Onkyo SC-5509 preamp randomly turns off

[BlueFox]

I have had my Onkyo SC-5509 for about two years now, and it is used daily. The whole time I have had this unit I have had the strangest problem. It would randomly shut off. Sometimes it would work for days, other times it might shutdown a couple of times in a night. I knew it wasn't thermal since it has more than adequate ventilation, and is never warm to the touch. I kept on praying for it to break permanently so I could get it repaired, but it stayed random.

Anyway, I think I found out the problem Thursday night. It turns out that on the remote, right side bottom, is a button marked sleep. If you press this the unit will turn off after 90 minutes, press it again and the timer decrements 30 minutes. So you need to press it multiple times to get back to the never turn off mode. When it is in sleep mode there is no obvious indication, other than 'sleep' displayed in small letters on the display. Unless you put your face right in front of the display it goes unnoticed. Additionally, I usually have a black DVD case over the display to block it. While you can dim it, it can only be turned off in Pure Music mode, but not when watching a DVD.

Thursday night I switched from listening to music to watching a DVD, and for a brief moment the display said 'Sleep 18 minutes'. I wondered what that was and went through the manual and found out about the sleep button. Apparently, I was sometimes accidentally hitting this when I would grab the remote. Since then I have been very careful to not press it, and check the display to be sure it isn't in sleep mode. So far, it has remained on since Thursday. If we make it through the weekend I am going to be reasonably sure that is the issue.

Sometimes I feel that there are too many bells and whistles on some gear. The more features there are increases the odds of some failure, or issue.

[jdandy]

Bud.......Real men don't need to read the stinking manual.

[BlueFox]

True. But sometimes it helps. Especially when something has 10 million features.

[chessman]

Bud, great tip! That kind of stuff drives you crazy. Is there a way to disable sleep mode?

[BlueFox]

I haven't found any way to disable sleep. Last night I started watching Fury, and when I paused to take a break I checked the display, and sleep was on. That button is just to easy to press, especially grabbing the remote in the dark.

I bet that feature is not used by 99.999% of the owners.