Power Up the System - What Do You Do?

My system never popped the speakers. As a matter of fact, I have never tried to powered up the system with speakers connected so I don't really know. I have Krell Amp, 400 watt per channel pushing Wilson Audio Sophia. I learned this technique from Hi End Audio in Atlanta that used to sell only Krell Electronics. During A/B test between two set of speakers - priced over $20K. The dealer switched out the cables without powered down the system. He told me there is tremendous surge of force into the speakers when flipping the amp switch of high current amplifier that can damage speakers.

Now for something completely different. I buy some older/vintage equipment which should "be powered up with a variac slowly". Well the problem is I don't know where to find this particular piece of equipment which I can only assume is an variably atennuated power source. How slow is slow?
BTW I like to go through the front end to amp start up, but leave my equipment in idle when my Mother's voice isn't saying "make sure you turn off the.... you'll have a fire and poke your eye out."

I bought my armaco variac in a garage sale for $20.its good for 20 amps and attenuates very smoothly.built it into a test panel with voltmeter ammeter and dc output as well as the 0-120 volt sockets.Its handy for first tests of projects as well as firing up newly discovered vintage equipment where inrush current can damage old discharged caps etc.you can slowly dial up the volts and watch the amperage at the same time dialing it back down if you see disaster looming.its a handy tool for troubleshooting especialy for those who take liberties with ohm,s law.

As a couple of others mentioned, this sounds like a truly bad idea (to me). A lot of dealers will say almost anything to justify whatever they're doing at the time; I've seen audio salesmen destroy cartridges, power amps, etc. because of ignorance or carelessness. If you really enjoy doing this, go ahead, but if I were you I'd read Fatparrot's advice about 10,000 times before doing it again.......it's exactly the thing you shouldn't do--sooner or later your fingers will slip on the speaker cables or "something" while doing this & you will be a very sad guy........

>>The dealer switched out the cables without powered down the system. He told me there is tremendous surge of force into the speakers when flipping the amp switch of high current amplifier that can damage speakers.>>

After 25 years of being careful I accidently touched speaker cables together last week. Immediately blew the amp fuses but hurt nothing else in my Aragon 8008BB which is quite bullet proof. Nobody is perfect all the time - connecting live eqipument will eventually result in dead equipment.
Gammajo