Class A/B. How long does it take, on average, and what changes can I expect after the initial break in period?
They come sufficiently broken-in from the factory. Use it normally and if you notice any changes for the better it'll most likely be your brain adjusting to the new sound signature.
They do not come burned in, so 100 to 200 hours of burn in time is the average. What you will notice is the true sound signature, be it enjoyable or not. The brain never adjusts to unpleasant sounds.
Most reputable audio electronics are soak-tested (i.e. 'burned-in) at the factory in order to allow components which are going to suffer 'infant mortality' to fail. This period is usually a couple days, at least at the company I work for. Electronic components do not generally have a burn-in period beyond testing for early failures. Once a product has passed this soak test, it will sound as good as it ever will. The exception to this is vacuum tubes. Tubes age, and can have differences in electronic and mechanical aspects. However all the other support electronics such as resistors, capacitors, transformers are not subject to changes over time and do not need to be burned in.
Never heard solid state gear burn in, seems to be one of those things illogically carried over from tube-only days of HiFi.
Capacitors and other components inside an amp have burn in period. Changes in sound characteristic don't measure, but they can be heard. You cannot measure everything. If you don't believe, you haven't heard it. I heard it on most of my gear.
What you are saying does not hold up to reality. If there were some mysterious 'non measurable' factor in passive components like capacitors, our modern world technology would cease to exist. Space probes intended to impact one asteroid might just decide on it's own volition to crash into some other un-related object instead. Our cell phones would connect us to random people when we dialed a number. Yes, complete audio electronics can have an audible sound signature, and no, we cannot measure all of the reasons this is so (the biggest elephant in the room is that we cannot test objectively with complex material like actual music - null testing is inadequate). If you're hearing 'capacitors' causing changes in your system, I would bet that the difference is attributable to something else. I have over 50 years of electronic design experience specifically in audio, and I have yet to find a single instance where a properly specified capacitor, resistor or other passive component can cause measurable or audible changes in performance over time. It just doesn't happen. The one exception to this would be improperly specified/implemented passive components such as the resistor which is dissipating far too much current as heat, or an electrolytic capacitor which cannot form properly, or is the wrong capacitor for the application. That's on the designer of the electronics to do a better job.
Never heard it in my 25 years of buying solid state gear. Not once. Ever. It’s more likely the music you’re playing, your mood, what you’re focusing on or the music you’re playing. The mind is a powerful thing.
You completely missed my point. I am not hearing/listening capacitors or any other EC in my amps. Sound characteristics of all my newly bought amps were changing (to various degrees) in the first x00 hours of their operation. I know my equipment, have a very good hearing and years of experience in listening music/audio equipment.
So how do you know it was the capacitors? Just you guessing that is the cause? I don't doubt what you're hearing, just the attribution of capacitors with such certainty.
Hi, have you bought a new amp, what is it, the Cambridge? I think you can expect the sound to get smoother and probably the bass to increase but I would not be expecting any night and day change. Is it harsh, excessive treble what you are getting?
Replacing the coupling caps, and only the coupling caps, on the tube output section of my DAC was very noticeable, in a bad way. High frequencies sounded gritty. Everything was harsh. Gave it several days of run in and it was back to making magic, even better than before. I have never experienced any kind of resistor or transformer burn in. Replacing a transformer is instant gratification. Only things I've heard with my own ears is capacitor burn in, tube burn in, and speaker burn in. Tubes and speakers make sense. Capacitors, not so much, but I have heard it I'm willing to admit it could be in my head, but the caps in that DAC changed so dramatically that it's hard for me to dismiss.
I do not know if it's just capacitors. I have read some papers/articles on the particular topic. To reiterate. I am not attributing the change in sound to any specific component. Regards
Different types of capacitors for instance can have very different sounds depending on where they're used. For instance I use paper in oil vintage military capacitors in the coupling stages of my tube amps specifically for the way they color the sound. I use polystryene capacitors in my electronic crossover for the frequency determining circuits because they are extremely stable and are very unlikely to color the sound. Dialectric absorption is the major capacitor specification which impacts sound. Oil capacitors have a high dialectric absorption and polystryene are very low.
500 hours or whatever the manual states. With some equipment I've heard drastic improvements, in others nothing.
I would say rather than worry about break-in, which I think does exist to a certain extent, just listen and see if you can hear any changes as you listen longer. It should be a fun process rather than some cut and dried number of hours.
Curious what the manufacturer of the ops amp recommendation on whether his kit needs a break in period or not?
THANK YOU DR.Z! I concur, speakers and amps do imo, stabilize after being on for hours after you getting them into your system. Folks who are naysayers, you’ve got to realize that EVERY STERO SYTEM IS UNIQUE. Therefore even if they’re burned in at the factory, there is STILL an interaction with a specific stereo system and ITS GEAR that the electronics have to get used to. So , yes, In My Experience with MY gear, everything from CD players, DAC (like the bitchen RME ADI2 DAC I JUST GOT) to speakers, yes it takes time for the SOUP, to cook and find the “Blend”. Sometimes it works and you have good sound, other times …ooops. Something is Really wrong. But I’ve done this so many times cause I’m a gear whore, that it’s not my imagination. I distinctly remember getting a Onkyo Cd 7000 player, and putting on the Stones “Satisfaction” which is my FIRST song I play on all my new gear. I’ve listened to this song since I was 12 years old on numerous stereo systems, I KNOW what it sounds like , the initial listen was horrible, the bass was something I’ve never heard before, like the speaker was farting, not being funny. As the days went by, every day I noticed a “tightening” of the bass until the third day, and then it HIT. If it was just my ears I would have acclimated to it in an hour, but I listened over 3 days and heard it “breaking in”. I know enough about sound being into this since I was 7 years old. I’m not high on “fooling” myself, just look at my threads and posts, the recent one being the tragic journey I went through with that damned Rotel integrated amp. Guys, I Wanted so much to love that thing but it just sucked schiit in my system, absolutely no synergy at all……so I “flipped it” for a $ 600 loss after only 3 months. So that’s my experience with this. Not a fallacy, real, for me. Over and out! BeaVe
I don't know about their amp, but Paul from PS Audio seems to believe in it. They burn in their products for the sound, as well as quality control.
Don't any of you find it strange that electronic components are so smart that they know which direction to sound when they break in - they always sound better. How many times do you hear about a component sounding worse after break-in? Food for thought....
Curious, do you believe in warmup effects? I have seen a member in another forum sharing a chart that track a DAC output voltage output overtime, when given same signal. If I recall correctly, it drift up slowly for a few days before eventually stabilized. Why? If a dac can do this, can an amp do this too? Slowly increasing output slightly overtime, when given same signals? If that is possible, then the slowly increase output can explain why most of the time, the amps tend to sound better overtime? I have read that people tend to associate slightly louder as better....
An illustration partially showing dielectric changes reverting back after a capacitor has been unplugged: from: Aluminum electrolytic capacitor Recovery Voltage | Nippon Chemi-Con Corporation There are even better graphs along with a theoretical underpinning starting on page 353 here: https://indico.cern.ch/event/897769...3376768/Broadband_Dielectric_Spectroscopy.pdf This has a graph of the effect of storage temperature on leakage current: https://www.mouser.com/pdfDocs/UCC_ElectrolyticCapacitorTechnicalNotes.pdf
