Audible Illusions M3a owners tube life?

Pre-amp tubes will last 5000 to 10,000 hours with 6dj8's outlasting 12ax7's generally speaking. Tubes being biased too high will burn them out faster-extremely high bias will have the tubes burning bright blue inside.
And yes, better tubes will last much longer as well as sound better. Telefunkens will give you the most life and best sound while I would avoid bothering with cheap russian or chinese tubes in such a nice unit (there are good russian and chinese also).

This subject was specifically addressed in a recent thread:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1092946488&openfrom&1&4#1

NOS Siemens E88CC (something like that) are about half the price of the Telefunkens, last just as long, and sound almost as good. Tube life is around 6/7000 hours; the Modulus runs a bit "hot" on the tubes and the usual 10k hr life of 6922 tubes in preamps does not apply here. Still a lot of hours, though.

The AI M3a runs the tubes in standby mode at all times when it's not turned on to play music. I like this a lot, but it did seem to take its toll on tubes. I found the sound of my M3a benefited from changing the tubes every year or two, even if I was not playing it a lot. I attributed this to the standby mode situation.