Posted on: 23 December 2017 by ryder.
Analogmusic, I was about to respond to your posts until I read Willy's. I have mentioned before that my experience was inconclusive as it can be due to psychoacoustics or mood swings/blocked ears. Nevertheless, here's my take.
I used to leave my equipment powered up 24/7 - my 202/200 for 8 years and 282/250 for 1 year. I only switch the amps off when I go abroad or won't be using them for a considerable period of time, or when I am comparing the amps with something else.
When the amps were permanently left on, sometimes i felt the sound wasn't quite up to the mark. In those times, I actually wasn't enjoying the music as much. The sound was either too warm or shut-in. I thought it's either the system that's sounding off or I was having a bad day at that time, my own system(organs) sounding off or my ears partially blocked.
When I switched the system off without the intention of doing that on a regular basis, I began to experience something new . The system actually sounded better when I fired it up from cold. It may have some ups and downs within the first few hours, but the sound stabilizes in 24 hours and it just sounds great after 2 days. I do not experience any "significant" difference between a system that's left powered up for more than 7 days than one that has 24 hours on it.
The most important point I would like to make is that the system doesn't always sound great when it's powered up 24/7 and at times, it did sound rather poor for the (possible) reasons as mentioned above. I do acknowledge that frequent reboot of the amps is not recommended, but in my experience the amps really did sound better when they are switched off once in a while.
Instead of switching the amps off once in a week, perhaps I'll make it once in a fortnight or a month.
