To Power Off Or Not??

[rmccam]

I just wanted to hear some opinions on whether it is better to leave your gear on all the time or power down nightly?

I have a Mac & Monitor, ProTools TDM, Apogee Rostta 800 Interfaces, Powered Monitors, Outbaord Gear, Headphone Amps, DAT Machines, Mic Pre's (Tube and Solid State), Tube mics, etc. etc. etc.

What is better to power down (nightly? weekly?) and what is better to leave on all the time?

Thanks for the opinions!!


Ryan

[kittonian]

In my experience and with other professionals I've had this discussion with (as well as some manufacturers) it is always best to leave all of the equipment on all the time. The reason? Well, think of it like this. What's the most use you put on your car? The Answer? Going from a dead stop and starting moving and/or turning the car on in the first place. Everything has settled down and now all of a sudden it's getting kicked into high gear and doing all of it's "checks". It's the same thing with a computer. When you shutdown and restart/power up you cause hard drive fragmentation and the components (drive spindles, etc.) have to work very hard.

In today's technological arena, gear has gotten to the point where if you leave it on all the time in a properly power conditioned and grounded state you should be fine. I do however like to let the mic's (the ones with tubes) cool down when I'm not using them. However, that being said, I do let them warm up for a couple of hours before a session so that they are at their peak of performance.

Some gear, like Amek's Channel In A Box, doesn't even have a way to turn the unit on/off. Once it's on it stays on. The only time I shut everything down is when I'm going to be out of town and/or not in the studio for more than a week's time.

Hope that helps!

[Howardk]

For me - Tube gear and extra hard drives are turned off whenever I will not be using for awhile (I have a lot of hard drives and they end up in a big rotation). I tend to leave Video monitors on because the ones I have auto-shut-down most of the circutry when the computer is turned off. My powered studio monitors do the same.

As for the rest - (consoles, computers, amps, analog/digital gear, interfaces) I take the hyrbrid approach. I leave the gear on for days or weeks when the studio is real busy, but shut it all down whenever the studio is going to be dark for a large portion of the next morning or when it will be dark for days. Basically if it is going to be dark for more than 10 hours, it is turned off, otherwise it gets left on. Yes, thermal cycles cause problems, but so does running time - with fans, hard drives, tubes, pluse the more fan-cooled-gear runs the more frequently you need to blow out dust to ensure proper cooling (especially if you have studio cats). This approach greatly reduces the number of thermal cycles, as opposed to shutting down every night, while also trimming off a significant portion of on-time compared to leaving it on 24/7.

[Dave B]

For my home PC (Windows), lately I've been powering down at night mainly because it's connected to the internet. My whole family uses it, so it usually ends up infected with spyware or a virus, etc, every once in a while. The less you have it on, the less likely it can be hijacked.

I know the original poster has a Mac. I've never had a spyware/virus problem with my Mac which is also connect to broadband, but someday this may become a consideration. Anyone have any horror stories about Mac's getting hijacked like PC's do?

Dave.