Leaving a gainclone powered on?

[ahanlon]

Hello all,

A big thank you to everyone on this site, I've recently finished my second gainclone and it sounds pristine.

I have a couple of questions about the power consumption of a standard lm3875 audiosector style gainclone: If there is no audio being input to the amp, how much power (approximately)would the amp consume. And following the above, is it safe / a good idea to leave the amp powered on for extended periods of time without input?

thanks again to everyone,

drew

[Bricolo]

That's no problem, a gianclone only consumes a few watts

That's that I did with mine

[pinkmouse]

You could do it, but why bother? Amongst many things I've noticed about GCs, needing warm up time is not one of them.

[XELB]

Originally posted by pinkmouse
needing warm up time is not one of them.

I think that everyone knows that the LM3886 or LM3875 sounds much better when hot

[pinkmouse]

I've quite frequently had one channel of a GC running while I had the other pulled out and on the bench, and when I reinstalled that one back in the amp and ran it up, there was no difference between it and the one that had been running.

[ahanlon]

Thanks for all of the info. I was mainly just wanting to use my ipod as an alarm clock, and to do so I would have to leave the amp on over night. I guess it would be no problem.

Thanks again.

[DragonMaster]

Thanks for all of the info. I was mainly just wanting to use my ipod as an alarm clock, and to do so I would have to leave the amp on over night. I guess it would be no problem.

Thanks again.

The PSU(including transformer) is burning watts when connected tho.

You could put a cheap plug-in timer that cuts the current when you're sure that the alarm will not start.

There are also some circuits that detect what's on the input and start the amp when there's a signal

[komen]

In commercial electronic equipment there is quite tight safety requirements concerning fire hazards. Either fire resistant enclosure or some other protection is usually required. Risk of fire should be taken very seriously also in DIY audio equipment.

There's no need to worry if you have metal enclosure or plastic enclosure made of certified fire resistant plastic and all internal materials are non-flammable.

If you have wood enclosure or anything similar and you want to leave chip amp powered on unsupervised you should be very very sure that there is absolutely no possibility of fire in case of any component failure.

I think LM3875 power consumption is typically around 2 watts per channel without signal.

[peranders]

I think it's a good rule to shut the gear off when you not are using it.