[amnesiac75]

I know the question of leaving your equipment on all of the time has popped up on head-fi forums before but many people live in areas that have few thunderstorms or rain for that matter but for people like me living in the mid-west between the months of March and October its a non stop chance of thunderstorms. I'm considering just taking my chances for the potential audio benefits of a fully warmed up dac.. Any suggestions? Also I do use a good surge protector I'm more concerned with larger surges or brown outs.

 

[westom]

Any suggestions? Also I do use a good surge protector I'm more concerned with larger surges or brown outs.

Define "good".  Some of the most expensive protectors are only electrically equivalent to one selling in Walmart for $10.  This business is full of companies recommended on hearsay and speculation.
 
For example, a good protector makes a low impedance (ie 'less than 10 foot') connection to single point earth ground.  Does your protector even have that always required and dedicate hardwire to connect direct to earth.
 
Obviously a safety ground found in wall receptacles is not earth ground.  Most who recommend protection do not even know that.  Be wary of every reply.  Any honest reply always includes specification numbers that says why it works.
 
Any honest recommendation will always say where hundreds of thousands of joules harmlessly dissipates.  How many joules did that "good" protector claim to absorb?  Hundreds?  Thousand?  Those are near zero numbers ignored by most who recommend protectors only due to advertising.

 

[mikek200]

Although,I'm in the northeast-I never shut off my dac,..
See my profile for the gear I use .

 

[aarontyson]

Some DACs like the Emotiva DC-1 have a "soft off" mode. Where it just shuts down the firmware/software side of the DAC. Leaving power running too keep the rest of the componets/parts warm and ready togo.. It basically has 2 power switches. One on the remote and the main switch on the back near the power cord.

 

[mark-g]

I'm not fully tooled with all the facts but I think APCs line up of computer UPS's offer some protection and they can normally be picked up very cheap 2nd hand etc. I've always used the Smart series and have a big 1500 unit for all my AV gear in the lounge. From what I remember reading there's a few ways of filtering power and the better APCs do an okey job of it.

Sent from my XT1053 using Tapatalk

 

[aarontyson]

To answer your question. I'm not too concerned with the chance of lightning, because I have a whole house surge protection and I use APC power/line surge protection too. The other areas you really need to worry about is the South East USA particularly Florida.. Why because its the Lightning capital of the world.

 

[Happy Camper]

The only sure way to save your gear is to remove it from power. Too much money in gear to be wasted by an act of weather.

 

[classfolkphile]

The only sure way to save your gear is to remove it from power. Too much money in gear to be wasted by an act of weather.

Agreed. I'm in Southeast FL and the storms here can be incredibly fierce. A close strike can fry anything connected to the wall even with surge protection. And a very close strike will even do so sometimes when it's not connected to the wall. I have both whole house and local surge protectors and I will still disconnect everything during a bad storm.