The Predator, Portable Headphone Amp/USB DAC Combo - Page 66  

deadfolk, with the burning predator process, you'll become an experiemented Audiophile.
Enjoy it.

Has anyone noticed that Ray's page is down?

Works fine for me.

cant wait to reach the 1000hr mark on my preddy.. =)

Journey

My journey was as follows:-

Stabalizes at 600 hrs (no more sometimes sounding good and sometimes sounding not so good)
Improves Substantially from 600 to 1000hrs - 1100hrs
After 1100 - I can't hear much improvements whereas some can.

If you can get a burned in one, you won't have to go through the above. But burning in also has its fun. Your choice.

Page down

Yes, thought it was for maintenance purposes. Maybe adding new products or changing web design? Hope nothing to do with the computer bugs.

I let my Predator take a 2 month break after playing it continuously for around 2500 to 3 000 hours. It cost me a fortune as being at the compuiter where I have my digital library on file is where I use the predator but have given it a2 month break just like that. After a 2 month or maybe more like 6 weeks break upon recharging it and using it I found that the predator actually went through small but big changes upon playong it for a few days(small in terms of relatively speaking but large to an audiophile breathing on every note or abscence of note). I've noticed this with all gear that when at rest unplugged to power for several weeks the components need a little more than just warm up time. The cold component will actually reburn in to some extent. I noticed this obviously but as fate would have it has settled down back to it's glorious self. I don't any longer wish to praise any one manufacturer over another but Rays amps seem to emulate the emotion for life Ray has. I wish I had place for another headsystem. I do not but I sure do love my HR2 and the Predator is not short of miraculous. It is miraculous. This is my opinion and I know it must be shared by many.
Thanks again Ray!!!

When I bought the Predator in early June, my previous experience with a portable headphone amp was with the Headroom Total Airhead, which if I remember correctly, I bought around 2006. I had many hundreds of enjoyable hours but I was looking for something a step up in term of sound quality. This is not a blow at HeadRoom, I loved their product since day 1 and would continue to do so if the upgraditis bug hadn't hit me...

I knew about the long burn-in time of the Predator, before making my purchase, and knowing my music listening habits I figured it would take me a year to fully enjoy the final sound signature of the amp. It's been almost 3 full months and I have around 300 hours on it. I can say that for some reason, sometimes the sound quality would be, erm, "weird" (like, little soundstage, very dull sounding) but then everything would come back on track within an hour or so. But the thing is, from Day One, this amp stroke me as being incredible! Loved it instantly.

Now, after the amp upgraditis bug hit me, the earphone/headphone did too and right now I am mostly pairing my Predator with the Yuin PK1s. There are 2 problems with this. 1) Apparently, from Yuin's own forum, the PK1 takes 500 hours of burn in time. If the sound coming from either the Yuin or the Predator gets any better than this combo is giving me right now, while they're both still burning in, the audio industry will lose a customer 2) I'm not sure I can tell which is getting better over the burn-in period right now

Anyway, early on, I decided to enjoy the burn-in process while listening to music (which in the end, should be done around May of 2009 :O ) and I don't regret it one bit It's only at 300 hours, it's an amazing sounding amp, and I am very happy with it!

You really should just run it 24/7 with a 1 hour break every day or 2 for two more weeks, and you'll be 93% done with burn-in. Well, guessing it's 93% of the changes that will be done. And, you'll be closer to being done with the PK1 too.

I must say that the temptation of doing that is in part due to the fact that I can't really tell how "great" the sound gets overtime. I lack the technical expertise to do a detailed analysis (hey, it sounds great, that's about what I can say), and the idea of having the burn-in done quickly and then really be able to compare before/after is enticing. I'll give it some thought, thanks for the input

Burn In

Some have argued that burn in is the final process of the manufacture. Lots of white papers and or articles have been written about them. Those are all technicalities. Burning in my predator was fun. The changes were enlightening and educational for me.

For my other equipment, I find that the bigger the caps the more burn in time is required.

I finally decided to take on your suggestion, partly. I now do burn-in during the night and while I work during the day by using a 20 mins pink noise wave file on loop from my old iPod Shuffle and listen to music at night I either connect the Yuin Pk1s or the AKG k141s to speed-up the burn-in process on those too

Come to think of it, this iPod Shuffle might become my "burn-in tool"