Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Leaving Audio Gear Powered Up

I remember reading an article some time ago (on some audio forum site), which advised leaving your audio equipment powered up at all times (unless you had a class A amp, don't recall the specifics to this exception). If memory serves me right, the reasons/benefits stated were as follows: 1) prolongs the life of your gear (citing the example that a light bulb filament will burn out faster with repeated on-off's, due to heating/cooling and expansion/ contraction of the wire), and 2) you don't have to wait for the electronic components of your gear to "warm-up", when power is kept on.

I know some gear has a "stand-by" power supply (my older JVC system has this feature), which I assume is designed for the reasons mentioned above, without having to have leave the system fully powered up. My new gear does not have a stand-by power feature.

Any thoughts or opinions as to whether there is any merit or harm to leaving audio gear (without the stand-by power feature) always powered up?

Cheers.

So, yes, any electronic component ages quicker when you power it on and off, espeically very quickly, when the capacitors couldn't discharge yet. Some solid EE can surely explain this better. Also, all Hi-Fi stuff I got has a standby.

As to quality, the only difference I realized is on the poweramp and I keep it up all the time unless I go away for 2-3 days. Even class A today is mostly A/AB biased so it only burns 20-30Watts with no signal. That's just like leaving a light bulb burning, no big deal. My amp needs 3-4 hours to suck up enough into its capacitors and if run cold, I realize it's kind of 'restricted', bass is a little back and on acoustic peaks, it's not as clear as I'm used to. There is a simple explanation for the fact, I have about 250000mF [when turned of, the Odyssey logo still stays lit for 15mins or so ;-)] in my monoblocks with peak of 60Amp per channel. Normally, 20Amp fuses are max in apartements, so the amp needs time to suck up the capacitors full to be able to push the peaks. That takes time.

Damn!

I guess I should apologize to all the people I got mad at for leaving my Denon on for hours and hours when not using it. I thought that was a bad thing....

thanks for the info!

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1) prolongs the life of your gear (citing the example that a light bulb filament will burn out faster with repeated on-off's, due to heating/cooling and expansion/ contraction of the wire)

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By what amount of time is the life of these electronics lessened by such a practice?
I highly doubt it is in the years category and a light bulb filament is far more fragile and PHYSICALLy prone to breakage than most wires in your electronics making this a feeble analogy (but sounds convincing to the brain).

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and 2) you don't have to wait for the electronic components of your gear to "warm-up", when power is kept on.

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And the audiophiles say warm up does what?
Change the audio quality to the extent that you should consider buying blankets and a bed warmer for them?

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Any thoughts or opinions as to whether there is any merit or harm to leaving audio gear... always powered up?

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No merit except for the constant burn of electricity across the nations home electronics sucking up an already taxed power grid. Save the natural resources and turn off your electronics. I highly doubt you will notice any difference.

Chess, how would you account for the fact that many manufacturers build in stand-by power supplies? For what purpose then? I remember the computer techs at work also advising us to leave our systems on stand-by versus full shut-down daily, for the same reasons given in my original post. So there must be some merit/benefit to the electronics /components, leaving the system at least partially powered-up, no?

Cheers.

(long time lurker, infrequent poster)

Basically, I feel it's a wash as to whether it is a benefit or not.

In an ideal situation, the electronics will last much longer if there is no thermal cycling _and_ if the source (power supply) is consistent. So one might be tempted to leave electronic equipment on all the time as a benefit.

But in the real world, the line voltage is susceptible to overvoltage transients and brownouts which both can have a negative impact on the lifetime on any electronics running off the line. So if you power off half the time, you may miss half the transients invoked by thunderstorms, etc.

Another factor in the equation is the mechanical apparatus, if there is any. Most mechanical devices, such as disk drives, will last longer if they aren't running all the time. The constant friction will wear down the mechanical pieces.

So there are pros and cons to both sides of the story. As far as myself, I leave everything on all the time through surge supressors. And I keep backups of everything on my computer, and consider the disks expendible .

Joe, yontz has made some good points that i also agree with.
Leaving electronics on/off depends a bit more on the component type within the unit. The more moving parts, the faster the unit may have wear and tear, the more often you may want to shut it down. Although receivers do not have many moving parts, wear and tear will still be caused by running power through the circuits, wires, transistors, resistors, etc. Electronics can burn out over time. I had the capacitors blow on a one year old motherboard of mine just recently (i think i still have the pics). The seemingly short lived plasma tv screens (hours of potential use compared to other tv technologies) is another example.

I believe that standby power idea is partly designed for static issues and mostly designed for user convenience. I know that upon startup you have a quick surge of electricity to the unit whereas a standby mode maintains a mild flow thereby eliminating such a fast burst to the 'cold' components (this is a rather general statement so take it with a grain of salt).
However with todays rather robust components, surge protecting equipment, i don't think this is much of an issue. We used to have an old B&W tv when i was younger that would make a disturbing snapping sound upon turning on the power knob.

The other half of this standby use is user convenience.
What is the convenience? Units take more TIME to startup from the 'cold' state.
Yee haw.
So it takes another minute or two for our laptops to boot or our receivers to initiate or the tv screen to popup. My Panasonic DVD player has one of the slowest startups i've ever seen. My win2k computer boots faster than my DVD player. Do i care it doesn't have a standby mode? Not really. It is annoyingly slow but for the amount of energy it burns when it is turned off, i'm satisfied.
At least the standby modes have tried to be more environmentally friendly by reducing the power usage of the item when idle.

As for the computers in standby at work, you cannot make the comparison. IT managers often run system updates overnight and may require access to your computer waking it up from standby mode over the network if it needs the updating process.

However my original statements still stand. Leaving your home audio equipment on is a waste of energy (although you may not be able to circumvent the standby mode on some units short of using a power bar and clicking the bar switch to off).
If there is no use for the component for hours on end, save the electricity. Two hundred million receivers/audio components across the US will burn quite a signficant amount of energy if left on 24/7. I know all too well how that is a far more important concept than leaving one's units on for "best quality sound at one's convenience".

Manufacturers include a stand-by mode so that we lazy and impatient users can use a remote to power the devices on!

A couple comments regarding prz's post:

The claim that your amp requires 3-4 hours to fully charge the capacitors is bogus. Sure, it may sound better after 3-4 hours of being turned on, but that's not because it took the capacitors that long to charge. The reason it sounds better is that the components have reached a more ideal operating temperature (i.e. warmed up).

However, much like batteries don't generate just because they hold a charge, capacitors in an amplifier do not generate heat when they're not being used. (They will generate some heat while they're charging, though.) You have to actually be using the amp (constantly charging-discharging the components) to warm it up sufficiently.

Last comment -- I promise:
The output current of your amp (60A) is not limited by the current of your household circuit (20A). The transformer in the amp steps up the household current to the levels required. You can see that the input stage on the amp draws much less than 60A by taking a look at the fuse rating on the back of your amp.

Gentleman (chess, prz, ravi, yontz, pm), thanks for the responses/info/opinions...interesting and much appreciated.

Joe