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Poor man's IC cooker?

I'm in the process of testing a number of new ICs for my preamp to amp link, and was debating what to do about burning them in. I want to get a quick turnaround on the burn in so I can spend more of the 30 day trial period offered by the manufacturers listening and comparing.

Since my peamp has dual outs I figured I could use one set as a burn point, letting me listen to the other output while cables are cooking on the first. So what I did was go to Ratshack and buy their 4 jack RCA phono board (274-322). I soldered 100KOhm 1/2W dummy loads to each of the outer jacks. I plug the cables from the preamp to the loads and have a nice stable load for burn in. I decided to use my FM tuner as a source. I have a Yamaha T-2, which allows me to tune so that I get a combination of FM white noise and some signal from a selected station. I set the preamp to half volume and let it go. My only concern is whether that's a good signal mix for burn in.

I figure 3-4 days of this and each pair of ICs will be burned in pretty well. And I can do it 24 hours a day without keeping myself awake. Does this sound like a decent plan?

I will, of course, run the cables with actual music for at least a couple of hours when they get inserted for listening.
tonyptony

Showing 1 response by alanmkafton

alanmkafton
72 posts
 
Tonyptony......the reigning theory is that voltage deals with the dielectric, and current deals with the conductors. This, of course, is simplistic, but it seems to pass muster with the engineers. I strongly suspect there is more going on with this, but to my knowledge no one has devised the tests nor gear to properly develop and/or perform the necessary tests to divine the answers. I personally think that much of what is going on is at least at a micro-level, and most likely at a nano-level....witness changes to turntable motors and sound with different belts of differing materials, and plugging turntable power supplies into power line conditioners....*something* is going on that has not been satisfactorily explained. The same for the phenomenon re: the conditioning of cables.

And as an aside, 76....the Cable Cooker(tm) is a trademarked name. Wally makes his own device, but it is not the Cable Cooker(tm). And the ~12 volts continuous that the Cooker provides (along with high current and a frequency sweep) does just fine with IC's, and phono cables. References are available. :--)
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