Breaking in your preamp does not require that your power amp be on. Just do what you said--connect your digital gear to the preamp, put it on infinite repeat, turn your preamp on and use your regular volume setting. The preamp has a loading resistor on its output (to prevent any DC from building up if there isn't an amp connected), so running the CD player and preamp in this fashion is fully equivalent to listening to music through the entire system.
How to break in a tube preamp?
Please excuse me if this is a stupid question.
I want to break in a newer ARC tube preamp (ARC says 400-600 hours needed to run in new Teflon coupling caps, etc.) and am wondering if I can accomplish this without running my tube amp at the same time and avoid spent KT-120 power tube use. Can I only leave a digital source on repeat with the preamp on and actually "burn in" the unit or is that not fully running what needs to be run to accomplish "proper run in".
I want to break in a newer ARC tube preamp (ARC says 400-600 hours needed to run in new Teflon coupling caps, etc.) and am wondering if I can accomplish this without running my tube amp at the same time and avoid spent KT-120 power tube use. Can I only leave a digital source on repeat with the preamp on and actually "burn in" the unit or is that not fully running what needs to be run to accomplish "proper run in".