I’m a new DCS Rossini + Rossini clock owner. For those who own DCS DACs and Clocks, do you put your DAC and Clock in standby mode when not listening or leave them powered up all the time? My dealer suggested leaving them powered up 24/7, but I would like to know what other DCS owners do; leave their DACs + Clocks on all the time or put them on standby mode when not listening?
As the new owner of a Bartók, I leave it on standby.
My Naim amplification is left on 24/7, as suggested by Naim Audio.
If away for more than a few days, or there is a storm, then I switch all off.
Basically there is not a great deal of difference between leaving it powered and in standby. As far as I can tell all that is basically happening in standby is the display panel is switched off and it won’t accept input. dCS engineers may know more. HI-Fi News were unable to measure any change in power consumption between the two states in their lab test.
So standby is good if you want to avoid any mishaps whilst you are not present. Otherwise it may assist the ultimate life span of the OLED display.
Switching off is best left for long periods away or electrical storms as David says. Otherwise time is required to reach thermal stability once again.
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Thank you David and Pete for the replies. When I owned my Ayre DAC, I used to put it it in standby when not listening and turn it on an hour or so before I started a listening session. I basically did this out of habit.
The OLED screen of my Rossini DAC remains off all the time, so there is no worry regarding the life span of my Rossini display. I did read the Hi-Fi News review and did see that info on power consumption when on vs standby is the same.
Therefore I will probably just leave both the DAC and clock on 24/7.
You could always check the internal temp, to see if it cools off in standby mode, if it doesn’t then i guess standby mode is pretty much the same as leaving on 24/7
Sorry Duncan but how do you check the internal temperature while it is in standby mode? You need to awake it to see any readout on the display.
We have already established from the HFN report that there is no change to power consumption whether full on or in standby. That can also be used as a simile for temperature i.e. the mean temperature could only decrease if power consumption decreases too ( NB: there are always minor fluctuations due to variations in ambient temperature) .
If you have a separate dCS clock with that little thermometer icon indicating stable temperature you will see that it is normally immediately displayed when recovering from standby ( sleep). If the internal temperature did drop the recovery time would not be instantaneous.
In any case:
Really lol?
If its been off all day and you turn it back on, you then check, it won’t warm up in a few seconds that it takes to check, and if its considerable lower then i would say its going to take a while to get back up to temp, and so be back to full performance.
lol? Unsure where that came from. Not me.
I effectively cover the point you are trying to make in my final paragraph. The temperature from standby to full operation is immediately the correct operating temperature i.e. it has been maintained. That is the reason why you put it into standby rather than switching it off.
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My guess is that the DCS is basically on all the time, even when in “standby mode,” with only the display turned off and perhaps the output muted.
Here is something that Paul McGowen, the head of PS Audio wrote on this topic a little while ago”
“Our products were going to stay on 24/7. There were a couple of reasons for this. First, solid state electronics has a longer life cycle if left on. Constant power cycling stresses components, shortening their life. Second, we knew back then of burn in and warm up time. Left on for weeks and months at a time, our products had a distinct sonic advantage others did not enjoy.
Over time we learned to compromise. A little. Our front panel “power” switch turned off the indicator LED and muted the outputs—effectively rendering the unit off without compromising our values.
Which is why the vast majority of our products still run warm even when “off”.”
My guess is that DCS is probably doing something similar when their products are put in standby.
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Mine are on 24/7 as is the balance of my system, tubed components and anything motorized excepted, even when I go on vacation.
I have a friend who had a 150-disc changer that he kept on shuffle. ALWAYS.
When he was off for a three-month trip to India another mate reached for the off button on the changer and was told in no uncertain terms “not to duck with the shuffle!”
Twenty years later that still makes me giggle 
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Oh yeah, topic.
I put my dCS and T+A gear on standby, and flick it all back on a few mins before I settle down for a listen.
The Keces P8, Perf10, GigaFoil etc. I leave on.
