[RCBinTN]

Just got my Gumby in. First of all this thing is massive. Second, only after an hour or so of powering it on - I'm lackluster. You can tell you have a lot of space around the music, it's super smooth, takes the mid forwardness and upper mid-bite out of the 650s which I kind of like but I can live with because the sound is so liquid. Everything is a bit effortless. Very happy right now but still mixed feelings. Will take a while it warms up to further develop my thoughts.

Right. And you're at two hours. Give it a day or two.
Powered on all the time...it needs to reach thermal equilibrium.
You will become a happy camper.

 

[hikaru12]

Right. And you're at two hours. Give it a day or two.
Powered on all the time...it needs to reach thermal equilibrium.
You will become a happy camper.

Definitely. I wanted a baseline as to what I can expect. I can wait a few weeks as I'm still waiting for my Atticus to come in (should be shipping next week or so). I can start noticing some dynamics coming through even through some JJ tubes.

 

[ColtMrFire]

Just got my Gumby in. First of all this thing is massive. Second, only after an hour or so of powering it on - I'm lackluster. You can tell you have a lot of space around the music, it's super smooth, takes the mid forwardness and upper mid-bite out of the 650s which I kind of like but I can live with because the sound is so liquid. Everything is a bit effortless. Very happy right now but still mixed feelings. Will take a while it warms up to further develop my thoughts.

Enjoy the ride.

 

[goldsgym]

Just got my Gumby in. First of all this thing is massive. Second, only after an hour or so of powering it on - I'm lackluster. You can tell you have a lot of space around the music, it's super smooth, takes the mid forwardness and upper mid-bite out of the 650s which I kind of like but I can live with because the sound is so liquid. Everything is a bit effortless. Very happy right now but still mixed feelings. Will take a while it warms up to further develop my thoughts.

I am excited to hear your impressions are you continue to burn it in. Mine will be here tomorrow, so I am pretty excited to plug it in a get everything going. I even made my own XLR cables to use with my fully balanced V280 amp.

 

[Charente]

@hikaru12 ... Congratulations. It WILL take quite a bit of 'warming up' (or burn-in) from new in my experience... and I leave it on 24/7 thereafter.

 

[artur9]

Just got my Gumby in. First of all this thing is massive.

If you think that's massive wait till you see an Yggy. And, wait at least 24h before listening critically. The Gumby takes a few days to reach its peak performance (being on the whole time, of course).

 

[KeithEmo]

I always feel obligated to comment when I read descriptions about extended "burn in" times on modern solid state equipment.

Thermal equilibrium should be a matter of a few hours at most - and not days.
And, while some components, and especially tubes, may change significantly over time, that also shouldn't be true for modern solid state components.
In fact, while many solid state components "warm up", which is another way of saying "reach thermal equilibrium", not very many of them really "burn in"
(Put an actual thermometer on your DAC and I doubt you'll see the internal temperature change much after the first six or eight hours.... )

Therefore, you should always consider the possibility that part of what you're experiencing is that YOU also "burn in"......
As you become more accustomed to how a new piece of equipment sounds, it comes to sound "more normal", and anything different comes to sound "different".
Some would say that "as the novelty wears off you start to notice more of the details".

However, it also contributes to a common effect that "after becoming used to your new piece of gear, you pull out your old model, hook it up, and notice a huge difference"...
What has happened is that we humans are programmed to notice differences more than similarities.
In your brain, you started out with the old one being "normal", and the new one being "different"; after a while, the new one becomes "the normal one", and the old one is "the different one".
(For better or worse this effect makes it difficult to fairly evaluate which one is actually better - and in what ways.)

Right. And you're at two hours. Give it a day or two.
Powered on all the time...it needs to reach thermal equilibrium.
You will become a happy camper.

@hikaru12 ... Congratulations. It WILL take quite a bit of 'warming up' (or burn-in) from new in my experience... and I leave it on 24/7 thereafter.

 

[AudioBear]

I always feel obligated to comment when I read descriptions about extended "burn in" times on modern solid state equipment.

Thermal equilibrium should be a matter of a few hours at most - and not days.
And, while some components, and especially tubes, may change significantly over time, that also shouldn't be true for modern solid state components.
In fact, while many solid state components "warm up", which is another way of saying "reach thermal equilibrium", not very many of them really "burn in"
(Put an actual thermometer on your DAC and I doubt you'll see the internal temperature change much after the first six or eight hours.... )

Therefore, you should always consider the possibility that part of what you're experiencing is that YOU also "burn in"......
As you become more accustomed to how a new piece of equipment sounds, it comes to sound "more normal", and anything different comes to sound "different".
Some would say that "as the novelty wears off you start to notice more of the details".

