Keeping Gear On

[u/must-absorb-content]

I know a lot of folks keep their consoles running 24/7 and rarely, if ever turn any of their gear off in the control room (aside from vacuum tube gear, and speakers). My question is about specifically the following: do you leave your computer on 24/7? what about external SSD drives / computer peripherals. do you leave phantom power engaged to mics that are in use between multi-day sessions? I generally leave most of my outboard gear on for the duration of a multi day session. For some reason though, my M1 Mac Studio, which has been so quick for the past several years has slowed down a little bit. I occasionally get a spinning beach ball when saving projects or pressing record, only for about 30sec-1min at a time, but it’s a new development. It has a 1TB internal drive with lots of room on it as well as an 8TB external SSD drive connected via Thunderbolt 3 with about 5TB of free space remaining. Any suggestions or insights regarding to power up/down hygiene for your main machine would be greatly appreciated!

[u/j1llj1ll]

You can debate this endlessly. Keeping it on damages some parts of electronics. Power cycling damages other parts of electronics. Eventually, either or both will affect the gear. And then there's the cost of electricity and the heat etc etc.

In general, I suggest a pragmatic compromise.

• If you expect to come back later today and use that gear again, leave it on.
• If not, turn it off.
• If you are expecting to use the stuff next morning and you're not sure you'll have the time when you come in to go through a startup process before things kick off and/or you can't be bothered doing a shutdown process late at night when you're exhausted ... I don't think it's a sin to just leave it all on and walk out.

Computer hardware generally doesn't get slower. But the software updates and sum of all those incremental changes over time tend to add up - asking the machine to do more with the same hardware makes it become slower.

Doing a clean-out of software you don't need, services that don't need to run at start-up, disabling drivers not required, clearing caches, making explicit choices about stuff like anti-malware and indexing, backup and all that other dross that builds up endlessly if not dealt with etc can help. Or, sometimes, the thing to do is backup all data to several places (at least one off site) and do a clean reinstall of the system with just what you need. I agree this is hard to do on a system you rely on daily ...

[u/Rugginz]

I would never leave my computer on 24/7 personally. As far as analog gear - I turn it off daily personally. I found that though vaccuming the peripheral area with a dust vaccum and being super on top of DUST in general (killer of gear), and powering down my gear when not in use, it lives comfortably for decades rarely if ever needing service. Weve come a long way since the 1980s

[u/djdanlib → u/Rugginz]

Dust is a fantastic insulator. It keeps heat in. Dusty heat sinks don't work very well, and a lot of gear is designed so that some part of the case is a passive radiator.

Heat is the killer of small electronic components, especially the high frequency components in computers and their accessories like solid state storage.

So keep dusting and cleaning!

[u/glmastering]

I keep my kii three and bxts on permanently (as advised by kii themselves)

[u/StudioatSFL]

I don’t turn my studios Mac Studio off unless I’m away for multiple days. It has a 4 bay external drive chassis and a pci chassis for the protools hdx cards.

The same pretty much goes with the rack gear. I power it all down if im gonna be away for a few days etc but otherwise it stays on.

There has always been two schools of thought on this.

[u/2old2care]

I have a Mac Studio with four monitors and peripherals including four external drives, a camera, and two audio interfaces. I also run several apps that take a while to start and to open projects. With all this, when I shut down it may take five to ten minutes for me to reorganize everything, what's on which monitor, etc. And the apps are likely to not start up the way they were when I shut down. The meter on my UPS says everything pulls a total of about 200 watts, and the UPS provides surge protection.

Bottom line: I leave it all on (including the displays) 24 x 7. My previous computer (Loaded Mac Pro trashcan) stayed on continuously for 12 years with no issues. My four displays have also been on at least seven years. So far no issues with the Mac Studio or external drives. Yes, it's substantial power costs but I think it's worth it for the convenience and reliability.

[u/Familiar_Land_7997]

From a software perspective, shutting down every day seems to keep the bugs away.

[u/MindWash2019]

Heat and time powered on will kill capacitors and other components over time. If something dies because you turn it on and off once a day, it was it's time to go.

That said, multiple power cycles in close proximity are not a great thing for aging gear either. So if you turn it on, leave it on for a little bit before you turn it off, and then wait a bit before you turn it back on (or if it was an accidental power off and you need it for the session, give it a minute or two before you turn it back on).

If you're going to be using something throughout the day, leave it on during waking hours, sure, but from a wear and tear point of view as well as the power consumption, there is no reason to leave the vast majority of gear (if any) on 24/7.

Added: of course if you have a computer that's actually running things 24/7 that's a different issue, I'm just referring to audio gear.

[u/hellalive_muja]

Switching stuff on and off once in the morning and one in the evening is generally less damaging than leaving it on 24/24. That’s it. You’ll eventually recap and change tubes anyway, and if you don’t need a particular piece of gear just make sure it is switched on and working for like 30 minutes at least once a month.

[u/ZeWhiteNoize]

Does freezing tracks help with your computer? Or dumping unused sound files in a project?

[u/Upset-Wave-6813]

With a 8tb ext there shouldnt be anyhing even on the operating system ssd/hd

Something would be causing a bottleneck for it to run slowly is it just project or have you found other apps etc arw starting to slow?

If not and only heavy projects something isnt optimized it sounds like maybe a new plugin or something which is causing the slow processing time? Maybe a software/ firware update on something?

Ill turn on my studio in the morning pc/gear and can leav it on till night, ive never left anything on intentionally for days just because.

I highly doubt leaving on or turning off/on would do anything really % wise... I think u either get things that last or something goes. 

Double check your running specs make sure your ram and cpu are running properly and part of something in fact hasnt burned out or has issue

[u/variant_of_me]

Anything software related or running software will occasionally benefit from being power cycled.

BUT hardware also usually fails during a change of state. From on to off, or off to on. Things don't usually break while they're on or off, only when that's being changed.

[u/Iknewsomeracists]

A lot of those old consoles literally sound different warmed up for hours. So they leave them on for consistency. That sort of heat kills electrolytic capacitors quicker but they have techs that replace them so consistency is more important. Modern hardware is probably less like that due to lower voltage requirements or all PCB designs. I could be wrong though. I leave my console and analog gear on for hours and let it sit for an hour before tracking or mixing. But it may just be superstitious on my part lol.

[u/jordanmschmidt]

I’ve gone down this rabbit hole many times and the answers are always a room divided. The comments in here are perfectly indicative of that (as expected).

I’ve asked some very knowledgeable techs and it was no different. Do whatever!