Four Hour Tube Amp Warm-Up

@bolong "The solid state cd transport and DAC are of course kept on all the time."

I can see why you would do this if the equipment has a auto standby mode that kicks in (my Hegel H590 did but my H30 does not) but otherwise I fail to see the sense.  I'm not aware any any manufacturer that suggests leaving equipment powered up 24/7?  I would think you are only shortening the eventual life span of things doing this?  Just asking.  

Agree with @tablejockey when it comes to tube gear, DAC's and digital components.   I do feel like solid state amps benefit from a 1 hour warm up period to sound optimal. 

Same here my Qualiton X200 is ready to go in 15 min.

My experience mirrors Tablejockey 

I always enjoyed the process of hearing things open up- I'd say 45 minutes is sufficient for the Lamm ML2 SETs and a couple or three sides of LP for the cartridge to really come into its own (after initial settle in which could vary depending on cartridge). My small vintage system running old Quad IIs with period glass (GEC KT 66s!) and restored Quad 57s is pretty much the same on warm up time. And you can clearly hear when these systems just bloom- everything opens up. 

I've been using various tube amps and preamps since the early '70s and can't say my experience decades ago is much different using then current ARC tube gear, but my sonic memory isn't that good. 

My experience mirrors Tablejockey 

Dozens of tube components later, the only ones I ever had concerns about a warm-up time longer than (say) 15 minutes were the hybrid electrostatic amps with lots of high-voltage transistor CCS on their outputs.

Never really experienced that with any pure tube components. They should sound really good very quickly. Unlike transistors, tubes need heat to operate at all, and they have filaments for that very purpose - which efficiently heat up so the tube operates at spec very quickly. Transistors are however affected by heat, and can take a relatively long time to reach their final stable operating temp - because heat sinking is used to pull heat out to keep them at a safe operating temp under maximum load conditions. There’s no such heat tug-of-war with tubes, so they get stable quick.

The only aspect of tube amps that has a slowly heat-accumulating element would be the transformers, and maybe silicon rectifiers and voltage regulators in the PSU. Though only large transformers should take hours to fully warm up. I don’t know if that significantly affects their performance - maybe. That could be the "4 hour warm-up" in your case.

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.

Pretty much in agreement with the above, this with many tube, both push pull and SET over many years. I notice as the amps age magic time can lessen to around two hour mark, also depends how hard I run them, running them hard further lessens time. I do always give at least hour lower volume prior to kicking things up. I also use boutique caps over much of my system, the physically huge caps I run in speaker crossovers need the hard running time.

Don't forget, speakers need warm up too. All my tube amps were good after 45 min.

Happy Holidays!

Longtime PL user.

5 minutes warm up, and it's ready for overdrive the next 4 hours.

I don't have 4 hours to wait for anything to perform "better."

I'd get my hearing tested and avoid reading audio forums.

Yes, with my past four amplifiers, all Class A or Class A/B, here is what I’ve noticed. This includes Tube and Solid State amps with big iron transformers though:

45-60m: sounds pretty good, and initially I’d think its warm enough.

120m no major changes but still sounding good. Close to the same as 60m.

240m (4hrs), with the big transformers now fully heat saturated, 3-dimensional sound kicks in, with sounds coming from the sides and slightly to rear of me too.

• My local 50+ year audio tech and builder colleague tells me "its the transformers getting to be fully heat saturated is when things can begin to sound magical" on some of the better amps w quality transformers.
• My local dealer fires up his amps at least 4+ hours prior to letting any customers in the door for listening sessions.

No !   I have had Rogue Audio amplifiers (Cronus magnum integrated, stereo 100 power amp). 

Each of them starting sounding great by the end of a record- e.g. 40 minutes or so.  

Definitely an improvement after side 1, maybe an hour max.  

Solid state monos here: on and idle about 6-9 pm , listening about 10 am or so, that is my laser beam zone, where the sound just lasers my ears with clarity and envelopes me with perfection. 
same with pre and spinner, on and morning listening, there is a huge difference from initial “on” and the 12-20 hours at idle to warm.

the odyssey strato amps take about 5-7days……yup days, but worth the wait.

clariy, bass, crunchy Mustaine mids! 

When I had my Viva, it was 45 minutes. You could set your watch by it. 4 hours seems long, but who knows.  Ask Kevin from Upscale.  He’s pretty familiar with that brand so I hear. 

Which Prima Luna?

The dialogue HP premium sitting in the rack sounds pretty good by the time the preamp is warmed up… (90 seconds.)

It could also be that the dross and flotsam of/from the stress of the day take 4 hours to be washed away…?

The old VTLs also sounded good pretty quickly.

But maybe there is somethng like capacitors forming that is happening?