Like it says up top. I have a Kenwood AM/FM stereo receiver that I liberated from work about 15 years ago. Still going strong and I want it to stay that way.
I heard some old salt a million years ago say that you’re not supposed to turn off gear like that at night. That it’s better in the long term to just leave them on perpetually and only turn them fully off if you don’t plan on using them for a week or more.
Is this an old wives tale, or is it really better for the amp and components and whatnots to leave it in standby rather than turning it on and off?
This thing was manufactured before I had hair on my armpits and it still sounds great. If it was a human, it’d be old enough to run in the next presidential race.
I’d like to keep it alive forever, if I can. So do I turn it off at night or no?
Heat from the power supply spreads through the chassis. Heat causes component failure, in partcular electrolytic capacitors. Another component that may be in your stereo receiver, like it is mine, are incandescent bulbs, whose life decreases in direct relationship to time on. Other components are aged with heat too, like solid state components.
Your receiver is not old enough or special enough to have tubes ( aka valves in UK ) which definitely sge more with time on.
This is balanced by the effects of heat cycling and thermal expansion, which for most solid state systems is pretty minimal. There is also a mechanical wear given to the on/off switch, which is not to be ignored, if you switch it twenty times a day or something.
So in general turn it on, and use it when you need it.
There is actually a side question too, is it actually off when it is off ? There are plenty of things like TVs and game consoles, where the switch doesn’t completely turn off power, so that the TV has standby power always running to give an instant on. Also stuff that you can turn on with a remote, has standby power. For the most part i’d not worry about that, though it is shocking ( literally sometimes ) how much power is consumed for practcally nothing with standby power.
I have had more electronics fail at power on more often than when idling or during use.
Or, having them never turn on again. Or having some other issues come from nowhere while turned off, so there is that as far as my experience.
My “bro science” rational on the matter is that the surge of power at startup is hard on components. Perhaps the power fade when shutting down too. Plus that on off switch might only be rated for 100,000 uses
Good question. I have a '60s solid state receiver that I leave on all of the time mostly out of laziness and because it’s nice to be able to connect to bluetooth from anywhere and it’s ready to go without having to go over and turn it on. When I first got it one of the channels would cut off sometimes but honestly since I’ve been leaving it always on the problem seems to have stopped.
I also have a 70s Kenwood that I don’t have setup at the moment. My parents had one when I was a kid and then I took it and used it throughout my early 20s and at some point I got rid of it for some stupid reason and I finally bought another one for the nostalgia! Love the chunky switches and smooth knobs on those.
It’s also the first stereo I had where turning the speakers on and off is independent from plugging headphones into the jack. As I teen I experimented a lot with simultaneously cranking up the speakers and listening through headphones which can be a really cool sound.
Before I started leaving it on all the time the on/off button probably saw an average use of about 2-8 times a day, depending on who’s home and if it’s a weekend. It’s the main stereo for the house.
