Subwoofers: Do you turn them off when you are done for the day?

Sounds like an age old question for a slightly different piece of gear that many of us have been contemplating.

You might save a little money in electricity depending on how much power they draw in stand by.  

Every time you turn on amps there should be a surge of electricity.  Surges can cause wear and damage.  Maybe the amps are designed to survive many surges over decades of use, or maybe not. 

In stand-by there will still be circuits energized, monitoring the input signals to know when to turn on.  How much heat is generated, how fast do the circuits degrade when energized, etc.

I don't have an answer, but the logical entity to ask is the company that designed your speakers.  They would be in the best position to tell you what the speakers were designed for and how to operate them to minimize degradation.   

From my experience, I would turn them off when not in use.  I had a $2500 Paradigm sub that I used for home theater, and we left it on.  A decade later it died.  And the Class D amps inside the sub were not possible to repair.  Just my experience, but that’s what I’d do.  I also have 2 JL Audio subs for my main 2-channel system and I turn them off when not in use.  They are still in operation today.  Standby mode on the Paradigm did not help, obviously.

What should the punishment be and who gets to decide?

I have one cheap sub that doesn’t have an auto-off feature. The others go into standby when no signal is present. Never occurred to me to turn them off completely 

I used to turn my T/9x’s off when not in use. My new Arendal’s have a programmable standby / on-time which is nice. Off and unplugged if out away for a while.