equipment switched on

I don't know if it's my pre or power or both. It can take two weeks from a brief power down. The NDS seems unaffected. We should go with what our individual common sense, experience and ears tell us.

Power cycling might might have a statistically insignificant effect of reliability - I suppose it depends on what statistics you look at - but for my system and also my PCs, failures always occur at power on. Not frequent but finite. Blown fuses on Naim PSs and mainly HDD and PS failures on PCs. So again, it's mainly personal experience and personal common sense. 

And what's this power on click? I get a bloody great THUMP. I'd be very disappointed with an irritating little click.

Engelbert & Harry you are spot on, so have saved me posting similar. I also find it takes two week for the system to be back fully on song, with the 500 being the worst culprit.

I had a look at the specifications for my television, PVR and DVD and they quote less than 1w standby power consumption. Only the PVR is left on permanently (for obvious reasons). Naim don't publish standby power consumption figures but looking at the specification of similar equipment it is only a few watts per item. Therefore in the great scheme of things we are talking about a relatively small energy wastage by leaving my Naim DAC and PA permanently switched-on (except during long periods of absence).

If I make energy savings elsewhere, e.g. cavity wall insulation, double glazing, loft insulation, more efficient car, take showers rather than baths, etc., then maybe I don't need to feel quite so guilty if I decide to leave my Naim equipment permanently switched-on, whatever the reason.

I am sure that those who claim huge gains in performance from leaving equipment powered up are being absolutely sincere in reporting their findings. Still however one cannot get away from the fact that leaving kit powered up when it is not being used is an absolutely terrible waste of electricity. The argument that it is not a 'waste' because it is necessary to achieve optimum performance does not really bear close scrutiny.

At the end of the day it is a free country (or so they say) and each individual can choose to do as they see fit. I confess that for much of the time when I owned Naim kit I did leave it powered up but I was never comfortable with the idea. My instinct was always to switch off at the end of a listening session. When I get back to Naim I would not buy any piece that I could not be happy with if I turned it off. If I could not find such a piece from Naim then I would buy another brand. Leaving on continuously would now be out of the question for me on safety grounds as well as wanting to avoid being wasteful.

Naim really do need to re-think this. Their advice to leave powered up is totally out of step with modern thinking on energy conservation and could be viewed as rather irresponsible. They are however a company of excellent repute and I find it difficult to believe that what the rest of the world regard as being such an important issue is not being quietly addressed by R & D. Maybe we will see future ranges having at least a standby mode option.

Peter

You'll have to shout up a bit - i can't hear a word you're saying!! 

Hopefully EVAR, your thread will be moved to the Padded Cell soon where it will rumble on for weeks. Just like the last time. And the time before that.

That way the rest of us can enjoy just talking about our naim hi-fi here.

Chris

About the only time when running the music system all the time is "wasting energy" is in the summer season when the small amount of heat generated is allowed to escape through open doors and windows. During the rest of the year the heat output from the powered on devices helps to warm up the house/room and so save having the heating system operating.

Apart from George, who as we all know is of Norwegian stock, and is only really happy when the outside temperature is below freezing and is sensitive to the excess heat from his music system, computer and yoghurt knitting machine..  

Who let the hippies in?

I like to compare it to running a car. If you start it cold and try to thrash it you won't get a lot out of it. Let it get up to temperature and suddenly it's a lot more fun.

Of course I know cars have moving parts and amps typically do not, but the way I see it is it takes a little while for each component in the box to 'sync' with each other, get the electrons pulling together and what not. The transformer needs to warm up, the caps need to charge, the transistors need their morning coffee.

Also I have seen a power switch on a Naim box fail due to over use.

..whilst humming a song quietly to itself, which is far more eco-friendly and energy efficient than switching lots of boxes on in order to listen to music (let alone leaving them on between songs!)

Clever as they are, perhaps Naim are working on stop start technology? Or maybe they've tried it and rejected it.

We all do what we can based on circumstances and common sense. I have a long list but it applies to my personal situation and is not universally relevant. One person’s ideal is another’s inconvenience.  But if there are hermits out there who will cut waste to the bone in situations where perhaps I can’t or maybe won’t, all I can say is thank you for keeping my low energy lights on for a bit longer. I appreciate it. But if you shop at a supermarket don’t preach.

