[Joules]

What is needed for break in of the AKSA N+?
Dose there need to be a signal ? is louder better?
Or is just pluged in and on enough? And for how long?

Smoke test this weekend!!!

Thanks

[rabbitz]

Just play normally for about 150 hours and take no notice of the sound changes as they can be very odd. When it finally clicks in, you'll know.

Don't joke about the smoke test  

[AKSA]

Joules,

Peter is right on the money.

It will be quite listenable after 50 hours, best after 150 hours.

You need to play music through it.  A good way is to turn the speaker on its face, right onto the floor (watch the drivers don't hit the carpet!!), then turn up to normal listening levels - nicely muffled.

This is pain free way of breaking it in........

Cheers,

Hugh

[aurelius]

Hi Joules,

I am just breaking in the second of my Linkwitz Orions powered by 4 x 55N+ (about 25 hours on it ATM).

My experience is that it sounds OK for a couple of hours, before becoming pretty terrible and then slowly climbing to dizzying heights...  

At its worst, the highs are sibbilant and the midrange confused.  Improvement starts with the mid-bass and moves up the spectrum.

This may have something to do with the Orions themselves, but I doubt it.  Just prepare yourself for a period of pain (the results are worth it).

[Geoff-AU]

Good luck with the smoke test, Joules

Hugh, have you got a technical explanation for the N+ break-in period?  By all accounts it seems to be quite savage compared to most amps!  While I don't discount that SS can "get used to" playing an audio signal, it's much easier for me to accept that a car engine has a break-in period because I understand the mechanical aspect of tight manufacturing tolerances.  I guess with a good explanation I'll understand electronics break-in too

I have found numerous references to exotic caps like Black Gates requiring some 200 hours to settle in, with the theory being that the dielectric has to settle or react or get used to being in a "charged" state.  Interestingly, I also found a quick circuit someone has knocked up to exercise a cap and break it in:
http://www.geocities.com/rjm003.geo/rjmaudio/diy_rack.html

Maybe something to think about for DIYers wanting great sound straight away - just build this one on a bigger scale and attach half a dozen caps and they'll be broken in by the time the rest of the amp is built!

[rabbitz]

Hi Geoff

Before I upgraded my AKSA55 to the N+ upgrade, I went through the exercise of using the cap rack to break in the BG NX caps before they went in. It did nothing at all to help and still had to go through the pain with me crying to Hugh.... were's my AKSA gone  

Just have to be patient I suppose and time does go fast.... but there are others who say the cap rack worked for them.... I'm sure I turned the power on  

[ginger]

The "break in" is the Blackgate Standard Capacitors. Possibly the Blackgate NX as well but I don't believe so.

This NOT unique to the AKSA. I have used Blackgate Standards (470uF/50V) as cathode bypasses in Tube Amps and found that the same "break in" is required AND perhaps not surprisingly had the same experience - that is, it starts great with brand new caps, turns to custard after a few hours and then gradually improves until it reaches stellar heights. The Blackgate Tech Notes say it takes 40 hrs, I found it takes more like 80 hrs BUT I felt that there was  still some marginal improvement out to about 160 hrs.

To break my 55N+ in I connected it to a dummy load (4.7 Ohm 50 Watt resistors) on my test bench and ran it continuously for 2 days, at a level jusufficient to just warm the loas resistors slightly (probably about 3 to 5 Watts). Then transferred it to the lounge room and connected it to the speakers, loaded the favourite albumn, sat back a grinned a lot.

Cheers,
Ginger

[AKSA]

Hi Geoff,

I'm not sure on this phenomenon, but I'd say it likely relates to 'activating' either the electrode (which I think is carbon) or the dielectric (which is some complex organo-metallic coating).

I suspect that the capacitance changes both in size and dielectric absorption during the break in process, but don't know for sure.

I do know these are amongst the best caps I've ever used for audio, and I will be very disappointed when they are no longer made.

Ginger, Peter, thanks for your responses...  appreciated.

