Amps - On or Off?

[Mark C Flick]

I know a lot of people who turn their amps on and never turn them off. Many others turn them on and off all the time.
Thermal cycling
Power consumption
Voltage stress
Thermal stability
Inrush of current
Component wear
etc. etc.

What do you all do?

I'm a firm believer that the initial power on and thermal cycles are killers so I compromise. Once I turn them on they're on for the day but I don't leave them on all the time.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

I leave my amps on all the time but turn my receiver on and off daily.

My main issue is that many amplifiers don’t provide thump or pop protection at turn on and that can be damaging.

Cheap and poorly designed amplifiers which cool themselves poorly and are built with lower voltage and/or lower temp parts (primarily capacitors) can be damaged if left on all the time. Well built audiophile type gear made with high temp and often higher voltage caps usually can be left on for decades. My Acurus A200 has run continuously since I bought. Only turned off during power outages or when I moved it. I bought it in the late 90’s. It has no issues.

 

[Sonnie Parker]

I turn mine off after every use, never had any issues doing this for a number of years. On average I am in my theater/listening room 5 days a week... but in our great room, it's daily, about twice a day. Just recently replaced my old faithful Onkyo 805 with a Sony AVR, and it never bothered my 805, which I'm holding on to for our cabin if we get it done one day.

 

[JBrax]

I turn my Emotiva on and off with the rest of my gear. I can’t imagine leaving it on all the time? The only thing that remains on constantly is my Panamax power conditioner.

 

[leecreek]

AVR comes on, PWR anp comes on. AVR goes off and the PWR amp goes off. This is for my present solid state equipment. Tubes on the other hand really do not like thousands of heat/cool cycles. At least HF/VHF/UHF radio gear did not. And the FPN-47 and FPN-16 radar gear really hated it. The poor NAVAids boys kept busy retuning the localizer, TACAN and VOR on power interruptions. Lots of fun days in the USAF early '70's for sure. YMMV

 

[AudioThesis]

Amplifiers sound best when they can be left on. The capacitors take some time to charge so to speak and sometimes it can take as much as a day for an amp to settle back in if it is turned off for an extended time. This seems especially true of Class A amplifiers. I've tried 3-4 of these in my home and each one was OK initially but after a day really opened up both tonally and spatially.

 

[Tony V.]

If Im going to be using my theater system every day then I leave just the amps and power conditioners on but if I am out for more then a few days I turn them off.

 

[leecreek]

A UPS in the system? If not, I would suggest getting one.

 

[Tony V.]

A UPS in the system? If not, I would suggest getting one.

I think that depends on where you live and how stable the grid is.
Up here we almost never have power failures even during thunderstorms its quite stable although I dont usually use my system if it gets bad. I do have a UPS on my Projector circuit.

 

[leecreek]

There ya go.......