John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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NorthStar

NorthStar

Member
Joined 2012
John, I meant to ask you: What is your take on AC power cords, power conditioners, high quality/geometry material cables,
and under audio components/loudspeakers anti-vibration devices?

Can they further improve your fantastically sounding designed products?
...Like by a truly valuable margin?

And last; if so, why is that that great audio designers like yourself aren't exploring those 'sound' values more?
 
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VladimirK

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Joined 2007
john curl said:
If someone is getting a NEW set of JC-1 amps, take care that you break them in for a number of hours, before final audition. Sorry about that.
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Recently I have used a square wave generator for breaking in the newly assembled amp - the procedure was even more efficient than using the white noise signal. I used 5 Ohms 150W wire resistors as a load, 100kHz square wave, 70...80% of max output power, 24 hours time period.
After the procedure one could state, that something magician has happened to the sound, but actually it is not more than plain materials science. Various approaches of annealing materials imperfections, important for electrical and mechanical properties, by using heating, alternating currents, ultra-sound etc., are known for decades. Some effects are even listenable, output trafos of tube amps, if produced some mechanical noise at the beginning, become more and more quiet during the breaking in. Similar observations could be found with big electrolytic caps. Film caps could benefit from some annealing of imperfections in metal films or foils.
One should not expect, that any parts manufacturer will break in new parts during days, so this comes to diyers duties. Some diyers (not me) even break in every passive part before its soldering to the amp. The less boutiqe parts are used in the amp - the more effect is achievable by the breaking-in.
 
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VladimirK

Member
Joined 2007
john curl said:
Of course, Vlad. We use a similar test signal sometimes.
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John, I mentioned the special breaking-in procedure just for those, who plan to use ordinary listening for breaking-in. In the last case, one could loose several months, and finally could not be able to listen final sound. This is very usual with majority of customers. On the other hand, not much people really need sound improvements.
 
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elektroj

Member
Joined 2011
VladimirK said:
John, I mentioned the special breaking-in procedure just for those, who plan to use ordinary listening for breaking-in. In the last case, one could loose several months, and finally could not be able to listen final sound. This is very usual with majority of customers. On the other hand, not much people really need sound improvements.
Click to expand...

I use the first generation burn-in CD from these guys on a regular basis:
Purist Audio Design
Seems to be working, at least for me. YMMV..
 
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