"Burn In" Question

Thank you for the clear guidelines Bob. You have explained why it took so long for my silver interconnects to break in. I was told otherwise regarding the the preamp selector switch. My 300+ hours of breakin was in reality only about 200+ hours, since we were listening to music during the day from another source. I have a new pair of interconnects on the way that should only take a week, now that I have finally got it.

Thank you all for your kind responses. Dekay, don't you just love those silver cable break in times? If I remember correctly you are trying the Homegrown's like me. For their price, I think they are worth the wait. BTW I do keep my digital source on all the time but I will now consider doing the same with my amplifier.

Hi Osclib. Let us know what you think of the Homegrown's when they are fully cooked. I really like mine and ordered a .5 meter pair in addition to the ones that I have. I am also expecting a pair of used Harmonic Tech. Truthlinks to try out with poorly engineered (50% of our collection) CD's.

I am not a big authority on tube gear so I can only offer opinion & repeat what others have said. Most users seem to feel that you should power off your tube gear at day's end, expecially & definitely power amps. Some others like to leave small signal tubes always on, but for sure you're burning hours of life off the filaments. I had one Golden Tube preamp (SEP2) which had a standby mode the turned off B+ voltages, but left the filaments hot. A lot of the older tube TV sets used to have this feature for faster startup. But then I've also read that thermal-cycling stresses the tubes & they should be left on; maybe OK for low power components, but if you ever paid hundred$ for new PA tubes then you probably want them to last as long as possible. I realize that this is all quite confusing. Perhaps others can offer advice from more experience? Regarding solid state, I'm told on good authority that you don't get the best sound until the power supply regulators reach thermal stabilization, at about 30 hours after startup. Definitely something to this theory; my SS equipment behaves this way. Interesting to note that the Ayre V3 SS amp has a standby switch, which shuts off the outputs, but keeps power supplies & drivers running. Mine seems to still sound good with cold outputs (when just turned on from standby) but if I plug the amp in completely cold, it's not sounding good.

Hey guys just wanted to clear up my previous comment about leaving SS gear always on. The theoretical idea is to minimize thermal cycling, but it's not going to kill the equipment if you do power down. Just use some common sense: if you're gonna be away from home on vacation, etc, do shut down the system during prolonged idle-times. Keep it warm if you play it daily & it'll sound better for ya... enjoy!