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AVA Van Alstine SET 400 amplifier -- burn in?

I am not trying to spark a debate about burn in. I purchased an AVA SET 400 amplifier and will give it a listen for 30 days and decide if it works for me.

If you’ve owned this amp or other solid state amps from AVA and have noticed any changes to the sound over time, can you please describe for me?

I asked Mr. Van Alstine about this and his reply was "No burn in time, it’s running up to speed within a couple of minutes."

What’s your experience? It arrives in less than a week. Thank you.
hilde45

Showing 2 responses by corelli

corelli
1,054 posts
 
@hilde45 Forgive my haste.  I actually auditioned the  FET Valve 400 amp, a step above the SET 400.  Good luck, look forward to your impressions.
corelli
1,054 posts
 
@hilde45   Years ago I auditioned this amp.  I paired it with Magnepan 1.7's.  On paper I thought this would be a perfect match.  During the 100 or so hours I listened, it's character did not change much.  I found it a bit flat and lacking in bass.  In fairness, I did not have their matching preamp (which was discontinued after a very short production run) so some blame might have been placed there.  After that I auditioned a Marantz Reference intergrated which I found much more pleasing to my ear--more subtle, smooth, spacious, with shockingly good bass relative to the AVA.  Really wanted to like that amp but could not deny what I was hearing.  
Also of note were a couple of small scratches and a buzzing transformer.  So back it went.  Cancelled the preamp order as well.
This is not to discourage you.  Systems are all about synergy as you already know.  But more to your question, I did not note it to change much in character over 100 hrs.
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