Small-signal tubes are usually rated for about a 10,000 hour lifespan, give or take. They will often last a lot longer, but they start to get noisier and sonic quality does start to degrade. So if you leave your preamp on 24/7, 10,000 hours is reached in a little over a year. If you are willing to retube your preamp every year, then no problem. Otherwise, turn it off when not playing, and you'll probably get 10 years or more of tube life. Power amps are even worse, with output tube life of a few thousand hours and much higher replacement costs.
Is it OK to leave a tube preamp on all the time?
I just recently purchased a used VTL 2.5 preamp that I'm using along side with an Adcom home theater processor. I've had to do this because I can't find a processor under $2500 that keeps me happy for two channel music. I'm currently going from the Adcom processor front pre outs, to the processor input on the VTL, then out to the amp inputs. I connect only my CD player and turntable to the VTL, and all video sources to the Adcom.
My wife has become very frustrated with this arrangement because it's much too complicated to figure out what to turn on and off, and which volume to adjust- so I've had to constantly leave the unit on and turn until the volume so it's balanced with the centers and rears. Does anyone know if leaving on constantly (but without passing any signal through) shortens the tube life? The logical answer would be yes, but I'd like to know for sure. Or is there another way that I can feed both the VTL preamp and my processor to the amp input without losing sonic quality (like a very high quality Y connector)?
Any advice would be appreciated. I know the easy answer is to get rid of the wife, but that's not an option right now ;)
Thanks!
My wife has become very frustrated with this arrangement because it's much too complicated to figure out what to turn on and off, and which volume to adjust- so I've had to constantly leave the unit on and turn until the volume so it's balanced with the centers and rears. Does anyone know if leaving on constantly (but without passing any signal through) shortens the tube life? The logical answer would be yes, but I'd like to know for sure. Or is there another way that I can feed both the VTL preamp and my processor to the amp input without losing sonic quality (like a very high quality Y connector)?
Any advice would be appreciated. I know the easy answer is to get rid of the wife, but that's not an option right now ;)
Thanks!