Gear Warm Up Experiment

Michaels HiFi

Michaels HiFi

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OK Guys - I conducted an experiment (you know me and my love of audio experiments).

I usually turn on my Luxman about 5 hours prior to listening to let it warm up for best sound but with no signal through it. I've noticed that it usually sounds better about 20 minutes after listening starts versus initially.

So I tried an experiment.

I only turned it on a hour early this time and simply played the TV through it immediately up until listening time. And guess what? It sounded better than the 5 hours of idle plus 20 minutes of listening time. It's like the unit (and cables and speakers?) warm up more completely this way.

Anyone else try such an experiment?

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I sometimes only have time to listen to 1 disk and everything sounds completely different between first track and 20 minutes later. Louder, clearer, more detail. I never experimented with different timings.
 
In my experience, there's a component dependency, as well. With my CJ tube gear (which also had CJ's proprietary Teflon caps) I found I need a full hour of warm-up time for the system to "open up" fully. With the Constellation and Lumn, I find about 45 minutes is sufficient.
 
step one - turn gear on
step two - select music
step three - pour beverage
step four - sit back, listen and enjoy (both music & beverage)

by the second Lp or disc and or second beverage all sounds great ! :D
 
I just leave my entire system on 24/7 with music playing quietly. Only times I shut it down is when I'm switching out gear or when there's a thunderstorm nearby. And with the storms, I unplug the system from the outlets of course.
 
Mikado463 said:
step one - turn gear on
step two - select music
step three - pour beverage
step four - sit back, listen and enjoy (both music & beverage)

by the second Lp or disc and or second beverage all sounds great ! :D
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This!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
I have ran this test with various systems throughout the years and found that the sound can vary over the course of 3 days. After 3 days, everything seems to not change much after that. Of course, this is system/gear dependent. If you have MOSFET's in your amps or gear with huge heat sinks, I have found that it can take every bit of 3 days to fully get to where she will fully shine. On some systems, day two actually sounds worse than day one....but on day three at no specific moment in time, everything seems to come into fruition.

The differences can be anything from slight loss of lower registers to imaging, air and spatial locationality cues to the resolution of micro and macro dynamics to fluidity, PRAT and the list goes on. Most of the time, nothing dramatic but changes nonetheless.

The worst offender was when I had an Odyssey amp. That one was decent on day one, I didn't even listen to it on day two (as things were all over the place) and somewhere on day three? Everything just fell into place. No specific time or reason, it just happened.

A friend of mine and I were speaking to each other one day about this phenomenon and we chalked some of it up to the MOSFET's optimal operational temperature. When you turn the unit(s) on, they heat up quickly but lose that sudden surge of power to heat them up. Over the course of time, the heat sinks slowly raise in temperature and at some point in time, reach the MOSFET's optimum operating temperature, which is the temperature they were designed to optimally operate at. When the MOSFET's and the heat sinks are at that optimum temp, that's when everything comes into fruition.

At least that was the theory we were throwing around that could possibly explain the changes over such a vast amount of time. Obviously not the only change but still a change. This was whether or not I was listening to the system during most of this time or I just popped in to see where she was at, at that particular point in time.

Tom
 
From a cold start my Luxman integrated sounds "meh" the first hour too. Experience more than experimentation. I placed all blame on the DAC and phono pre tubes at first but I can warm those up all I want and it still takes an hour.
 
I have found that the system can sound off when first turning it on, improving over the next 30 to 45 minutes.
As most listening is done at night, this works:
Just before starting dinner, the box is fired up; listening is not critical while preparing dinner.
By the time dinner is finished, the dog fed and the kitchen cleaned up, it's two or three albums later and ready for some couch listening.
As W9TR astutely pointed out, this is usually after a bit of stimulus.

Enjoy the Sounds

John
 
billo said:
From a cold start my Luxman integrated sounds "meh" the first hour too. Experience more than experimentation. I placed all blame on the DAC and phono pre tubes at first but I can warm those up all I want and it still takes an hour.
Click to expand...

I agree. Currently I am now turning all the gear and have the TV run through the system for about an hour before listening time and it seems to do the trick.

I also wonder if this help "warm up" (for lack of better terminology) the speaker coils and such themselves as well.
 
Porsche said:
no offense but some of you need to stop auditioning gear all the time and just enjoy the music
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Just curious - why do you care how we get our enjoyment in audio?

And who says we don't enjoy the music? I listened for 3 hours last night with a huge grin on my face enjoying the new tubes in my DAC.
 
MichaelsMinute said:
Just curious - why do you care how we get our enjoyment in audio?

And who says we don't enjoy the music? I listened for 3 hours last night with a huge grin on my face enjoying the new tubes in my DAC.
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alls good and I don't, just making a statement, like someone said earlier, leave it on 24/7, that's what I do, you can only tweak something so much was my point, but to each there own
 
Porsche said:
alls good and I don't, just making a statement, like someone said earlier, leave it on 24/7, that's what I do, you can only tweak something so much was my point, but to each there own
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Yeah - I've heard with NAIM especially leaving it on 24/7 is very important. My NAIM gear took forever and a day to warm up.

We get pretty bad storms here in N.Texas that move in very quickly so I worry about leaving it on should a storm blow in while I'm out. I do think the advice others said about playing music through it to warm it all up for an hour or so is good advice.
 
Even with my tube gear I have recently realized that warm is much faster if I’m playing music even at low volumes while it’s warming up. Takes my system about 2 hours to open up but the tubes in my new REX II amps need replacing so that could be a factor.

George
 
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