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I bought a used Cary CAD-300sei on Audiogon about a week ago (got a smoking deal) and at the same time also purchased a full set of 300B & 6SN7 tubes from Sophia Electric.
Question, is there an advantage to playing music through the unit while the tubes are burning in? What I've done is hook up a CDP, put it on repeat and let it play all day long.
I'm wondering if it would be just as effective to simply turn on the amplifier without a source hooked up.
I'll say it has been interesting to listen to the changes in the tubes at the end of each day.
So far I'm very impressed with the Cary, makes a great headphone amp too.
Follow Ups:
thanks guys for the advice.
DA
IMHO, those sonic differences you actually heard were NOT necessarily limited to the tubes " breaking in ", but rather, the whole amp circuit, every part, was breaking in, being left on and playing music for hours or days at a time. Think about that for a moment.
Jeff Medwin
don't run the tubes 24/7 in an OCD effort to speed up the process.
do run them for a few hours (3-5), turn the amp off/let the tubes cool for an hour or so, turn back on for a few hours. aka, rinses/lather/repeat :)
IMO, the heat/cool effect for new/NOS tubes will result in "better" tubes. Read up a little on "tempering" metal.
EM 300 B. No more than 4 hours continous play and shut for minimum 1 hours. This is for the first 100 hours burn in. This will form a better cathode.
Wast of tubes to let tham burn contiously without enjoying music.
Best regards
Balle
In many cases, new tubes (and sometimes old stock that has sat around for decades) have imperfectly "formed" cathodes, whose emission is low. Usually they will fix themselves with some tens of hours of current flowing. This is in fact how they are "formed" at the factory. No music need be involved.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the only burn-in effect for tubes. Other things such as capacitors and transformers seem to have other break-in mechanisms that do want a signal voltage or current of some sort.
Don't worry about tube burn in.
Just use them normally and enjoy.
Tre'
Have Fun and Enjoy the Music
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