Mike Cawood, HND BIT wrote:

My late wife's stepfather, W Cutler of Wolverhampton, read in some
mentally deranged hifi magazine that you should always keep the
system switched on, so now the ****** leave it on loud all night and
keeps people awake. If I was his neighbour, I would have made sure
that Cutler was given an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) and had
his hifi confiscated.

Yes... when hi-fi magazines talk about leaving the system switched on
permanently... I don't think that's *quite* what they meant!

Actually there's a lot to be said for leaving your kit on all the time
(if you're using it for more than say 8 hours in a day)... it eliminates
the "thermal cycling" effect. No, this is nothing to do with snake oil
or esoteric audiophile theories. If you heat metal up to 40-50 degrees
it expands, cool it back down to 18-20 degrees (normal room temperature)
it'll contract. Enough cycles and it'll fracture.

Also it avoids the surge current when you power it up. Think light bulbs
- they nearly always fail when you turn the power on. A sudden inrush
current into a cold filament causes a thermal shock. As an aside, the
bulbs for my wall lights in my living room are quite expensive, so I've
wired them through a 'soft switch' which fades them up to full
brightness when you turn them on and fades down to dark when you turn
them off. Practical advantage is that it avoids thermal shock to the
bulbs... and it looks *really* cool!

--
Glenn Richards Tel: (01453) 845735
Squirrel Solutions http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/

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