California electrical shortage audio

craig, very interesting. my electronics manufacturers say just the opposite of yours and mr. vandersteen. that is, you gain nothing by leaving your dac and transport powered up but you do with your amp. i know from personal experienve that my ss amp takes at least 2 hours to fully warm up. that being said, i would not favor leaving any of my electronics powered up if you think you may be in for a black or brown out. I have no scientific basis for this but i've been told by several people in the industry whom i trust that this is the safest protocol to follow.

I usually leave on everything that doesn't have moving parts, like the preamp, DAC, and power amps. I used to leave everything on, but some tape decks and cd players have motors that continue to spin, and then belts and motors wear out too fast. I also have a power conditioner on my stuff since the power is so bad in my area, and I don't like to give up listinging to music during storms just to protect my equipment. I have read that brown-outs can be very hard on equipment like amps because when the voltage drops, the power supply draws more current than normal which can damage the circuits. In general I think its better to leave the eqipment on because it is warmed up and ready to go, but also keeping it at the operating temperature is easier on the components because you don't have the heat up/cool down cycle that can cause components to fail early. However, if your power is not clean, as during brown-outs or electrical storms etc, then you can be doing more harm than good if you don't have protection on the power line.

Hi gentelmen, i live on the island of GUAM. We get power knocked off frequently,along with electical storms. I have my cd plugged into a audioprism foundation 3 and my pass x350 direct.I have not had any problems.I leave everything on or running music thru it 24hrs. a day.
MY pass does sound better i noticed after being on 24hrs.a day and i mean on not in warm up mode. The sound is smoother and more revealing.

There are actually several issues involved here. For one, there is the danger of damage from turn on surges, which is the reason many manufacturers do not even provide an on/off switch for amplifiers or preamplifiers. However, if your electronics -- and especially your amplifier -- have a "soft-start" feature in which it takes anywhere from 15 seconds to a minute to reach full operating power (longer for tube amps, shorter for solid state), this is less of an issue. Secondly, my equipment does seem to sound better when left on all the time, which is what I usually do, but not without a little trepidation. Bryston (manufacturer of both my amp and preamp) has no formal recommendation on the subject. Third, even though all of my electronics are protected by professional/studio grade surge protectors, I always turn everything off during an electrical storm. This decision is based on experience. When we lived in New York, a power pole near our residence was struck by lightning and all of our light bulbs were blown out; and the permanent plug-in plastic night lights used by our then young children all melted. Several of our neighbors lost their well water pumps which were in the on cycle when the lightning struck. A dealer friend of mine lost several pieces of equipment when his store was struck by lightning, and he was using surge protectors. And finally, Sam Tellig in STEREOPHILE reported losing a Bryston integrated amplifier when a nearby power pole was hit by lightning. Fourth, and relating to the issue of brown-outs, when we lived in California, we were once subjected to a very localized brown-out (it encompassed a two-block area) due to a transformer problem and my amplifier suffered very severe damage to the power supply. Obviously, there is no perfect answer to fit every circumstance, so we must each make our own individual decisions. All in all, I personally would rather be a little safe than a lot sorry and thus take the actions outlined above.

I live in LA and have been able to monitor the frequency of the Brown outs with an APC power supply that I recently added to our computer. The APC has a "chirp" alarm that goes off when the power drops. Well, it chirps merrily all morning and throughout the day. It used to settle down after midnight, but this is no longer the case as I suspect that the power company is reducing their power output after that time. The Brown outs are not noticeable to me when I am playing music in that they do not cause MY DAC to lose data or cause anything to malfunction. I suspect that the power supplies on my gear have more than enough juice in reserve to cover these partial seconds of power reduction. I do not however play music at high volume. I now turn my SS amp off in between use to conserve energy (it idles in class A) and do not have standby on my tube amp. I do still leave my DAC and player on 24/7 because they both sound a bit lifeless (for many days) following being powered down for any amount of time. What is the difference between depleting the power supply reserves when playing complex music at high volume -vs- having the power input reduced for milliseconds at a time as far as damage to the equipment? I know that steady low (reduced) amperage is hard on power supplies (and light bulbs) but this is not a "steady" reduction of current (amps and voltage), not yet anyway. I also wonder what effect this would have on the power supply of a power supply/conditioner such as a PS model?