does your system "warm up" and then sound better?

Rja. Me too. I leave my whole system on all the time. If you look out your window on a clear day and you see an electrical vortex well that is where I live. After about twenty minutes it sounds better to me. I often go back to the song first played after twenty minutes it sounds more like I like it than on the first play. Only my dog knows why.

I turn my stuff off after use. I have found that the caps and the transformer are fresher in the morning and perform much better becasue they are well rested. And as pertains to the speaker crossovers, it's night and day!!

Speakers. Let me take another stab, in case I was being too obtuse.

Think of your car. The mechanical work of making a car go happens in the engine. Engines tend to work better once they've warmed up to operating temperature. You know, friction and tolerances an expanding and contracting materials at different temperatures. Often, the higher the performance, the stricter the mechanical tolerances, and the more warming up matters. Your engine doesn't give a damn if you leave your lights on all the time. Sure lights'll be all warmed up ahead of time, good on ya, but you still have to actually run the engine to warm up the engine.

So, barring a few gross over-generalizations, what's the fundamental difference about warming up speakers even if the standby light on your CDP has been on for nine years? There isn't one. Yes?

Mezmo, nice point.

I think that the warm up period would be shorter, in the mechanical sense (cones, drivers) but when it comes to cross overs, I guess they'd have to warm up like any other electronic device.

Heck, has anyone (hopefully not) considered how long it takes to warm up cabling?
(I'm only kidding!) :-)

All the best,
Nonoise

I could be dead wrong about this, but I think a passive device performs best when cold. I still have no conclusion as to why there seems to be an increase in performance after pausing my CDP. I still suspect it could be the crossovers cooling down a bit in the interim. They can and very often do, get sizzlingly hot. After all, a super conductor has theoretically zero resistance. I leave my SS amps on 24/7 also. But I think the reason they sound their best warmed up is because this is when offset and bias become stable. Not because the flow of electrons is optimal.