Cheers,

Hugh

[Geoff-AU]

Cool..  looks like cap break-in belongs in the same camp as the smoke they put inside chips during manufacture..  "don't ask, it can't be explained, just accept that it works"

[stvnharr]

This is written at great risk, as I have a differing view here from most everyone else.  
I have two 55N+'s.  First one was constructed as N and upgraded w/BG's last January.  I never noticed the awful sound, that everyone else has written about in copious quantities, when BG's are installed in an amp that has been around awhile.  Did I notce a change down the road a bit?  Well, I made other numerous changes in the GK-1, so everything existed in a state of changed parts.  But never ever ever did I hear any sound degradation such as people have described.  
The other Aksa was constructed with BG Standards from the get go.  In the intervening time a few things have been changed, different values, Standards changed to NX's, and a few other things.   Again, never ever ever was there any sound degradation.  The amp sounded great from the moment it first played, and maybe it's gotten a little better, but nothing major.  
I'm not disputing what others have heard and described, far from it.  And my GK-1 did go thru some change, from being awful at the beginning, to something near divine some time later.
But this idea that one has to wait 200 or 400 hours for something to sound good sounds, well, questionable to me.  When something gets repeated often enough, it just gets accepted without question.  And how does one come up with these hour "measurements"?  Guess????!!!!!
The analogy to the "break-in" of an internal combustion engine is just not so.  There are many moving parts in an engine.  There are no moving parts in an amplifier.  
Many things in audio have this aura of the mysterious and unexplainable.  I think a lot of people really like this as all opinions are thus valid and it give great cause for discussion.  And if one spends much time on the forums, it can all be very entertaining.

[netaron]

Well, I have always thought of it as a water valve. If the inside of the valve is rough, it will soften over time with the flow of water. And since electricity behaves much like water, I can buy the analogies of "break-in period". I am sceptical though, since it may be our ears adjusting and not the caps. All in all, and in just about anything that I like, smoothness always becomes the final factor. That is one quality that always stands out first when I evaluate food, wine, relationships, people, cars, operating systems and of course AKSA's. I realized this when I asked my then 8 year old son a few years back to tell me the difference between 2 sources. He obviously picked the LP over cd, because it sounded smoother to him. It's 2am here in North America and I am rambling, but all in all, there is a slight difference after the break-in, that slight difference could very well be the change one is seeking, and that is big.

Haron

[rabbitz]

stvnharr

I'm glad you find us entertaining as that's part of what we're here for and if we all had the same opinion and observations, it would be boring.

Good for you that your upgrades went well without any sonic funnies. The changes mine went through were not awful, just not consistent, just different and lost some of the magic sonics that the stock AKSA 55 had.

I did use some BG NX on the output circuit on a CD player and there were no strange effects at all.

Mechanical break in is quite easy to think about, but their are others such as chemical break in until things stabalise.

Come to think of it, you just reminded me, I must add a time meter onto my amp  

[stvnharr]

Given my earlier post, I have to write that I have experienced "break-in" with a couple or more units other than the GK-1.  The units were brand new, cd player, preamp, and a cable or two.  The beginning sound was very center weighted, almost monophonic.  The "break-in" time varied, but was either overnight, or a couple weeks.  I just put in a cd on repeat and let it play, on mute, overnight and while at work.  For the cd player everything pretty much happened in the first overnight period.  The cable had to have music going thru it, so took a couple evenings or so of listening, but not too much.  The Bat preamp took a couple weeks, and then one evening while listening the sound just opened up as it played over a period of an hour or so.  And then it was all over.  I was supposed to hear tonality differences, according to the dealer, over a period of time thereafter, but I never really did.
My take on tonality changes in a "break-in" period is that if they do occur they are so subtle and so slow occurring as to be really unnoticeable.  However, some months later, on may notice that one evening the music just really has been sounding a bit better these past couple weeks, but it's hard to really put a definitive quality to that assessment.
I have also made a fair number of capacitor changes to components in systems since I entered the diy world.  Here, I never really notice much afterwards from before.  It really doesn't matter either.  Nothing ever sounds worse, and better parts always make things "better", but I suppose it depends on one's definition of better.
I do have a little difficulty with these statements of 200 hours or 400 hours for break-in.  Subtle musical changes are hard to pick up.  To say that after several weeks or months everything SUDDENLY sounded better just does not correlate to my own listening experience.
Everyone's experience differs I suppose.

