Four Hour Tube Amp Warm-Up

I am really sorry to hear your system requires such an extended warmup. For tube equipment this is simply rediculous. I have owned a PrimaLuna integrated amp for over 10 years in my home office. I may have never discovered it’s sweet spot. I seldom have spent more that two or three hours in my office.

My main system is contemporary Audio Research Reference gear and my headphone system is Woo 300b… and neither have much of a warm up gain. In the past the Reference 5 series premps had a strange ~ 12 minute requirement to have signal passing through it until reaching optimal sound quality… it could be on for hours… but still had to have a signal going through it. This went away with the 6 series preamps. I don’t hear a noticeable improvement after the first couple minutes.

In decades prior, my equipment had a noticable improvement after 15 minutes or twenty… nothing like four hours.

All tube amplifiers sound OK after 30 minutes. But if you listen carefully sound is getting better during 2-3 hours. Especially it is true for not feedback circuits. I also paid attention that this difference gets bigger after I tweaked and improved sound quality my 300B amplifier. I had McIntosh MC30 and Marantz 8b amplifiers. All of them benefited from couple of hour warm up.
Another fact, in recording studios all used tube equipment is switched on in start of the day and switched off in the end of the working day.

I am really sorry to hear your system requires such an extended warmup. For tube equipment this is simply rediculous. I have owned a PrimaLuna integrated amp for over 10 years in my home office.

Ditto

I may have never discovered it’s sweet spot.

When did we switch from amps to women?

My experience with warm up time has been so variable over thirty years, variability in comments not surprising to me. I've found system presentation or voicing, tube types and qualities, especially power tubes in amps, standby ability, number of tubes in entire system, AC quality, cabling, on and on ad nauseam, all have bearing of when system kicks in, even mood plays role. I just wonder if there is some point of stabilization applicable to every single little thing in our systems, and ourselves for that matter?

With -20 degree wind chill factors during recent listening session even thought about how temp could be affecting AC cabling exposed to these temps, specifically, could temp of wire affect sound quality? Obviously heat is of concern here, does more heat mean quicker warm up times, cold or cooler longer times? This meant in relation to all parts within components.

I only know every listening session has a point where things just kick in, assuming nothing breaking in. I only find consistency when my system is in static mode, meaning nothing changed over certain length of time.

1/2 hour to an hour should do it