Leave it on

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It used to be standard practice to leave big mixing consoles powered up 24 hours a day, especially in a studio setting. The reason was primarily an issue of warmup time, since the EQ sections do tend to drift with temperature in an analog console. The other reason was that something like a big Neve VR or SSL kicks out enough heat to be a major portion of an AC unit's load, and turning that off on a whim can cause issues with room temperature. In extreme cases, it can lead to major condensation.

Lots of installations leave their amps running 24 hours a day too. At a venue I worked at the power amp racks were all located up near the grid. About 7 flights of stairs to get to, as it happened. Now with the L-Acoustics amps, it's irrelevant since their standby power is about 1W. Even with the Macro-Tech 3600VZs that came before them, there were fewer faults with the amps run 24/7.

In computers (at least that see regular use) with mechanical hard drives, there is certainly good reason to keep them running since 2,000 power cycles can be much worse for a hard drive than 10-20k hours.

That said, it's hard to justify in a residential environment. The issue of warm-up with power amps is probably just an old wives tale that originally came from studios that left all their equipment running.

I have a bad habit of leaving solid-state preamps running, mostly because I forget, but they tend to be a little less violent when they fail.


Most of the time vacuum tube equipment should not be left running 24/7.
 
my sony boombox has no power off switch
it has stand by switch, but the display always shows time, since it has clock and alarm function
never off, only if you take cord out of the wall

my cambridge audio azur cd player has on/off switch on the front, but that is only standby switch too, it still receives remote infrared signal, it has hard mechanical off switch in the back, which is not accessible, and I never used it

i used to have california audio labs cd player, and the only things the switch on the front did was to turn the display on, otherwise the electronics was on from the moment you plugged it in the wall

well, I was not advocating leaving the incadescent light bulb on all the time, I hate it when empty offices are lit all night in every city, you completely misunderstood me, that's ok, you can do whatever you want, I was just pointing out that turning it often on and off will stress the filament sooner to end its life
Edison's light bulb in the museum is still on

you can twist my words any way you like, I stand by my opinions, you do not have to take them

I wasn't trying to twist anything and I agree with you that frequent switching on and off stresses components, I just wanted to point out that keeping things on stresses components as well. For most components, keeping the equipment switched off continuously would be the best, but even that is not ideal as the dielectric of electrolytic capacitors degrades when they are not under voltage for decades. Well, at least you won't notice the difference when you never turn your equipment on...

The Senseo example is of course an example of bad design; something that is meant to be under voltage all the time should also be able to survive that condition for a very long time.
 
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music soothes the savage beast
Joined 2004
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Ideally, audio equipment with lots of power consumption should have soft start. But that would make it more expensive, and likely less competitive.

My 3 dvd players each has switching power supply and power cord goes right in without any switch. Power switch on the front is just standby mode. No way to turn them off. Well, they consume only few watts, still, switching power supply is likely polluting the ac line with some high frequency signal.
 
While some phones might do that from bad design (Samsung...), aren't most caused by cheap Chinese chargers?

That is what worries me the most, leaving on unbranded or dodgy/cheap looking chargers and supplies, had some decent (expensive) equipment come with the most awful cheap dangerous Chinese power supplies that clearly are not approved...
 
Ideally, audio equipment with lots of power consumption should have soft start. But that would make it more expensive, and likely less competitive.

My 3 dvd players each has switching power supply and power cord goes right in without any switch. Power switch on the front is just standby mode. No way to turn them off. Well, they consume only few watts, still, switching power supply is likely polluting the ac line with some high frequency signal.

It's a huge deffernce between turned on and standby. In standby, most of the electronics are powered off. only a few low voltage low current curcuits is powered. and we are talking around 0.5W consumption.
 
Sometimes it is needed for a built-in clock (like in a VCR) or to keep the remote control receiver working, in other cases it is just a trick to get away with a cheaper switch. The portable radio/cassette recorders of the 1980's had a switch between the batteries and the rest and used that same switch when the radio/cassette recorder worked on the mains, simply by keeping the entire power supply running continuously.

Getting back to LED lamps, to give an example of a LED lamp spec: a Philips P45 2W E27 220-240V CL has a specified typical lifetime of 15000 hours and 20000 on/off cycles, so when you on average use it less than 45 minutes, it will never reach its 15000 hours.
 
The Krell Showcase amps do something strange like disabling the output stage but keeping the rest of the driver transistors powered up. Of course it cooks the electrolytic caps to failure after some years.

I saw same solution in Crest Audio PA amplifiers, designed to use for 100V systems, such as railway stations etc. They are running 7/24 during their life. And if no input signal, for 5 minutes, they turn of the quiscent current of the output stage, and turn it on with the first input transient.
Sajti
 
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Joined 2002
I have seen a few horror stories regarding kid sand mobile phones.
They often go to bed with their phone and leave them on the bed while charging.
A few have set on fire and caused injury.

Any fire fighter can testify. In trainings I have seen USB chargers causing fires in bedrooms and cars. At least 1 family dies per month in my country because of this. Why people sleep with their phones under their pillow is also beyond me considering the RF output. One should train kids to properly charge batteries so to charge them 100%, then use the device till the battery is approx. 5% and recharge fully. Of course this only when they are not sleeping. I see the habit is to leave phones charging the whole night which is plain stupid. One can see the same behaviour with electric cars, e-bikes and almost any device that has rechargeable batteries which results in premature worn out batteries so definitely anti-green results.

Proper charging and proper timing of the charging will be better for the battery and better for safety (and the wallet too).
 
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Disabled Account
Joined 2002
That's what one is told when electric cars are concerned. My cynical mind thinks that the tedious charging and waiting is a bit softened for the customer. I recently heard a seller tell the future will be to never charge the Tesla fully. Maybe it is true for electric cars with their high power draw and their specific cells, I don't know.

5 or 10% is not deep discharging when it is about phones I would say?! Normally the electronics won't even allow deep discharging and cut off the load under a certain percentage which is not the percentage the user sees in the screen. Because of this one can still dial 911/112 when the battery is officially depleted. This is done by design.

Anecdotical evidence alarm! -> I compared battery life of iPhone 6s of one that was always charged under usage and/or half to one that was bought the same day and was charged only when the battery was low. The latter lasted nearly 2 more years. I know there are more factors involved but personally I almost never have to replace Li ion/Li Poly batteries of any of my devices where I see laptop/phone batteries that some people manage to destroy in less than a year.
 
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Joined 2018
Step back into "the past" and you'll see civilized society living relatively content in comparison to today.
There were no "battery operated" devices that literally took control of people's minds, souls, and daily routines.


Remember when back at home, people would check their landline-connected answering machine?
I still do that simple non-commited task, if the "message light is blinking".
But not before I put the groceries away from shopping, etc.
Priorities, ya know.....

I keep a healthy balance in life, avoid becoming "addicted" to things, and even firing up this desktop computer is only something I do when relaxing, like reading a book.
You'll never see me "clinging" to some cellphone as I walk down the street, I rarely take it on trips, unless I'm with others that might get "seperated" in big stores, or expecting an important call.


But this current atmosphere of relying on "being connected" and virtually depending on a lithium-ion battery has in a large way turned humans into machines - it's just not normal.
 
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