Continuous Burn-in experiment with Ack! dAck

Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

Background:
At home I have another DAC that is almost never powered off...it has no power switch. The benefits of extended burn-in are semmingly subtle sonic changes that become endearing as as caps, ICs, wire, etc alter over time with burn-in. Most of the benefits of this stabilization process coming in after about a week.
Batteries are not continuous:
...or as HP (of TAS fame) would say "stabilization would require continuosness". With the battery powered Ack! dAck, the longest continuous burn-in is limited to about six hours ...beyond that you begin to venture into the land of deep discharge and sacrificing the useful life of your battery. At best, you can rack up the hours (in non-continuous fashion) as you need to power down for a while to recharge and then play/burn-in some more. Continuous burn-in is not an option and finding out if there is a benefit to it remained a mystery.
Experiment:
Intrigued with how continuous burn-in might affect the dAck, I experimented with "extended continuous burn-in" by building an outboard DC supply to temporarily replace the batteries. Hooked up the battery umbilical cord connetor,it ran for about a week being fed by the SP/DIF output of my DI/O. I carefully plugged back in the battery (see below) and gave it a listen after an hour on the battery.
Approaching dAck 2.0 teritory ? Favourable impressions? Better?
Not as dramatic a revolution in the imaging and soundstaging changes found in the new and soon to be released dAck 2.0 level as I found the changes to be an evolutionary refinement of the Rev 1 dAck tone and better definition in the bass. Most welcome.

cheers,
PeAK

Burn-in impression of dAck (Open in New Window)

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The Cable Cooker

Topic - Continuous Burn-in experiment with Ack! dAck - PeAK 09:01:46 01/28/05 (0)

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