electrical? ok or bad to turn MPC on/off from power strip

scenario:

leave MPC power button ON
turn POWER to MPC on/off from power switch.

is this ok or bad for the MPC in the long run? is it different from turning on/off an MPC from the onboard power switch?

This isn't a direct answer to your question but it may help. I was involved in a lengthy thread over at Cakewalk forums about powering up and down studio monitors (bear with me here). The conclusion to that discussion was that if you are using your studio every single day it's better to leave studio monitors on ALL the time because certain components within the monitors power suppy are subject to going bad when power supply heats up and cools off ....they went on to say that- if you use your studio every couple of days it would probably be better on your electric bill to turn the monitors off when they are not in use. During this thread I took the opportunity to ask these guys (who seem to know what they were talking about) it if would be ok to turn my monitors off via an electric power strip as oppose to reaching behind the monitors every time to turn them off and the answer I got was basically "yes it works out the same as if I would use the monitor power switch". I've been powering on and off my monitors via power strip ever since and I haven't had any problems. So...I hope that helps.

^^^^

agreed, Most of the time when I worked for a company with a lot of gear, we just power stripped everything and after two years I never saw a problem and the older guys said they were doing it like that forever. Doesn't mean its right, but I never saw an issue with it.

I would think the end result will be the same... you're just leaving the switch engaged and killing the power further down the line.

it should be fine as long as the device has a physical switch... but if it has a shutdown feature or a soft off then that would not be good... when the device(s) are not in use actually it may be beneficial to turn off the power strip regardless of whether or not you used it to shut off your equipment.

Speaking as an Electrician, I'd say it's fine.
The only problem you may have is if very high wattage items are also plugged into the power strip and it's all switched on together. eg. A large power amp with a high start up surge. This could potentialy cause a brief voltage drop which may not be good for the mpc when it's booting up (particularly if it boots from a floppy).
However, if you had a fairly modern power amp, it would probably have a soft start and not cause a problem.

Hope this answers your question Nym

*Pilchard* wrote:The only problem you may have is if very high wattage items are also plugged into the power strip and it's all switched on together.

Im no sparky but that's what I thought too.

Sometimes you also have stuff that needs switching on in a particular order (ext hard drives, digital mixers, active monitors) so for me gear gets power in a preset order depending on the setup.

Interesting thread Nym...

awesome everybody. that helps a ton.
upright, thanks for also telling me about the monitors, i've been turning those on/off from the power strip for ages. good to know it's ok.

this is MPC1000XL related, for those that remember that concept from a couple years back.

I turn all my gear off from a power center/conditioner. One switch turns my whole studio on!