IME break in with a low wattage tube amp takes even longer than 250 hours! If you haven’t already crank it up for a few days straight. Borrow a SS amp if you don’t wanna burn your tubes.
Wait, so all your gear is still new? How many hours do you have on each one? For example, the X5's won't settle in till after 250 to 300 hours, so treble in particular will be fairly rough until then.
How much time do you have on your other gear? I know from my tube amps they also take about 300 hours to fully settle in. Tubes settle in first (about 100 hours), then caps (about 200 hours) and finally the transformers (about 300 hours). You can't really make any judgements on your system until you've got some time on your gear.
In the meantime, I suggest turning up the bass a little, in order to balance out the sound until the treble calms down.
My X5s have about 250 hours and I've had my subwoofer turned up from day one and the speaker has definitely turned the corner with much better SQ. The PrimaLuna gear has about 200 hours and my speaker cables and interconnects have about 75 hours. The Holo Audio DAC requires about 500 hours of break-in before it performs at its full potential, per the Kitsune HiFi USA Distributor, and it was not close to 500 hours of break-in before I sold it about a week ago.
UPDATE: Today, I spoke to my sales rep. at Upscale Audio where I bought the PrimaLuna gear and he advised he'd get back to me on tube recommendations after he spoke with a tube guru who worked in their service center. He also reminded me to try the different speaker taps on the power amp, which I planned to do anyway after I asked you guys for your experience on this. So, I decided to use the PrimaLuna EVO 400 power amp's 4 ohm speaker taps to compare with the 8 ohm taps I'd been using since I bought it. I tried it when I first bought it, but the unit was so new and I don't recall hearing a difference, so I never bothered to try it again. Anyway, I played (2) songs that I know really well using the 4 ohm taps and I begin to laugh in excitement because I don't recall hearing the tunes sound at such a high level in my current system. Later this afternoon, I switched back to the 8 ohm taps and the shimmering cymbals were not as rich and full sounding as it did with the 4 ohm taps. The second tune was from the newly released album by Pat Metheny titled, "Better Days Ahead" and his guitar sounded loud and distorted, played at my desired listening level. This was an example of how I've been experiencing some guitars, pianos and brass sounding bright/distorted, causing me to lower the volume and the music is not as exciting when the volume is too low with "some" tunes. So, I soaked up the tunes in my auditory memory and switched back to the 4 ohm taps just to make sure I wasn't overreacting. Well, well, well, it was confirmation that the 4 ohm taps were clearly outperforming the 8 ohm taps. I am serious, for example, I cannot honestly say tweaks like cable elevators actually made a noticeable difference in my system, but this swap to the 4 ohm taps were downright shocking in my system. I listened to the Pat Metheny tune again, at the same volume level, and his guitar was CLEAN and the shimmering cymbals were ridiculous. The location of the instruments/musicians were so clearly defined, it just seemed like you could reach out and touch them. The X5s have always been accurate with the location of musicians, but this was clearly more distinct/refined with no audible distortion to be heard. This is definitely the best I have heard my system sound! Keep in mind, in my equipment roster, I indicated that I sold my Holo Audio Spring 2 KTE DAC and awaiting delivery of the Spring 3 KTE model, so my current DAC is the Audioquest Dragonfly Red. My system was smoking with this little DAC that cannot compete with the Holo Audio DAC.
I still plan to purchase a few more input tubes to see how it sounds, but I am really happy with what I heard today and it didn't cost any additional coin!
Thanks all!