[rabbitz]

More on the run in topic..... how long does it take for valves to settle in?

[andrewbee]

The part of this whole break in Phenomena that has me saying "hmmmm" is that I have never, ever, heard  a person say that the unit sounded better out of the box and was worse with time or "break in".

Andrew

[MikeC]

The part of this whole break in Phenomena that has me saying "hmmmm" is that I have never, ever, heard a person say that the unit sounded better out of the box and was worse with time or "break in"

When I upgraded my late lamented AKSA to N+ status, it was way good "out of the box", then deteriorated drastically after a few hours playing. I ended up leaving a CD on repeat playing very loudly while I was at work, switching everything off when I came home. One day, I walked in and everything sounded "right". There were some slight changes after that, but there was a literal snapping into focus during the 10 hour period I was out, and this was probably after 100 hours hard playing. I doubt it was my ears becoming used to the sound as I was not listening during this time.

Cheers

Mike

[Geoff-AU]

The part of this whole break in Phenomena that has me saying "hmmmm" is that I have never, ever, heard  a person say that the unit sounded better out of the box and was worse with time or "break in".

Andrew

one very plausible reason for this is that your brain adjusts to something new.  

[AKSA]

Geoff,

I'd agree, except more than five people have told me that the final change 'snaps' in over a period not more than an hour.

This of itself is so strange, and yet so uniformly reported, that it adds credibility to the view that there is something much more to this than meets the eye  (or ear, as appropriate......)

Cheers,

Hugh

[aurelius]

First, let me say that I was a break-in sceptic.  If I don't understand it, I'm reluctant to belive it.  If no one really understands it, I'm even more reluctant.

Also, forgive my lack of audiophile vocabulary. Music for me is like wine.  I know what I like but I'm too lazy to analyse, then jargonise my experience.

With this in mind, I have broken in each side of my Orions independently and experienced the same so far both sides (the second one now has about 50 hours).

I posted because I was relieved to read other's posts when experiencing the decline in performance after a few hours... it was traumatic to think that I had spend so much on something that sounded that bad. Anything I can do to ease someone elses angsiety is worth while.

Could this be psycological?  Sure!... perhaps one notices the superb speed and timing of the amplifier up-front and then after growing familiar with the sound, only then notices the lack of mid-range coherence.  However, like most people, I belive what I THINK I hear... reality or perception? Who cares? I can only relate what I've experienced and I make no appologies if it does not easily fit within someone elses world view.  

The part of this whole break in Phenomena that has me saying "hmmmm" is that I have never, ever, heard a person say that the unit sounded better out of the box and was worse with time or "break in".

I was reading a review on speakers from the Horn Shoppe just this morning and they were having exactly the same experience with 4" fostex drivers.

As for suddenly "snapping in", our lives are full of gradual change in physical phenomena that  result in sudden changes in perceptual experience.  Think, for example on focusing a set of binoculars.  When way out of focus, there is only blur, and it doesn't "hurt" our perceptual systems... there's no detail, but no pain either.  As the lenses slowly move toward focus, more detail is revealed, but the detail invites attention and the lack of perfect focus starts to cause pain and fatigue.  From this point, a very small incremental change in lens position causes perfect focus.  The image becomes clear and fatigue diminishes.

This is not evidence, but it is food for thought...

Mark

[andrewbee]

I have no doubt "break in" exists, I have experienced it myself on more than one occaision. I am just begining to believe that as Geoff says its more of a getting used to a "new" sound more than anything else in many cases but not all (see paragraph below).

As to the the 4" Fostex, I can attest that all the Fostex speakers I have heard (and its more than a few) across the board sound terrible when new.

I still wonder though why I have yet to hear of someone prefer something before "break in"

Back to lurk mode.

Andrew