It takes music to open up a tube preamp/amp


I'm wondering if anyone else is having the same experience with their tube gear... I have a CJ PV-14L and a MV60. A number of times now I have turned on the gear about 30 min. before I sit down to listen. As it states in the manual.. the sound will improve after 30 min. I initially thought it just need for the metal inside the tube to get warm to lower the resistance. I'm now thinking it takes 30 min of music... I've been digging up some old music I have not listened to in quite some time. For the first few tracks of the first disk I keep saying to myself "I guess this is not a very good recording after all". Then after about 15 min I'm saying hey this ain't so bad... after another 10-15 I'm saying dam this is cool... So tonight I went back and played the first track and sure enough it sounded way better than it did the first time. So are my tubes warming or is it just my brain ?
btrvalik
I actually thought pbb's post was kind of funny... I guess I'm to big and cocky to take it as a slam. As I stated above I really don't take these debates very seriously anymore. If this is a psychoacoustics effect that is almost cooler in some respect sort of a safe narcotic. Hey maybe tubes are telepathic :^) The reason for my original post was that I'm in disbelief of my own ears! Kids have no problem chalking things up to magic ... too bad we grow up...
ASA once again your writing and, I guess, thinking, is way beyond my comprehension. Most of your posts as far as I can tell are written in this stream of consciousness language. Briefly put: what the hell are you saying? Sorry if I upset your touchy-feely-higher-plane-and-mental-state side, at least Btrvalik understood that I was not taking aim at him in any personal way. I will not bore you with the heat and kitchen thing as you have bored me with the picking a size thing. Btrvalik you are a good man. I hope you enjoy your system as much as I do mine, and that it doesn't get in the way of the music. Damn it, now I have to look for an audio Guru...
Oh pbb, don't be a spoiled sport; talking about heat in the kitchen and then running away, as in, feigning I don't understand (with more stone the witch, looking for comrades as you go). It's interesting that your original posts were, basically, that other people are deluded in what they hear and they don't understand, and then when someone says you don't hear well enough to hear it, you feign lack of understanding. Interesting tactic...

The tactic is your Guru. I've sat around for months listening to your smart mind swoop down with your scientific materialist assumptions, telling everyone that they are deluded (read: irrational) to hear anything beyond what those assumptions limit you too, and I thought it was about time to call you on it.

If you want to say now that it was all fun, then OK.

btrv: if you doubt what you see, then see some more and then perhaps you will know, or know that it was only "magic" and that pbb is correct. Remember, however, as much as pbb cites wishfulness for "magic" as a delusional origin for twl's perceptions, the assumptions that he brings - that what you and twl experienced can not be real - are just as much a bias that leads towards not seeing what is.

It is a subtle thing, admittedly, that some tube systems seem to sound better with music driven through them rather than just glowing and sitting there. Its almost like when you first discover that different quality juice coming out of the wall late at night makes a difference (which, er, as you recall some years ago people of pbb's bent also accused of being a deluded perception, and then wires after that, and then after that...). I can't hear the effect in my lesser second system - even though its got $20K thrown at it - so I can understand why someone would doubt this position (and quite apart from scientific materialist attachments and their distortions of perception; pbb, see Kuhn, Popper, Freyerabend...). In my better system, and mostly with analog as twl points out, I hear it and the phenomenon is consistent over time (which is how, er, empiric experiments are conducted). Its not magic, but if your system isn't to that point, or, like pbb, your "brain" isn't (your initial inquiry, Btrv, although the brain matter itself is not what hears, but the mind willing to hear), then I can not confirm or convince you through language or thinking. You must conduct that experiment - or now, re-conduct it - to see if it is true or not. The "what is" has it rigged that way...

twl, slap me with a wet noodle. A few months ago I chided you for engaging the priests of scientism and here I am right back in there! Oh well, its the protector thing.