If you play music through it for a few hours it does get pretty got. Nothing alarming though. And as others have said, I didn't experience any break-in improvement, but the M11 does sound better once it has been on for an hour, I guess it has something to do with reaching optimum temperature may be? Right after turning on the bass is lacking and the treble is slightly harsh, goes away after an hour.
Pure Class A should be same temperature all the time. Certainly was with the OPPO HA-1. I doubt that with the volume control set at 40 I'm using all that much extra energy playing music but we shall see.
Looks like some of us do see improvement in sound from m11 after it has warmed up and hour or two or four. I do not understand why these solid state devices need hours of warm up to sound best. Jr. Scientist here thinks perhaps the electrons might flow faster. Do the chip manufacturers include the warning "Please apply power for 6 hours before first use". I can see where playing music through the system is different than just powering up. I believe Schiit says Yggy uses Military DAC chips. Does the military wait 6 hours warming up equipment. That doesn't sound right. So why do these m11's need this much warm up time? Me, I just turn mine on when I get home from work but I do not leave it on all night unless I'm up all night.
The warmup will IMO make an improvement in SQ. The Master 9 sounds good than it feels warm. How long time that will take depend on temperature in the room. In winter time maybe 2 hour and summer 1 hour. My Master 7 toke a bit longer to sound the best, but it got up to let say 95 % performance after maybe 4 hours and 100 % after around 8-10 hour. I don’t know but I would guess that the warmup time to get to 95 % is shorter for the Master 11 as the amp will warmup the DAC section quicker.
The reason the DAC takes longer time before it perform at its best is that the clock is sensitive to both the right temperature and the exact right voltage. The tolerance for those are in other word low. I don’t think that the dac chip is as sensitive to temp and voltage as the clock.
Yggdrasil owners like to keep their DACs on all the time, and claim warm-up time of ~160 hours for it to sound its best.
The short version is, don't turn off your DAC unless you need to or it's been on for a really long time and you think it needs time to cool down.
Are my ears good enough to hear a difference between ~4 hours and 4 days on any DAC I've ever heard? Nope. But I can barely tell a difference between an Emotiva Big Ego and Schiit Bifrost Multibit.
My OPPO HA-1 is rated at 70 watts and arguably was hotter to the touch, at least in the area of the vent on top which I assume is the location of the Class A headphone amp circuitry.
After leaving it on all night I have to say this unit runs a bit COOLER than my class A OPPO HA-1.
Go figure.
OK, probably not as the heat is evenly distributed over the entire top of a MUCH larger chassis, but still, there is no place on the top of the chassis close to as warm as the area of the vents on the top of the HA-1 after running for a few hours.
Top panel of the Master 11 is no warmer than the bottom of my MacBook Air. Perhaps less so.
And now in the main system for which it was NOT purchased. This was to be my own personal DAC/Headphone amp but...
Had to see how it played with the 'Toobs and Horns'.
Holly Crap moment, that's for sure.
OK, 108dB horns can play LOUD driven by 8 watt 300B monoblocks but not with this much dynamic 'punch', at least not streaming Lossless FLAC over the internet, until now.
Clear as a bell! No distortion. No glare and not tizzy digital crap!
And now in the main system for which it was NOT purchased. This was to be my own personal DAC/Headphone amp but...
Had to see how it played with the 'Toobs and Horns'.
Holly Crap moment, that's for sure.
OK, 108dB horns can play LOUD driven by 8 watt 300B monoblocks but not with this much dynamic 'punch', at least not streaming Lossless FLAC over the internet, until now.
Clear as a bell! No distortion. No glare and not tizzy digital crap!
I was quoted 5 days business days. I ordered on Monday, so should ship next Monday. Ohhh what an agonising wait.. I just got my balanced headphone cables as well. The anticipation is higher than ever now lol
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