Debate: Class D amps need 48 hours of warmup


Have you listened to your amps cold? Warm? Both ways?  What was your experience? I’ll hold my own observations to not bias the replies. 

Did you leave them off while on vacation and then come back to find they sounded hard and strident? 

erik_squires

I leave my AGD Duets on stand by all of the time, so I haven't tried them from a "cold" start except when I first bought them. Then they definitely sounded better over time. Part of the burn-in process I guess, between the amps and the stock power cords.

Hey @deep_333 as an engineer, of course I get what you are saying.  Temperature wise the system should be thermally stable within less than half an hour, if not much shorter.

So try to avoid giving yourself a concussion, but truth is myself and others, specifically with ICEpower based amps hear a noticeable benefit in leaving the amps on for more than 24 hours. 

I don't actually know why.  I call it "warm up" for lack of a better word, but it's unlikely to actually be purely a temperature thing, unless there's some odd component that is kind of thermally isolated which would explain it. 

All I can say is my engineering knowledge and my actual listening experience have not lined up. 

Are you a registered professional engineer, or do you just call yourself an engineer?

Hi @lanx0003  - You caught me. I only worked as one ages ago.  These days I’m more into software.  I used to work on motion picture audio equipment back in the day.  Electrical, PCB and mechanical engineering of gear, and sometimes the installation too. 

It would have been more correct for me to say something like "from an engineering perspective, I have no way to explain the reason why these amps seem to need the time they do, and yet I still hear it."

 

Best,

 

Erik 

"Are you a registered professional engineer, or do you just call yourself an engineer?"

@lanx0003 - I find that question interesting in that the title "engineer" has sometimes been loosely applied in various industries. 

In our world of home audio equipment, a professional engineering license is not required to design, manufacture, or service electronic audio equipment.  Over the years, some of the very best sounding home audio equipment has been designed and manufactured by individuals who have not earned an engineering degree.  Of course, there are product safety and regulatory compliance requirements that must be met by designers and manufacturers of consumer electronic equipment. 

A Registered Professional Engineer (PE) is licensed to practice engineering on public projects in a particular discipline, or to offer engineering services to the public.  This licensing process is intended to safeguard public welfare by ensuring that registered engineers meet certain educational, knowledge, and ethical standards.  However, many industries employ engineers who have graduated from an ABET accredited engineering college and who perform design and application engineering for projects, products, and processes in cases where professional licensing is not required.  These unlicensed folks are certainly engineers.

The title, "engineer", has also been historically used to identify roles in certain industries where specialized scientific, mathematical, and technological knowledge are required, and in some cases these individuals are performing engineering related services but have not earned an engineering degree.  I would prefer that these roles be identified with a different title, and that people designated as engineers have actually earned an engineering degree, but that ship has sailed.  I would not argue that for some positions in some industries, it is common to identify a person as an "engineer" who is not a "graduate engineer."