However, it also contributes to a common effect that "after becoming used to your new piece of gear, you pull out your old model, hook it up, and notice a huge difference"...
What has happened is that we humans are programmed to notice differences more than similarities.
In your brain, you started out with the old one being "normal", and the new one being "different"; after a while, the new one becomes "the normal one", and the old one is "the different one".
(For better or worse this effect makes it difficult to fairly evaluate which one is actually better - and in what ways.)

@KeithEmo

Thanks for laying all of this out. I have not doubted that people are hearing what they report. We have some very expert listeners here. I have, however, had exactly the same impression about why as you just posted. I am sure you will be told you are all wet, but then we both will be. I am also of the impression that we don''t hear a whole piece of music consistently each time we play it. The brain is an amazing processor. Much like a DAC it reconstructs a coherent sound from soundbites. Each time you listen your brain samples different bytes (if you will). By the time a week's burn-in has completed, you've done a pretty job on sampling most of what a piece of kit sounds like. That helps make it sound like it's changing with time.

Now here's a question for you. How do you explain the results for those who get a new DAC, turn it on, listen to it once, feed it music for a week and then listen to again and declare it has undergone an amazing transformation? It would seem like they have not had a full brain burn in yet nonetheless they report changes with time.

 

[nicoch46]

Caps need a burn in ,must have some time to form oxide that is needed to work....

 

[Ableza]

Caps need a burn in ,must have some time to form oxide that is needed to work....

What? Oxide? You've been reading too many Wiki articles...

 

[SilverEars]

IME, it's not so straightfoward that the differences you hear after a prolonged duration especially. Our memory are not that good to compare subtle differences from recall especially. That is not all, we are not like a DAC or a circuit, we have conditions(our conditions change), and our auditory system is tied to the brain that has bias from the overal sensory and predispositions. We have emotions, feels, etc.. What we hear at one moment can change, and out auditory conditions change. Our brain/ears has a way of adjusting. Unless we do a precisely controlled experiement, these opinions have too many variables that should be considered to be certain especially considering human subjectism is involved. There's more variables.

 

[KeithEmo]

The process that happens in your brain is quite different than the way electronic components burn-in.... and how it occurs, and how quickly, depends on a lot of different factors.

One classic, and somewhat disconcerting, way to demonstrate this is very simple.
Fill one container with cold water... and fill another with hot water...
Put one hand in each container at the same time for a minute or two.
Now put BOTH hands in the SAME bowl of room-temperature water.
Your brain will have fun trying to figure out how one hand can be in "warm" water, while the other is in "cool" water, but you can see both hands - in the same bowl.

For most people, this "calibration effect" only takes a minute or two.... think about the amount of time it takes for your bath water to no longer seem hot.

Photographers and other artists are very familiar with this experience as it concerns color.
Sunlight, skylight, fluorescent lamps, and incandescent lamps, are all very different colors.
Yet your brain does such an excellent and seamless job of correcting what you think you see that a white piece of paper looks "white" in all of them.
(But turn off the auto-white-balance on your camera and take a picture under each.... you'll see that the paper REALLY looks yellow under sunlight, blue under the sky, and probably greenish under the fluorescent lights.)

There are limits to these effects... but those limits are a lot further apart than you probably think.
Because the act of hearing is itself very complex, the effect of "normalization" is also more complex, and can occur along many different axes.
It's also strongly influenced by your perception - and your concentration and focus.

With audio, most people notice this effect most strongly with speakers, which tend to have the most variation.
Your current speakers sound "normal".
Then you buy new ones.
For the first day or two your new speakers sound "bright".
But, by the end of the first week, they probably sound "normal".
And, now, when you pull out your old speakers, THEY sound "dull" and "laid back".
Guess what?
The speakers haven't changed.... your brain has simply reset it's frame of reference.
This effect can be really insidious if you design and build speakers...
You're busily trying to tweak your new project to sound the way you think it should.... while your brain is busily tweaking itself to consider what your project sounds like today as "normal".
(So you should make a point of having a reference, and going back and forth between your project and the reference - to avoid having YOUR calibration "drift over time".)
(To make matters worse, new speakers really DO mechanically break in over the first 100 hours or so of play... so there are some real changes mixed in with the illusory ones.)

The process is also strongly influenced by our personal biases and expectations.
(After all, when you hear a difference between your old DAC, and that expensive new one everyone is raving about, you EXPECT the new one to be better instead of worse, right?)

