Tube stereo sounds -smaller- after being on
Ok here is a weird one. I’ve been into tube audio for the last 20 years or so and I have one system I leave as is and one system I mess around with and change things out. For the most part, these days, I’m happy with both. Except I’ve been noticing something I thought I was imagining. Which is my experimental system starts out sounding great and after being on for a couple of hours sounds worse. Small soundstage, compressed highs and lows. Just over all enh. I have two turntables -
Gates and an EMT 930. The mixer is a great sounding one hand built in Austrailia called a Condesa Lucia. The amp is a Line Magnetics 2a3 amp LM 217. The cartridges are an EMT and a Denon 102. The tt preamps are by sun valley and auditorium 23. The one thing I can think of is the amp is a 220 version and goes through a power converter. Perhaps this is a sonic wrecker when it gets hot. Any other ideas? Thank you.
If you are "adding" EQ with your preamp/mixer it's possible that doing so is overtaxing the 3 watt amplifier and/or the step-up TF you are using. What speakers are you using, or are you using headphones (I know ZIP about headphones)? Just throwing this out there for thought/discussion. Interesting LM amp which I was not aware of (like the tube compliment and the soft start feature).
DeKay
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@yaluaka , potentiometers are the death of high fidelity. Get rid of that awful device. It does not belong in a high fidelity system. I am not even sure what kind of system it belongs in! |
It’s obviously not the mixer of the sound is initially good with the mixer in the line up. I was eying that mixer a few years back - it’s top notch among rotary mixers. I would set up a few experiments with the equipment running on 220 and the overheating transformers - then if the problem persists I’d look into tube swapping. If the mixer has a tape loop you may be able to connect the loop out to another input. After a few hours switch to the loop input to see if the problem persists. |
