Does anyone care to ask an amplifier designer a technical question? My door is open.

@ramtubes

For those who will likely disagree: If burn in exists in these devices why did we not know about it until recently. I find no references to burn in in the 50s 60s 70s.. when did it start?

And if burn in occurs in cabling, why don’t we see people producing these measurable results between a new and burned in cable? The suspicious thing is that when most cable manufacturers are hyping either the technical reasons why their cables produce better sound, or telling you the cables need burn in, they are always appealing to some objective, technical phenomena whose existence is known because it was measurable. "Here’s a technical problem with cables you need to know about, that we have solved via our manufacturing process!"

But when they tout that they have "solved" one or more objective technical problems in cable design, they typically don’t demonstrate they’ve solved the problem in any measurable way. Instead, the results go straight to hype, marketing and the subjective impressions of audiophiles and reviewers. Same with burn in. Funny that.

As I’ve mentioned before in such discussions, audiophiles think everything changes substantially with "burn in," fuses, resistors, cables. And yet companies like Vishay and others - responsible for selling cabling, resistors etc to professional industries - industrial, computer, and incredibly spec-sensitive applications in avionics, military and aerospace design - don’t go on about "burn in." If the specs actually changed that much over time of a cable or resistor or fuse from when it was delivered new to in-use, this is something customers employing them in sensitive applications would need to know (and it would obviously be very problematic if those industries could not rely on a product actually meeting the stated specs, out of the gate).

And, again, you see (as far as I know) none of this "please burn our product in for 100 hours before application, as the specs will change" when the rubber hits the road, when you sell these things to engineers who can identify B.S. from marketing.

So my question is, why is it tubes are able to do that? Is it a matter of tubes being lowest in distortion at lower-signal levels (where imaging resides?), and transistors in their curves highest?

Back in the 90's when emulating gear in digital, we found that adding even order harmonic distortion brought the image forward and wider, i.e. more tube like. Odd order made the image deeper and more triangular, i.e. more SS like. By careful adjustment of O/E ratios, we could alter the sound stage. We were using 24bit digital and adding distortion at the 16th bit or 0.0015%.

Mani phono pre [only for example, not a slur against Schiit]

In the upper left corner is a 3 terminal voltage regulator. These devices are notorious for varying between manufacturers and within manufacturers as die changes are implemented or offshored. Additionally, these are active devices with feedback and as such can have horrific impedance and phase characteristics which affect the sound of the circuit powered therefrom. On the same DUT, the regulator can make it sound boxy, shrill, dull, warm, etc. With the same regulator, circuit changes which alter the current draw can cause the same sonic changes.

I find no references to burn in in the 50s 60s 70s.. when did it start?

I first heard of it, when the first burn in CD was produced to suck the gullible in so the makers could make some bucks, as they weren't cheap, I think it was Monster that did it to "burn in" their cables

The only thing that "may" burn-in with 20hz lf  tones, is the roll-surround on speaker drivers, that's more of a softening rather than "burn-in"

Cheers George 

Technical question: Do certain electronic components, e.g. capacitors, need to "form" before they operate at their best?

Amplifiers, only the tubes. When it comes to electronics and wire I believe the listener is becoming accustomed to the change.

I must admit that I personally in my limited experience of owning new HiFi components I never experienced this  marked change of sound during 'burn in process'.  When you confirm that in regard solid state amplifiers it is the listener who is becoming accustomed to the change thats quite an assertion  when you consider the host of people (professional and non professional) who claim to have actually heard and experienced the change of sound during the claimed burn in process.  Its fascinating that such a divide exists among normal music lovers.