How long daes it take your gear to warm up?

What is happening during all this 'warm up' time? This stuff travels at approx light speed, so it should not take very long to traverse the inards of your amp. The only thing that warms up is your imagination.

Rok2id yes it does travel at approx light speed, but it does not mean that the equipment is performing at its best! Like I said in regard of my Rotels Ra-1090 without a couple of hours of warm up time the highs are ear piercing and the bass notes lack punch, slam and definition. I believe what is happening during this warm up time is that all the components inside the amps are dissapating heat (and they continue to do so) until they stabilized to what is called "steady state." Thank you all for your comments!

"Mapman, Your SP-16 is not warmed up in a matter of seconds. It has merey stabilized enough to be used."

YEs, perhaps I did not say it clearly, but it warms up enough so that the relay switches on and "good" listening is possible as per ARC design. It only gets better from there. I would not rule out additional "Warm-up" as a likely contributing factor, but I cannot say for sure.

Regardless, I tend to leave it on during the day if I know I will be listening again soon, otherwise I turn it off until the next time to save tube life. Them good performing tubes are rather expensive!

My two solid state preamps (one of which is used as my phono stage, via its tape outputs) are on all the time, in part because they have no power switch. For critical listening I allow 2 hours for my CDP to warm up, and about 1 hour for my tube amplifier. That seems to be sufficient with these particular components.

I can't envision any reason why a component should take longer to sound its best than it would take for all of its internal components to reach thermal equilibrium, unless some kind of re-breakin is occurring following a significant period of non-use. And I would expect that for just about any component thermal equilibrium would be reached in a matter of hours (or less), not days.

Regards,
-- Al

As long as we're on the subject, does anyone warm their equipment up slow like a cold car engine? Or just crank the piss outa' it until you smell the dust frying? I let it warm up with an album/cd or 2 first. I’m always paranoid of frying anything in my system. I absolutely despise sending broken stuff out for repair.
And yes I agree with you Tiofelon, my Krell 300cx does sound a lot better after being warmed up. Really mellows out the highs and makes the bass more pronounced.
-JD