Four Hour Tube Amp Warm-Up

By far the most incredible listening session happened two days ago after the PL's had been accidentally left on for 7 hours. Technically, the Sophia EL 34 power tubes may not be "fully" broken in yet, but they have about a 100 hours on them of playing time.

I can agree that full transformer saturation may explain a lot. The solid state cd transport and DAC are of course kept on all the time. The Primaluna pre and power tube amps are not in the interest of tube life. If they didn't sound so good I would probably go back to a full solid state system.

Since I initiated this thread things have changed for the better. Now my set up is sounding very acceptable after an hour warm up. Tweaking has helped.

All the power cables are Anticables, and they are all plugged directly into the wall now except for the cables to the Jay's Audio redbook transport and the Denafrips Terminator DAC  - those cables are still plugged into the Shunyata power conditioner. Running the Terminator in oversampling mode is now better.

Speaker cable is now vintage cloth covered Western Electric tinned multi-stranded 10 gauge wire which is complementing the Primaluna's and the Cornwall 4's with no loss of detail and good PRAT. The bi-wire jumpers are vintage 16 gauge Western Electric pink cloth wire which seems to slightly tame the treble. I tried it with 10 gauge WE jumpers, but the treble ran a bit hot that way. This may or may not be logical from an electrical engineering standpoint since the bi-wire terminals all theoretically end up in the same places internally but..whatever.

I have also been re-burning CD's from .flac to .wav (in JRiver) and think they sound better perhaps because of less computing in the signal chain and therefore slightly less noise.

Also discovered a 12au7 tube that was microphonic. Replaced it and now the background is much blacker. Also reinserted some vintage 12au7 Amperex "Bugle Boys" into the signal positions, and this has helped quite a bit. The Primaluna's do not like "alien" 12au7's, but just the Bugle Boys as signal tubes are doing fine.

Also, built some floor attached angling guides for the speakers so that they can be pivoted predictably and in perfect unison relative to each other and the back wall, and the distances between them can be exactly gauged relative to my listening chair. This has improved sound-staging quite a lot.

Tweak City over and out.

After making some adjustments it is down to about a 2 hour warm up now.

Time has passed and the Sophia Electric EL34's are probably technically burned in now. I would say that about an hour and half use/warmup blooms them nicely. However, a couple of weeks ago I accidentally left the tube amps on for 7 hours unattended. When I got home that night and started playing I was taken back to the real, real "bloom." What can I say - there is this everyday operating dimension and then there is the dimension slightly beyond. I am hopeful that electrical theory will one day catch up.

Will try that. Thanks