Tube Preamps Should Have This Feature

Life is too short. Flip on the tubes and enjoy your system.

I have found the warm up time required to sound the very best is highly dependent on the make and model. For instance the Audio Research Reference 5 and SE had a very distinct ~ 10 - 12 minute warm up sound improvement… but a signal going through it was required! It was very distinctive… you could turn it on for an hour but the sound improvement happened ten minutes after a signal got sent through it. I thought I was nuts, so I got on a forum… and I was surprised to find detailed discussions about this exact behavior.

Now with the ARC Ref6se… no notable change from the moment the one and a half minute internal warm up and the auto mute comes off.

Other equipment has been different. But an individual piece tends to be completely repeatable.

@invalid 

Definitely that can be true. But is somewhat dependent on the specific equipment. 

I suspect both your pieces of equipment have solid state power supplies and tube amplification. Tube power supply life tends to be much shorter than the main circuit tube life. Many older preamps had tube life over 10,000 hours, they never had tubed power supplies. 

@invalid

Thanks for your reply. Really. That means you are running them 8,700 hours a year.

I have been told that tubes… particularly power tubes age more slowly when on but not in use. Maybe that has something to do with it.

My Audio Research gear recommends tube changes after 3,000 hours. When I do this I hear a bit of and improvement, as in the older tubes were starting to roll off a little.

What kind of gear do you have?

@invalid 

That makes sense the lasting longer would not extend from power tubes to rectifier and smaller tubes.

So, what is your preamp / DAC.

Thanks. Interesting. I had not heard of them. Lots of tubed equipment. They must use the tubes conservatively to get so much mileage out of them. Always good to see different audio companies.