2. amps-preamps
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Physical explanation of amp's break in?

Recently purchased Moon i-5, manual mention 6-week break in period, when bass will first get weaker, and after 2-3 weeks start to normalize. Just curious, is there ANY component in the amp's circuitry that known to cause such a behaviour?

I can't fully accept psycho-acoustical explanation for break-in: many people have more then one system, so while one of them is in a "break-in" process, the second doesn't change, and can serve as a reference. Thus, one's perception cannot adapt (i.e. change!) to the new system while remain unchanged to the old one. In other words, if your psycho-acoustical model adapts to the breaking-in new component in the system A, you should notice some change in sound of your reference system B. If 'B' still sounds the same, 'A' indeed changed...
dmitrydr
aball
2,018 posts
 
I guess it is clear that there is no need for another EE like me to comment on this, however I am about to. The thread has drifted to where it is hard to tell what the latest consensus is but if it matters at all, I think we tend to over-analyze burn-in a lot. I have done lots of research in system reliability (for aircraft systems mostly - they get picky about this sort of thing) and capacitors are by far the biggest problem and change the most. However, I hate to say it but the design uses a given value and not every component is matched when installed in your amp (and it drifts anyway), thereby making burn-in moot for amps and preamps. However, speakers are a different story...but that is for another thread.

As a final note, we don't actually understand everything in the universe, do we?? Some of you sound like you do. Each year I spend in EE courses (I am now at year 8), I realize how little we actually understand well - and that is the part that shouldn't be forgotten. Everything changes, nothing stays put. Arthur
herman
2,296 posts
 
Aball, back to an earlier question: when you say that capacitors drift, for a given type of capacitor, do they always drift in the same direction?
sean
6,231 posts
 
Aball: "However, I hate to say it but the design uses a given value and not every component is matched when installed in your amp (and it drifts anyway), thereby making burn-in moot for amps and preamps."

If i sum up your statement here, it reads as the following to me: "Components are typically not precision matched upon installation and will shift in value over time. Due to the shifting values, measured performance and possibly sonics may vary from the time that you first start using a brand new product till the time that it breaks down and needs repair". Does that sound about right ? If you are in agreement with that "interpretation" of what you said, would you say that most electronic components typically reach a plateau and stabilize in value for a period of time before reaching a point where decay starts to set in ?

Other than that, I agree with two of other points that you made that aren't really open to interpretation. The first one is that caps typically show the widest variance in measured value over time. I will also add that they typically display one of the highest, if the not THE highest, failure rates of any given component. The second point was "the more you know, the more you realize you don't know". I think that this saying is pretty self explanatory. Sean
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