does your system "warm up" and then sound better?


I leave my amp on all the time but I'm wondering if all the other components warm up too. Speakers, pre amp, cd player, cables, ears? It seems that my system sounds better after an hour or so. What gives?
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Showing 1 response by kijanki

Larryi, Electrolytic caps are worse with temperature. ESR increases with temperature sometimes even causing thermal runaway when capacitor heats itself by ripple current times ESR (mostly old dried-up caps). On the other hand electrolyte eats dielectric - aluminum oxide over long time storage. Voltage rebuilds layer of aluminum oxide keeping breakdown voltage up. Temperature is causing also electrolyte to dry-up cutting life of capacitor by half for every 10degC increase.

Temperature also changes viscosity of ferrofluid used mostly in tweeters but sometimes even in midrange. My speakers (Hyperion HPS-938) have 6.5" midrange without suspension (spiderweb) using ferrofluid as a suspension.

Yes, parts (including semiconductors) are getting worse (fail) with temperature but it is very small effect until you cross about 100degC where numbers of failures starts getting very high.