Do you leave your DAC powered on all the time?

[Ralf11]

I believe you are dancing backwards* -- a computer should be periodically turned off and restarted (to have checks done).  I do it about every week.

 

I don't see a reason to leave solid-state components on or off when not in use.  Power consumption is small and I can hear no SQ differences either way.  

 

The manual for my ARC tube-based pre-amp does say the SQ will improve after an hour...

 

 

 

 

 

* sorry Patti

[Ralf11]

3 hours ago, wgscott said:

 

Sure enough, I was forced to reboot it this morning.  Audirvana became a Zombie process.

 

you must have extended some evil force field northward - ironically, I had to reboot my mac this am to kill the ungodly slowness... and I don't have Audirvana or any other vanas on it

 

 

BTW, Conserving energy will be optimized if you have all your wall warts on a single strip that you can switch off - those transformers are what really suck power in most SS items.

[Ralf11]

you could A/B it with different units (and assume or test unit to unit SQ variation)

 

re caps - electrolytic capacitors have a finite lifespan of about 20 years or so (at least for ones made in the 1980s; not sure re more modern ones) -- IIRC, they will fail even if not used after some time (tho it would seem that heat would shorten their lifespan)

[Ralf11]

re: warm-up process occurs in our ears...

 

Yes, to some extent.  It has been shown that human hearing will accommodate to some extent with repeated listening.

 

I'm not willing to say that is all it is with equipment left on for a minute or an hour.  OTOH, I don't worry about it either.  I turn on the pre-amp, let it blink for its required 40 seconds then raise the volume and turn off the muting.  I just leave the other equipment on all the time unless leaving for a vacation or something.

 

If there is an effect it is unlikely to be very large (especially when compared to interconnects or chickens...)

[Ralf11]

Lightening strikes are for upgrades

[Ralf11]

one more tidbit - OS-X is not a real Eunuch; it is .. um... highly similar and also has a real nice GUI shell wrapped around it -- either could affect the uptime

[Ralf11]

my understanding is that is [a] cloned or rewritten, and has the nice GUI shell

 

maybe I am not grepping the question?

 

just ideas as to why OSX may not have the same uptime duration as a VAX or something running Berkeley etc. 

[Ralf11]

Sorry if I was unclear.  Apple paid for certification, via The Open Group, with Leopard IIRC.

 

My point is whether OSX has anything in it besides AT&T code or BSD code, that could cause greater system instability with longer intervals between reboots.  Besides the GUI shell, userland programs could be culprits.

 

[Ralf11]

Thx for those measurements - I agree the SQ differences are likely nil

 

We still need someone to do a listening test with 2 identical components - one warmed up & one cold

 

for those concerned with wasting energy, turning a DAC (or any other wall-wart powered component) off at the front panel saves nearly nil energy as the wall wart is still powered - you'd be best served by putting all the wall warts on a power strip and turning that off

 

- unplug it for lightning protection

[Ralf11]

label one A, the other B

 

Let people guess which is which - see what happens

[Ralf11]

need more samples for statistical significance