Phono pre "Break-In" process? Necessary?

wolf

With all due respect, let me clarify a few things.

wolf - The "same as live" concept is irrelevant

If you are listening to a live band on stage and you turn your head – what happens to the band members? Do they follow your head and stay in front of your face? No.

Their positions on stage are fixed. The drum set is still sitting where they set it up.

The stability I’m referring to does not have to do with turning your head – instead its how you perceive their location while listening. When there are problems with velocity, the resulting image is out of focus. You have a good idea where the drum set is but not the exact location. When the focus becomes sharp and crystal clear you begin to identify the exact locations of each drum in the set separately.

wolf - (I’ve mixed and recorded hundreds of live concerts from Richie Havens to the Baltimore Consort)

I am no stranger to recording. I have built recording studios in the ‘70s.  I also recorded Duke Ellington live.

wolf -"black backgrounds" exist in a vacuum only. We really have to ban the "black background" term…really…perhaps the most overused and patently useless audio bullshit term since it appeared a few years ago.

 

You can have an amplifier that is dead quite when no music is playing. There is a big difference between noise at the noise floor and noise that appears when music is present. What I am I referring to is the simultaneous projection of sound objects into space while STILL having a black background (like a canvas). That scenario is difficult if not impossible to achieve with conventional amplifiers. Conventional amplifiers produce a phase noise while trying present sound objects in your image. Objects that are side by side on stage have clear air space between them. If your image is out of focus (and it is) the blurry portion from both will overlap to some degree and not allow the output to drop all the way down to the noise floor. This results in a “grey” background. Once the music stops – it returns to a black background or at least as quiet as the noise floor. That should be happening between individual notes but it doesn’t.

Roger

Roger_paul...There's a smell of paternal condescension in your posts that some may find annoying, including myself. So...my balanced pre-amp to tube power amp system sounds fabulous with rock solid imaging, clarity, punch and tonal accuracy. Lucky me! I only mentioned my current and past live sound gigs to make a point about live music…I hear a lot of it. Describing issues my (and others who lack your alleged remedy) system must have is silly, as you haven't heard my system. Last night I was listening to a really sweet 1964 LP of Benjamin Britton conducting some of his and Hayden's music, and I could hear every damn musician with no "blurring" or what you describe as the "grey" background, so your assumptions are simply irrelevant regardless of the florid terminology you feel compelled to add to your diatribe. Rabid self promotion with sketchy theories that conveniently only you are privy to make you seem more than a little insecure.

"geoffkait, so you’re the one. Organic neuron stimulation? telepathic-enabling technology?... like in the film Æon Flux?! That’s way cooler then this gear thing."

I prefer to think of myself more like in the film The Men Who Stare at Goats.

Break in 126 1/2 hrs then it will sound great.!

wolf

I apologize if I rub you the wrong way or any other readers for that matter.

As time goes on and others are added to the number of people who have  had a chance to hear what I have been trying to describe, it will become self evident as to the advantage (or not) of such a system.

A 1964 recording no doubt with tube mic preamps. Good stuff!
BTW I have designed with tubes as well and often thought of how an H-CAT circuit made of tubes would perform.

I have also thought about sticking a 12AX7 out of the top of my SS preamp with just the heater hooked up.  (Sorry - I couldn't resist)

Roger