Four Hour Tube Amp Warm-Up

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.

By far the most incredible listening session happened two days ago after the PL's had been accidentally left on for 7 hours. Technically, the Sophia EL 34 power tubes may not be "fully" broken in yet, but they have about a 100 hours on them of playing time.

I can agree that full transformer saturation may explain a lot. The solid state cd transport and DAC are of course kept on all the time. The Primaluna pre and power tube amps are not in the interest of tube life. If they didn't sound so good I would probably go back to a full solid state system.