[Tomcat]

How long do you let your tube gear warm up before you start listening with it? Here are my experiences with the Earmax Pro:

5 to 10 minutes – things are starting to become edible, somewhat glaring, annoying and distorted treble disappears

around 2 hours – now it’s getting a serious feast, the sound firms up, smoothes out and becomes liquid and captivating, low-level linearity seems to improve, more ambience and soundstage information

20 hours (?) plus – bass gets a little soggy, everything seems slower and fuzzy, noticeable levels of treble distortion

I know, that there are people who never turn their tube gear off. Doesn’t seem to work for me with the Earmax, though. What are your findings?

 

[acidtripwow]

I find with most of my tube amps that 5 to 10 minutes is fine. I think after about half an hour is when things sound their best.

 

[Vertigo-1]

If I remember to warm it up, I'll give it about 15mins to half an hour. Otherwise I just pop it on and go.

The RKV is a huge enough of an improvement over other amps that I've heard that it sounds totally great right from the get-go.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

I try to leave my RKV on as much as possible (which I will probably regret once the tubes burn out, hence the jumping on templeboy's quads). To me, there are two thresholds: #1 - turning it on; #2 - leaving it on, I.E. > 24 hours. I agree that #1 is pretty damn fine. #2 is that last little bit.

So, to reiterate -- in my case, the longer I leave it on, the better. Doesn't really improve from the second day to the third, but I have to leave it on, otherwise I start over, and I listen to my headphones at least once a day. If I know I'm not going to, I turn it off.

Vert, I know you live in Hawaii, and it's not exactly cold down there, but...you gotta try it.

Now that acidtripwow has one, I would like to hear his impressions of this...erm...tweak?...too.

 

[Hirsch]

Tomcat,

I've been seeing the same progression as you with the X-Can, but stretched out longer in time. 30 min to get listenable, 24 hours to peak, starts to get muddy after 10 days to 2 weeks. Then two things happened.

1) I got an X-PSU
2) The X-Can simply had enough playing time to be burned in.

Now, it's playable in a couple of minutes after turn on. Pretty good by 30 min. I've stopped leaving it on all the time, and as a result, I don't see the definition getting foggy when it's been up too long.

 

[Tomcat]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

I feel the Earmax's power supply looks a little dubious. It's just this small and unassuming little box. Where is the huge and macho toroidal transformer? It might be, that the deterioration I perceive after twenty or twenty-four hours is due to the power supply that's somehow past its operating point.

Hirsch's findings are quite intriguing, this deterioration after "10 days to two weeeks" without the X-PSU. Hirsch, do you have a theory why that occured? Have you rolled tubes since then? Might differnt tubes demand different warm up times?

In a sense, it's a pity and rather costly, that Dusty feels he has to keep his RKV turned on. It could be that a thoroughly warmed up RKV walks all over the Earmax, though.

And finally, Vertigo, acidtripwow, I second Dusty's recommendation: it's probably an excellent idea to experiment with a little more warm up - the RKV might sound totally greater.

 

[Hirsch]

I rolled back to the original Jan Phillips tubes, which sounded much better than the JJ's which had been on for several weeks. I'm going to put the JJ's back in again, and see what happens. The X-PSU has altered the warmup time, but I don't really know the parameters yet. Since the effects I've been hearing take up to two weeks before I'm sure of them, A/B comparisons are a bit slow...

 

[vn412]

I just got the MF X-Can v2.....any advice on breaking it in? Help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Owen Meany]

I have the Earmax and I find that about 15 minutes is good...before that I hear a bit if what sounds like clipping..
I don't really want it left on all the time so save tube life...

I think this climate theroy may warrant more thought..life/warm up of tube in HI vs in Maine....I know that here in So Cal I do benifit in that area,such as fish tank temp, and I would think that if the ambient temp is much lower in area X then it would stand to reason that more warm up would be required..

 

[Hirsch]

Quote:

Originally posted by vn412 I just got the MF X-Can v2.....any advice on breaking it in? Help would be greatly appreciated!

Generally, what I do is just to use it, and let break-in happen over time. A more formal burn-in would be to play music, or even a CD designed for burn-in, for a period of time (a few days) before listening to the amp. Way too much work for me

The only time I do an offline burn-in is when the initial sound is bad...at that point I want to hear what the unit will sound like when stabilized as quickly as possible (before the return period is over

)

The manual for the X-Can says that it is designed to be left on indefinitely, but as noted above, at a certain point the sound seems to deteriorate when I don't turn it off every now and then. I first started noticing this with JJ tubes, which many find to be the tube of choice for the X-Can. I started hearing compression and distortion of the sound stage. I pulled the JJ's and went back to the stock tubes, and all was OK again (but by this time I had the X-PSU, so comparing the Jan Phillips with X-PSU to the JJ's with the stock wall wart is a bit unfair).

 

[vn412]

thanks for your help

 

[chadbang]

Once you've got your X-can up and running and want to have some fun with it or try tailoring its sound I enthusiatically recommending spending some time with this article at audioasylum:

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/faq/joes-tubes.html

Although I knew nothing about tubes, in a short time this article explained a tremendous amount about the sounds of different vintage tubes available for the X-can (The X-Canv2 uses E88CC, ECC88, 7308, or 6922/6DJB tubes which this article covers). What a godsend this article was! Very informative and extremely comprehensive. If the X-can has a tendency to brightness, I think I've found just the right replacement tubes (Siemens RCA labelled tubes from the sixties) which should give the X-can a warmer sound with "softer" highs. Perfect!


Oh yeah, what I also learned from 7 hours on the web is that the really tricky thing about tubes is finding the right person to buy from. There are counterfeit tubes floating around, so that's one concern. Price variations are another. And I almost jumped on the first set I found for 150 dollars, but managed to locate another for only $40! So take your time when your searching.

 

[vn412]

wow....i was actually looking for that! Thanks for the very detailed article. Do u kno of ne good dealers to get cheap tubes from? All the places I've seen thus far have been rather expensive

 

[chadbang]

I'm sorting out the dealers I've found and I'll try to post a little run down tomorrow. (I can't take anymore Internet today! I'm beat!)

 

[dngl]

www.upscaleaudio.com has some of the best NOS deals and www.triodeelectronics.com has some of the best current prod. deals.