We often hear music lovers say that they like to leave their preamp and/or power amp turned on all the time.
What is the point of this, and is it a good idea?
Many listeners feel that their equipment sounds better after it has been turned on for a while. For some equipment, “a while” means 30 minutes, and for some, it means “a day or two”. Of course, all of this depends on who you’re talking to.
What Parts Are Actually “Warming Up” During Warm-up?
Some people believe it’s the tubes, in a tube component.
Others believe it’s the power supply — specifically, the capacitors in the power supply, which are often large-value, high-capacitance capacitors (however this is not true for our preamps… our GreenForce power supply uses less than half of 1 microfarad (< 0.5 uF) to generate the raw B+ for each channel).
And finally, some believe it’s simply the entire component that is getting used to being “on.”
Final answer: Power Amps
Both tubed and solid-state power amps can benefit from being “on” for a while before you engage in critical listening. We have heard some power amps that are ready to go after 20 minutes, some that take an hour, and some that seem to keep getting better over an entire day.
In the end, this is up to your ears.
Tubed. We don’t recommend leaving your tubed power amp on all the time — the power tubes will age quickly this way, and you’ll end up needing to replace them in less than a year. This can be very expensive.
Also, when tubes in a power amp fail, they can damage other parts on the circuit board, and in rare cases can even cause smoke (or flames) so it’s not advised to leave these units on all night if they are not monitored.
Solid-state. Leaving a solid-state power amp on 24/7 will eliminate concerns about warm-up every time you listen, but will add some extra expense to your monthly power bill. This will likely be affordable (only a few bucks a month) unless you have a Class A power amp, in which case the extra expense may be noticeable. At Backert Labs, our president Andy Tebbe leaves his solid-state power amps on all the time, and our CEO Bob Backert does not.
Final answer: Preamps
Solid-state. From our experience, we believe that most solid-state components that use very little power such as DACs, CD players and preamps can be left on 24/7 with little worry that the component will wear out.
Tubed. Tube preamps are a little different, because some music lovers invest quite a lot of cash in their tubes. Leaving them on 24/7 will accelerate the day when they need to be replaced, so we don’t recommend this for most tube preamp brands.
However, if you have a Backert Labs preamp, as we have written here, leaving the unit on 24/7 may have very little impact on your tube budget because we have not observed tubes “going bad” when used in Backert Labs preamps.
We can’t promise that tubes will never fail in a Backert Labs, because (A) you might install a tube that is quite old and used-up, in which case its days are numbered, and (B) just because we haven’t seen tubes fail due to age in our preamps yet doesn’t mean it could never happen.
However — is there a benefit to leaving a Backert Labs preamp on 24/7? Not that we have heard. None of us at Backert Labs do this, even though we want our preamps sounding their very best at all times. We have found that our preamps sound their best very, very soon after being turned on. Some customers have told us they like to give our preamps 20 minutes before critical listening, and others have said things like:
“I didn’t notice a major improvement in sound quality with long warm-ups. The music was enjoyable from the start – so much so that I frequently had to consciously force myself back into critical listening mode to stay on task.” — Rick Becker, in his review of the Rhumba Extreme for Enjoy The Music.com.
Any questions? Just give us a call, or write to us at c o n s u l t @ b a c k e r t l a b s . c o m.
