Quote:
Originally Posted by Raptor34 
When stacked, both were very warm. Guess if you do stack them, the amp should be on top.
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Meh. I like the amp on the bottom for taste reasons. As long as the amp isn't to hot to comfortable handle it's fine. Hot electronics (to a point) work better. At some point though, lifetime degradation of the electrolytic caps is the first issue that crops up as the amp gets too hot. I recall Joe saying something like every 10 degrees C over about 90F halves the lifetime ... roughly. I seem to recall that at 150F internal temp the degradation half life of electrolytic caps was something like 10 years --- continuous running. So maybe 20 years of heavy use.
Numbers are rough, but we found the Ultra Micro was well below the problem.
BUDA is closer to the line, but I still put the amp on the bottom and the DAC on top. I just make sure to turn off the units when not listening. Yes, it might take a little while for it to warm up (1/2 hour) but extending cap life by a big margin (to maybe 30 years to 1/2 cap life roughly) by not running it all the time seems easily worth it. I don't hear much (if any) difference with the gear cold vs. hot.