[ted_b]

I was just sitting here thinking.....if Bob's new Ultimate Mundorf Crossovers allow my Revs to reach a potential of say, 100, while his Intermediates go 95, and the Standards at 90....well, then what are they out of the gate.  Let's assume the Standards start at 85 and suffer only a 50-100 hour break-in to reach 90.  Any reviewer or early listener will hear a beautiful 85-90 speaker and write glowingly.  Conversely, my Revs go "10 better" (to paraphrase Spinal Tap) but may begin life at 70 due to the larger battlefield the signal must endure, and take damn near 600 hours to reach their adulthood.  A reviewer or early listener may well be less than stupified, as there are a plethora of 70's out there.  What can we do to incubate these bad boys??? 

Well, I have my XLO Break In Disc ripped to my Transporter (Slim Server) and play track 9 continuously when not listening to my new Ultimate Mundorf Revs.  The caps in those babies are the size of hand grenades.  Most in the biz think it will be 500-600 hours or more.  Any ideas as to how to shorten this saga? 

Bob, any chance you can build the next set of Ultimates (I have one more coming, and a pair of Intermediates, but speaking for all here, not just me) and run some large current or whatever something through them as you go about building the speaker cabinets, etc.?  I know the crossover network/boxes are voiced per speaker (i.e one may need a diode here, a speck of magic dust there) but wondered if there was a way to parallelize the process in order to deliver adolescents or even young adults. 

I don't know...maybe too much holiday drinking.....but it seems a conundrum to work so hard to deliver the next level of performance, only to realize that out of the box they sound less appealing than their "lesser" brethren.  Seems a shame, really. 

Net/net, I'm a type A who has patience listed somewhere south of humility on the virtues list.  Thank goodness the Revs are 70's with their hands tied behind their backs, and are already moving into the 80's.  This is rarified air already. 

Gotta go turn off that hideous test noise and listen to some Coltrane.

[bluemike]

Ted you should be used to breaking in Speakers 

[ted_b]

Exactly.......used to it, and tired of it.   

These are not the same.......the earlier ones were in the 40's initially (really), then blossomed after 45 days.  Same issues, though; early listeners couldn't be impressed.

[WGH]

Jim Hagerman's Frybaby should do the trick.
http://www.hagtech.com/frybaby.html
If the crossovers are in a stand alone box I think you could burn in the speaker cables and crossover at the same time in a closed loop so you did not have to listen to any noise. I use his FryKleaner built from a kit, maybe he has an extra board to sell since they are no longer on his website.

Ask Jim about burning in caps in his forum, he always has something new up his sleeve. His blog has some info too
http://www.hagtech.com/blog07.html

Wayne

[2bigears]

   Ted,we really do feel your pain brother,burn baby burn.....    

[Bill Baker]

Hi Ted, with the Mundorf components found in your crossovers, you can expect well over 400 hours of signal for them to break in. Also to be taken into consideration is that the Mundorf capacitors are rated at 1200 volts which increases the time it takes for them to reach potential as compared to standard 200V or 400V capacitors normally used in crossovers.

 I have used the Mundorf Silver/Oil and Silver/Gold capacitors in quite a few amplifier and speaker applications so I have been down this road and yes, it is a long one.

 I currently have the Silver/Oil in a pair of my Bella 100 amplifiers and they still have a long way to go.

 If you plan on having to burn in more crossovers, the Cable Cooker may not be a bad investmant for you. Burn-in CDs also work but take a lot of time out of your listening I am using the Stereophile Test CD 3 right now to burn-in my Bella 100's but have three other systems available so I am not without music during the day while at work.

 Patience my friend, patience.

[ted_b]

Bill,
Thanks.  I have the XLO Burn-In track 9 on repeat (from my SB3, don't want to waste the tube time on the Transporter) when not listening.  Dumb question:  does volume make a difference (dumb question for two reasons: 1) don't know; 2) not sure I could raise the volume on that alien-landing-sounding noise regardless.)?

Is anyone familiar with the Isotek cd as an alternative solution?  Quicker to break-in?
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/isotek/cd.html

[Bill Baker]

Sorry Ted, I read right over your mention of the XLO disc in your initial post.

 In regard to volume, you want to be care not to play burn in tracks too loud as they contain some very low frequencies that could damage your speakers if played at extreme SPL's. Simply watch the woofers to assure they're not bottoming out.