Four Hour Tube Amp Warm-Up

Time has passed and the Sophia Electric EL34's are probably technically burned in now. I would say that about an hour and half use/warmup blooms them nicely. However, a couple of weeks ago I accidentally left the tube amps on for 7 hours unattended. When I got home that night and started playing I was taken back to the real, real "bloom." What can I say - there is this everyday operating dimension and then there is the dimension slightly beyond. I am hopeful that electrical theory will one day catch up.

Never experienced anything like that with pure tube amps. In fact I always find them quick to warm up. I once had a hybrid electrostatic headphone amp (grounded grid EL34 with solid state CCS outputs) that took like an hour to sound its best -- but I'm pretty sure that was from the transistors. 

@bolong I have to agree. 20 mins gets them up and running (same time needed to "warm up" my turntable bearing) but they do open up as the hours go by. By the time I’m turning the things off after 4+ hours, they’re at their sweetest and most three dimensional. This seems to hold at any time of the day too, so I don't think it's related to cleaner power as the day winds down. 

My experience is as a result of having a Vinyl / CD Source, along with ESL Speakers and Cabinet Speakers, is that with CD used as the first medium and an ESL, the Sweet Spot is usually quite present before an Album Side is over.

With Vinyl as the first medium and an ESL, the sweet spot is quite present on the second side of an Album and will be max'ed not too long after. I put some of this down to the Cart' findings it optimised condition as well.

Using Cabinet Speakers the Sweet Spot will appear at almost the same time line for both Vinyl/CD. The sweet spot can start to be noticed after a few hours. I put this down to the Drivers Suspension becoming optimised. When using the Cabinet Speakers I have conditioned myself to use CD as the first music as a Background music, prior to sitting in front of the system.

With the price of Vintage Valves, it is not a nice experience to have them wasted in use for Warming up other devices as well, to get them to an optimised function.

A 'cheapo' integrated amp' to drive the Cabinet Speakers for a period of time would be the most cost effective, preserving Valves for best SQ replays. 

Will try that. Thanks