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https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl AUDIO FORUMS >> General Discussion and Support >> Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? https://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1601953782 Message started by canonken on 10/06/20 at 04:09:42 |
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Title: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by canonken on 10/06/20 at 04:09:42 In general, for a tube amp (or even a tube pre-amp) - if you listened for a few hours in the morning...had a hours-long pause in the middle of the day (say 4 hours)...then planned to listen in the afternoon, would you ever power it down for just those 4 hours, or leave it on? Question is getting at tube life as it related to wear from being powered on vs. power cycles. My perception is there is NO instance where I would power up in the morning, power down for 4 hours, then power back up later in the day. It is better for the tubes (forget sound quality, just tube life) to just leave the thing on all day, then flip it off before bed. However, I might be wrong and happy to hear your input. I also heard different amps are more or less hard on the tubes when starting up - but even if the amp was 'gentle' I'd still thing those heat cycles would put a lot more wear on the tubes. Don't worry about sound quality for this topic, just curious about maximizing tube life. Thanks! |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by CAJames on 10/06/20 at 12:33:12 There is a lot of magic stuff about tubes that I don't understand, but one thing I do is every hour, every minute the tube is on it is burning the emitting chemicals off the cathode, and those are minutes and hours of tube life you can't get back. So my rule of thumb is if I'm going to be away for half an hour I'll power off. JMO and YMMV of course, but this has worked pretty well for me for a long time. |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by GroovySauce on 10/06/20 at 13:20:23 If I'm going to be around all day I'll leave the amps on all day. The heat cycling is my number 1 concern. The ZP3 signal tubes barely get warm, I can lightly put my finger on the 5AR4 and it's uncomfortably hot, not burning. The Zstage, ZR and Zbox all stay on 24/7 and the tubes last a very long time. Some tube amps are basically space heaters, while the ZMA and Torii MKIV put off a significant amount of heat, they run cool compared to some power amps. Point being is the Decware amps seem to run the tubes easier than other tube amps. Also the amps just sound so good after they have been on for a few hours. |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by Lon on 10/06/20 at 14:52:44 GroovySauce wrote on 10/06/20 at 13:20:23:
This is my practice as well. And man. . . try listening to these systems when they have been on a few days--WHOA! |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by rockrubber1 on 10/31/20 at 16:50:48 Pertaining to break in, do idle hours count or do you need to be actually playing a signal with some volume added? |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by GroovySauce on 10/31/20 at 21:18:14 Rockrubber, For the actual components I don't know. If I had to guess I would say that even if it's not playing music it's doing something, playing music would be optimal. As for tubes. just leaving tube on with no music does burn them in. |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by hdrider on 10/31/20 at 22:17:05 Canonken- I side with Groovy and Lon. Our system is usually on if someone is home since music is generally playing and obviously off if both of us are at work. After work, once inside the house and the shoes are off the system is on. And Lon is VERY correct about having it off for days. Ouch!! We were evacuated because of the CZU wildfires in the Santa Cruz mountains for 20 days and the system took darn near two weeks of regular use to get sounding GREAT again. In fact I have new input tubes landing this Monday for our Rachael and CSP3, just because it's that time of the year. Of course everyone/every system is different. Happy listening, Chris. |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by canonken on 11/03/20 at 00:12:56 Thanks! So sticking with 'once on, on until bed'. I would not leave it on 24/7, but would have no reservations about it going on at 7AM and being on until 10PM. That is what I do with my MC275. Hearing the tubes clicking as they cool and dimming at the end of the night is always a bit painful (not really because of wear, just putting them to sleep). |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by Dunning1 on 12/16/20 at 06:26:27 I took in new data from your article, you are working admirably! Much obliged to you. |
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Title: Re: Cycle a tube amp on/off during the day? Post by Dunning1 on 12/16/20 at 06:28:09 I was searching for a similar data, had a go at doing likewise yet it didn't worked. MyAARPMedicare |
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