Waste and excess come in many forms. For example, perhaps using a pair of speakers which require mains power when passive will do? No offense intended George, I'm trying to illustrate a concept. We each excuse what we can't do without. Few of us, perhaps none of us own the title deeds to the moral high ground.

+1 Harry.

I think it's important to put into context as Harry has done eloquently. I use my system every day that I'm home and it just doesn't make sense to turn it off as it does make a difference to SQ in my system. I don't leave my TV, AV receiver, Sky Box, second smaller system, computer etc on as it doesn't make any sense to do so. I try to conserve energy as much as possible so I don't feel guilty for leaving the system on. This, apart from time with my wife, is my my daily entertainment. Having a large plasma screen on all evening probably burns more than leaving the Naim system powered up and listening to music is far better than watching the dross on TV. 

Granted that waste and excess do take many forms, and leaving a Naim system powered up all the time is possibly not the most wasteful thing that could be done. But the heart of the matter still remains - consuming electricity when not using the equipment is wasteful no matter how you dress it up. Possibly a nice and sensible compromise would be to switch off at night and then switch on next morning? At least saving several hours of power every day.

But I have to agree that it is a matter for each individual to decide for themselves and to do what they feel most comfortable with taking into account all factors.

Peter

I have a quite new telly (and yes, the old one did go to a good home and not into a tip) which has a fairly aggressive auto standby feature which is switchable. I guess this is part of the EU regulations? It doesn't bother me at all and I've left it active. My last valve amp had a stand by mode which kept things warmed at a low level and (claimed the manufacturers) allowed the amp to be performing optimally within half an hour of switch on from standby. To my ears they were absolutely right. 

I have no doubt that if they are compelled to do so (or even possibly not) Naim will come up with something which preserves much of the goodness unless you kill all the power. This is perhaps of greater interest and importance than things like how many analogue inputs the next range of pre amps should have.

Well if I power up without first switching my ground switch out of my preferred setting I get a blown fuse.  So it's wall switch, Dac, grounding to chassis, XPS, grounding to floating, then my tube amps.  

I now switch everything non-naim off and leave the DAC/XPS on.

Does this sound better?  Well i only went to bed last night because we had a brown out as a fruit bat ran foul off our substation.  Just prior to that I was still trawling my collection looking for new references.  The nDAC/XPS2 DR absolutely should be left on to appreciate the full performance from your considerable investment.  It sounds stunning, particularly with a full Nordost reference cable " loom "and vibration management.  Bass, soundstage, clarity and detail, yarda yarda yarda.  Amazing sound quality.

I have the added constraint that the Teflon caps in my preamp take an hour to really sing and many hours to become truly sublime, yet because they use tubes it is switched off each night.  I kind of like tube amps gradually optimising over the evening. leaving the Naim gear on has no options if you want to truly hear how good my system sounds.

its one more reason for me to get solar panels I guess.  It's only a matter of time now.  I'm thinking its my next, dare I say final,  upgrade.

I agree absolutely. Naim cannot simply bury their heads in the sand over this - it won't go away and will gain in momentum as time goes on. As indicated by others legislation is forthcoming that may directly impact on Naim and force them to address the matter. In fact, as I posted earlier, I cannot believe that Naim are not already tackling things in the background. Like everything they do though it won't see the light of day until they are 100% happy with performance.

Peter

A useful protection from the legislation would be to use rechargeable batteries to keep the system warm when it was not being used. The batteries being recharged when the system is working. This would ensure the system was invisible to the big brother monitoring systems when it was not being used.

A UPS of sufficient capacity would be the first area of research, however the UPS would have to be switched out of the music systems power supply when music was being played.  

I am delighted to report that my footprint is 0.9 planets though I shall continue to make more refinements and savings.

In response to Derek, who noted that I am happiest when there is a frost and hate the summer heat [when added to by my replay at least], he is correct. My nest refinement will be to move my bed into the same room as the replay so as to avoid the wish to heat the listening room at all in the winter! If its bloody cold, I’ll listen from the comfort of my pit!

I am not kidding!

ATB from George

I suspect the embodied energy in the materials and manufacture of the 'boxes' themselves far outweighs the energy in use - 24/7 or not.

G

Another good reason for buying the petite shoe-box models compared to the full width ones then!

ATB from George

Graeme ^ You mean some kind of total life cycle analysis? There's a PhD thesis there for someone

Chris

I suspect Naim will have high level data on this. G