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 shasta

The prob w/ FM is that there isn't anything below 50HZ or above 15kHz. And there sure isn't anything resembling dynamics...

I built the Hagerman and it works OK, though not as flexible as the Audio Dharma. I also am running the Isotek CD w/ great results, and it's only a 30 min track. On repeat play, with a series string of cables, it may be a nice alternative.