Four Hour Tube Amp Warm-Up

No !   I have had Rogue Audio amplifiers (Cronus magnum integrated, stereo 100 power amp). 

Each of them starting sounding great by the end of a record- e.g. 40 minutes or so.  

Definitely an improvement after side 1, maybe an hour max.  

Yes, with my past four amplifiers, all Class A or Class A/B, here is what I’ve noticed. This includes Tube and Solid State amps with big iron transformers though:

45-60m: sounds pretty good, and initially I’d think its warm enough.

120m no major changes but still sounding good. Close to the same as 60m.

240m (4hrs), with the big transformers now fully heat saturated, 3-dimensional sound kicks in, with sounds coming from the sides and slightly to rear of me too.

• My local 50+ year audio tech and builder colleague tells me "its the transformers getting to be fully heat saturated is when things can begin to sound magical" on some of the better amps w quality transformers.
• My local dealer fires up his amps at least 4+ hours prior to letting any customers in the door for listening sessions.

Longtime PL user.

5 minutes warm up, and it's ready for overdrive the next 4 hours.

I don't have 4 hours to wait for anything to perform "better."

I'd get my hearing tested and avoid reading audio forums.

Don't forget, speakers need warm up too. All my tube amps were good after 45 min.

Happy Holidays!

Pretty much in agreement with the above, this with many tube, both push pull and SET over many years. I notice as the amps age magic time can lessen to around two hour mark, also depends how hard I run them, running them hard further lessens time. I do always give at least hour lower volume prior to kicking things up. I also use boutique caps over much of my system, the physically huge caps I run in speaker crossovers need the hard running time.