I have changed my regime on this . For many years my entire system ( then all solid state) was switched on 24/7. I then incorporated tube pre-amplification which, as tubes need to be treated as consumables, meant that if not required for a listening session, pre and power amps were switched off but the dCS stack was left on.
However I started to think about that “listening session”. It’s a case of entropy v. thermal shock. I now think of a listening session as including a period of warm up , a period of iistening to music and including any resting period of up to 3 hours before the next predicted period of actually listening to music. So in one evening I would listen to audio for , say, an hour, then watch some TV for 2 hours and then listen to music another hour without switching anything off. So, let’s say I subsequently went to bed. Off with the amplification but it was the case that the dCS was left on. However it might be 14 hours before the audio system was needed again. In fact most of my audio listening is from Friday to Sunday so perhaps 4 days before it was switched fully back on.
So, what did I gain by leaving the dCS on all of the time given that , according to the temperature icon on the system clock, the DCS stack reaches thermal stability from cold in about 25 minutes ( in my particular ambient environment)? The tube gear also seems to need about 30 mins or so to sound at its best. Otherwise I am just using up energy on silence. And as a general principle we all need to husband energy use in ever better ways.
So now I just take the precaution of switching the system on 30 minutes before I want to listen to it. I cannot find much of a downside ( if SS components’ life is shortened I don’t care as they now tend to be so long anyway that I won’t be around to find out as I am in my 70s) , don’t need instant gratification and get an upside of saving on my electricity bill .
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I leave mine on all the time, with one exception. In order to avoid the nastiness that happens with the occasional power glitch here, I turn off the Valor’s internal amps when I expect more than three hours before my next listen. Even with a full solar system, fail-over whole house generator, battery, and excellent protection in the Torus, PG&E still finds a way to deliver an occasional unpleasant surprise. Which is why I am going to keep pursuing Stromtank, no matter how often they refuse to sell to me!
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Sorry to dig up an old thread. Can dCS products be brought in and out of standby/sleep mode by the products of other manufacturers?
My mono power amps are near the loudspeakers while my preamp is next to my listening chair. They are from different manufacturers. My preamp has a trigger output which I wired to the trigger inputs of my power amps. Pressing the “power” button on either my preamp front panel or on its handheld remote wakes it up, which then wakes up my power amps. Pressing it again puts my preamp to sleep, which then does the same to my power amps.
I have a Rossini Player and Clock. A section in their user’s manuals talk about a “Power Link Feature” that does the same thing. If their RS232 ports are in the same mode and are connected via a suitable cable, they be brought in and out of standby mode by pressing the “power” button on the Player or its remote control.
My question is - is there a way for the trigger outputs of other manufacturer’s products to make our dCS gear sleep and wake up?
The simple answer is: no.
However, if you look down the chain of audio connections: either your remote, or an incoming audio signal, does wake up dCS gear, and the remote of your pre does wake up the rest.
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Thank you. I mostly use the network input of my Rossini Player. Is there a way to set it to automatically enter sleep mode when no music is playing?
You mean that you want it to go to sleep mode in between tracks? Or at the end of an album even when you were intending to play another to follow?
Like to your earlier question this unfortunately also has a similar simple answer. No.
I appreciate that the lack of these facilities may cause difficulties if perhaps you have mobility difficulties but if this is the case it may be worthwhile investing in the universal remote as you can at least then put Rossini in and out of sleep mode remotely.
You can do that if you use Roon:
Automatically sleep device
Auto Sleep automatically puts supported devices into “standby” mode if you haven’t played anything recently. And after going into standby, your device can easily be “woken up” just by playing content in Roon.
This setting will work with Roon Ready devices that meet the above criteria, as well as devices from Devialet, Linn, and Meridian. It will also work when an extension-provided source control with the same capabilities is available on the zone.
I really like the auto of feature. Sometimes I forget to turn off the device and it works all the time and it is not needed. I know that not much electricity is used, but you feel better if you know that everything is turned off.
Regards Robert