So, if you want a really fair comparison, buy that new DAC, then let it sit in the next room "burning in" and "reaching equilibrium" for a week or two.
At the same time, continue to listen to your old DAC.
(Or, even better, don't listen to either one for a week or two.)
NOW you can compare both, with both "fully burned in" and "fully warmed up", and no calibration problems.
(Or, even better yet, go and listen to LIVE BANDS for a week.... then come back and see how each of those DACs compares to the REAL reference.)

Incidentally, if you REALLY want to see how or if a component changes when "burned in", it's really easy. Get TWO samples of the same DAC, let one "burn in" for two weeks playing music; leave the other one in the box; NOW, after that two weeks, turn them both on and compare them. (This would only really be practical if you have a buddy who lives nearby who is considering buying the same one... but it should be practical - and useful - for a reviewer to do it. It would be even cooler to try it after a half hour, when the new one is fully "warmed up", and compare that to one that's "been burning in for several weeks".)

IME, it's not so straightfoward that the differences you hear after a prolonged duration especially. Our memory are not that good to compare subtle differences from recall especially. That is not all, we are not like a DAC or a circuit, we have conditions(our conditions change), and our auditory system is tied to the brain that has bias from the overal sensory and predispositions. We have emotions, feels, etc.. What we hear at one moment can change, and out auditory conditions change. Our brain/ears has a way of adjusting. Unless we do a precisely controlled experiement, these opinions have too many variables that should be considered to be certain especially considering human subjectism is involved. There's more variables.

@KeithEmo

Thanks for laying all of this out. I have not doubted that people are hearing what they report. We have some very expert listeners here. I have, however, had exactly the same impression about why as you just posted. I am sure you will be told you are all wet, but then we both will be. I am also of the impression that we don''t hear a whole piece of music consistently each time we play it. The brain is an amazing processor. Much like a DAC it reconstructs a coherent sound from soundbites. Each time you listen your brain samples different bytes (if you will). By the time a week's burn-in has completed, you've done a pretty job on sampling most of what a piece of kit sounds like. That helps make it sound like it's changing with time.

Now here's a question for you. How do you explain the results for those who get a new DAC, turn it on, listen to it once, feed it music for a week and then listen to again and declare it has undergone an amazing transformation? It would seem like they have not had a full brain burn in yet nonetheless they report changes with time.

 

[Charente]

Reasonable points regarding so called 'burn-in', be it equipment or US ... or both. I do experience some feelings of SQ degradation in my hearing if I have been away for some days (having switched everything off before I left) and it seems back to 'normal' the next day (or so). Is it me or the equipment ? Is my hearing re-adjusting after an absence of not hearing what I'm used to ?

 

[KeithEmo]

There are two issues with that statement....

First, it's generally not true (except in very specific cases).

Second, for many components, the exact values simply aren't that important.
For a capacitor used in a filter network, even a fraction of a percent in value might make an audible difference.
That's why we would hope that the designers chose components for those with both tight tolerances and minimal variation due to temperature.
However, for an electrolytic filter capacitor used in a power supply, the ones with exceptionally TIGHT tolerances are only specified to be within +/-20% of rated value.
(In the old days, typical power supply capacitors were specified as +80%/-20%, because having a value above what was needed simply doesn't matter in that application.)
Since the guys who designed the circuit know this, hopefully they designed the circuit to NOT be affected by differences on that scale.
However, if the value of that capacitor changes 5% over time, as it "burns-in", clearly it isn't going to make much difference either.

CERTAIN components change quite a bit in their first few hours of operation..... notably vacuum tubes.
Those changes may continue for days - and, to some degree, throughout the entire service life.
This is also true if you're turning on a vintage amplifier that hasn't been run in many years..... some of the capacitors MAY benefit from a long gradual warm-up to allow them to return to operating condition.

In contrast, most solid state amplifiers do have automatic bias adjustment circuits, which may indeed cause significant audible changes before they reach thermal equilibrium.
(That's why they may sound different after being warmed up... and why you don't adjust the bias until they're "fully warmed up" - usually specified as after thirty minutes to an hour.)
However, that really does refer to the time it takes to reach "steady state operating temperature" - which may range from minutes to a few hours - but not weeks (certainly not in consumer equipment).

Caps need a burn in ,must have some time to form oxide that is needed to work....

 

[KeithEmo]

Well, now.... that should be easy enough to test.
The next time, leave the equipment on instead of turning it off, and see if the difference seems similar - or not.
(My guess is that the difference in your perception far exceeds the difference in the equipment itself; I know mine does.)

Reasonable points regarding so called 'burn-in', be it equipment or US ... or both. I do experience some feelings of SQ degradation in my hearing if I have been away for some days (having switched everything off before I left) and it seems back to 'normal' the next day (or so). Is it me or the equipment ? Is my hearing re-adjusting after an absence of not hearing what I'm used to ?