yyzsantabarbara,
I suggest you put in 400 hours of amp time before sending it to Ric. I am doing this with my Rouge Audio Studio N-10DM, a dual mono IceEdge 1200 AS1. Francesco of Rouge advised 400 hours. At this moment, I have 157 hours on it. I let it play with my typical music, Mozart violin concertos with small orchestra. Loudest sections are about 75 dB, although transients are higher, but probably under 85 dB for milliseconds. I live in an apartment building and let it play for 16 waking hours a day, so I don't disturb neighbors by keeping the volumes modest. Ideal break in procedures are speculative. I wonder what the relevance of harsh break in at 90-100 dB would be. Perhaps the most relevant procedure would be to use your typical music at the playback levels you would listen to.
The sound is quite variable at this point. It has little to do with whether the amp is warm or cold. My power quality is very variable, which I found with other amps. At this point, I don't know whether my variability is due to the power quality or the break in of the Rouge amp. At 400 hours, I will do the final assessment, go back to my reference amps after they are briefly re-broken in after 1 month of no use. Then I will do Ric's mods.
Years ago, I almost bought the Benchmark AHB2. It had excellent clarity and neutrality, although after break in it was very slightly warmer than my Bryston 2.5B SST2. So I want to hear how your AHB2 compares to the new amp.
I suggest you put in 400 hours of amp time before sending it to Ric. I am doing this with my Rouge Audio Studio N-10DM, a dual mono IceEdge 1200 AS1. Francesco of Rouge advised 400 hours. At this moment, I have 157 hours on it. I let it play with my typical music, Mozart violin concertos with small orchestra. Loudest sections are about 75 dB, although transients are higher, but probably under 85 dB for milliseconds. I live in an apartment building and let it play for 16 waking hours a day, so I don't disturb neighbors by keeping the volumes modest. Ideal break in procedures are speculative. I wonder what the relevance of harsh break in at 90-100 dB would be. Perhaps the most relevant procedure would be to use your typical music at the playback levels you would listen to.
The sound is quite variable at this point. It has little to do with whether the amp is warm or cold. My power quality is very variable, which I found with other amps. At this point, I don't know whether my variability is due to the power quality or the break in of the Rouge amp. At 400 hours, I will do the final assessment, go back to my reference amps after they are briefly re-broken in after 1 month of no use. Then I will do Ric's mods.
Years ago, I almost bought the Benchmark AHB2. It had excellent clarity and neutrality, although after break in it was very slightly warmer than my Bryston 2.5B SST2. So I want to hear how your AHB2 compares to the new amp.