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I have this payer since October 2005 and after a few reliability issues (Philips transport), I ended up with a whole new motherboard (and transport).After 2000 hours, only now are the tubes going through its burn-in cycles (from sounding great to damped/congested) - at this point an additional 1000 to 1500 hours is needed. My issue is around tube burn-in as it seems that AA factory supplied a motherboard without 'rippening' the tubes. Does this make any sense? Any advice?
Follow Ups:
years. The long burn-in is caused by the fancy upgraded caps.
The latest info on teflon caps is that minimum break-in is 500 hours.I suggest that you connect a cheap CD or DVD player to your Prestige, via the digital inputs, select the appropriate input, play a loud CD on repeat every night at maximum volume (power amp off) for about 30 days. That should break-in the caps nicely.
Good luck
...burn in of tubes will occur in about 50 hours for small signal tubes and 100-200 hours for power tubes. This is a conservative estimate and they likely require less time, in most situations. At 2000 hours, I am guessing that if your tubes sound "damped/congested" that they may be nearing the end of their tube life as this is a typical symptom. Depending upon the tube, I find the average life is about 2000-4000 hours with a few exceptions up to 10,000 hours or more.Try changing them out and see how things sound. Also, do you have access to a reliable and accurate tube tester? Testing doesn't always tell the whole story but at least you can see if they test low or have leaks, etc.
This player needs more than 1000 hours to sound best and should've been plenty for these subminiture tubes.Its been running for 3 weeks and is starting to sound really good (but can improve further). I opened it for a visual inspection and all looks fine - tubes are soldered to board. Don't have a tester though.
Also, I decided to disconnect anlogue input board (I don't have any use for it). There's a ribbon connection cable (10cm) that I removed. I was surprised as this led to an improvement (marginally better hf and lower overall noise floor) - still early to tell as player needs to reach normal operating temperature (4 days).
nt
As per AA factory which is the cryo'd Philips 6021W mini tubes (Signature Edition).
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