Ripple is the quasi ac component left on filtered dc after rectification, a more proper description is the charge discharge waveform; at twice line frequency for full wave rectification. Power conditioners are used to filter EMI riding on the ac line - and typically to compensate for undervoltages and protect against overvoltages. Check the specs on your equipment - my guess is it will work fine over the range of fluctuations of your line voltage. For example, if your line voltage fluctuates 10 percent or less around the nominal. Do you need one? Depends on your power but probably not. It is wise to have catastrophic surge protection - for dealing with induced lighting for example. But you don't have to buy a power conditioner for that.

If you have a lot of power problems - and they are fewer than the number of line conditioners sold, then you may want to look into a power conditioner, particularly if you have a lot of momentary drop outs. But to really get the benefits - choose one that is sold by a company to businesses to protect data equipment or from such same company for audio use - but get one with fast catastrophic protection and one that will quickly produce a clean ac waveform from batteries in the event of say a 2 to 3 second power drop out - an event not uncommon during high electrical usage times in the summer months. Otherwise just get an inexpensive surge protector. I have never had the need for more than an inexpensive surge protector. One imporatant aspect, if you have your equipment hooked up to an antenna or cable leaving the house, particularly if the cable goes overhead, protect against induced lighting on that antenna or cable line - such catastrophic potentials are much more likely to enter your system via such routes than via your ac.

Musicnoise, thanks again for your valuable input on elec. matters!

Pepe

This forum is amazing. Thanks for all the valuable advice! My amps run cool and I believe they are class D so for now I will go with leaving them on.