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Naim warm up

S

say it as it is

pfm Member
Ok am going to throw this hand in and run for cover haha

as I prepare to dig out my bits to sell I hooked up my Nait5i for a last listen before I have to part way with it.

anyways hooked it up now bear in mind I am currently using some very unusual Naim Nam 402 vintage speakers and a tweaked Rotel 955.

been powered down for ages turned it on and yuk sounds flat and a boxed and a million miles away from the punchy little Rotel Ra05SE I just unplugged.

fast forward 35 mins playing and slowly starting to sound like it should, am i cab only hope it improves.

so this my take on turning naim stuff on and off it definitely likes to take it time to come back to life for sure!

off to hide now before the battle rages
 
I had a similar situation with an Exposure IV that wasn’t used for a period of 2 years and it started sounding as it should after a couple days only so pretty normal IMO.
 
I had a nice dual boiler italian espresso machine that would make much better shots after a 30 minute warm up (heating up the big brass group). But that didn't mean I was going to waste electricity and heat the house during the warm months by leaving it on all the time. I just got better at planning ahead.

And IMO if you can't live with the way it sounds from cold and can't wait 30 minutes then it probably makes more sense to ditch it (like you were planning to) and get something that sounds good right away.
 
Your brain is adapting, not the electronics. The brain‘s spectral filtration changes over time. When I get into my car I can hear the wind noise and tyre noise but after 30mins it’s no longer there.

When I come home and my wife tells me about a friend whom she found on Facebook and that she went to school with and her son may have ADHD or autism and how her friend’s friend knows her auntie and how her husband once met the friend’s counsin’s aunt’s sister who left teaching and spent ages on the phone trying to get her money back from Ryan Air since lockdown but actually she was relieved not to go to Lanzarote this year....at first I can hear it all but after 30 mins I can’t....
 
In my experience Naim power amps improve over the first hour from cold but their pre-amps/cd players need more like days (certainly overnight) to come on song.

For this reason my pre-amps stay on all the time and power amps are switched on about half an hour before I want to listen.

Don't know how an integrated reacts.

Leave it on overnight and see what you think tomorrow!
 
If stuff has been in the loft a long time I find that it can sound awful, even distorted.
I don't know why.
Once I bring it into regular use it will come back to it's good old self.
It's more true for things like phono stages and preamps.
 
well as for the comments about its just me getting used to it well respectfully I have to disagree if I had just come home fair enough but literally swapped amps on same cd so very much back to back replay from the start sounds a lot better this example at least likes to warm up I guess
 
peterm said:
In my experience Naim power amps improve over the first hour from cold but their pre-amps/cd players need more like days (certainly overnight) to come on song.
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I agree. I don't buy this brain adapting thing. I do think you get used to the sound of your own system but you're not going to suddenly like something you didn't like yesterday.
 
Mr Pig said:
I agree. I don't buy this brain adapting thing. I do think you get used to the sound of your own system but you're not going to suddenly like something you didn't like yesterday.
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Perceptual sensitisation of the sensory apparatus, the neuronal projections and the cortical processing centres. It’s basic neuroscience. Whether you choose to accept it, that’s a different issue aside.
 
My Cyrus 2 used to take 30 or 40 minutes to sound like it should. Problem was, I much preferred its sound when it was cold, when it had body and real bass. The characteristic all leading edges with nothing behind them would suddenly appear after a period.

I haven’t noticed a warmup period with any other of my amplifiers.
 
seethroughyou said:
Perceptual sensitisation of the sensory apparatus, the neuronal projections and the cortical processing centres. It’s basic neuroscience. Whether you choose to accept it, that’s a different issue aside.
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If one does accept it .. does that mean equipment cannot possibly sound better after a certain time of switch-on?
 
say it as it is said:
as I prepare to dig out my bits to sell I hooked up my Nait5i for a last listen before I have to part way with it.

fast forward 35 mins playing and slowly starting to sound like it should, am i cab only hope it improves.

so this my take on turning naim stuff on and off it definitely likes to take it time to come back to life for sure!
Click to expand...
30 minutes to 1 hour is about right for most if not all equipment, I suppose for your Naim Nait 5i too. Hence, 35 minutes is common. However, Naim preamps 202 and 282 in my case take a longer time in my experience. It won't sound terribly bad or anything but the sound will be more balanced and fleshed out when powered up from cold in a day or so, optimally 3 to 4 days although some reported up to 7 days. That is one reason most Naim owners especially the Classic pre-power owners leave the amps powered up all the time, all year round.
 
RoryL said:
If one does accept it .. does that mean equipment cannot possibly sound better after a certain time of switch-on?
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There are probably as many electronic engineers who accept that components can behave differently at different temperatures as don't. The ones who design a lot of the kit we're talking about for a start. You can believe kit doesn't warm up if you want to but being dogmatic about it just makes you look unreasonable.
 
Naim circuits are minimal, the bias is not temperature compensated, and while the amps warm the bias wanders. Bias adjustment effects distortion. They are stable quite quickly, perhaps 30 minutes. On newer amps they seem to put a thermal cover round some components, perhaps somebody that has looked can say what?
 
say it as it is said:
Ok am going to throw this hand in and run for cover haha

as I prepare to dig out my bits to sell I hooked up my Nait5i for a last listen before I have to part way with it.

anyways hooked it up now bear in mind I am currently using some very unusual Naim Nam 402 vintage speakers and a tweaked Rotel 955.

been powered down for ages turned it on and yuk sounds flat and a boxed and a million miles away from the punchy little Rotel Ra05SE I just unplugged.

fast forward 35 mins playing and slowly starting to sound like it should, am i cab only hope it improves.

so this my take on turning naim stuff on and off it definitely likes to take it time to come back to life for sure!

off to hide now before the battle rages
Click to expand...

You are correct about the warm up time. My scope instructions tel me to turn it on at least 20 mins before taking measurements.
 
There are technical reasons why this can happen.
A very tired capacitor can lose most if not all capacitance when cold but it can regain much of it's performance when warmed up. Usually applies to smaller caps.
 
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