Jeff Rowland's Continumm

Guido,

maybe you missed my response above. As I said above, 1 preamp was a demo unit...so it likely had some hours on it. The other one had less than 200 hours on it. And as I said above, I am not a big believer in break-in.

Thanks

Pinkus, you have a right to your position about burn-in, but if you're going to write reviews (you did, despite its brevity) you owe it to the makers to take the effort to burn-in. You'll notice that the "pro" reviewers routinely mention burn-in. Whether they or you believe in it or not, enough users think that they hear a difference that it's considered important if you're going to make comments that may impact a designer's livelyhood.

Please take this in the spirit of me trying to be helpful. I think you're also trying to be helpful, thus the advice.

Dave

Thank you Pinkus and apologies. Indeed I missed your post about break in. I appreciate your position on little breakin reqd. My subjective impression is that both my Ref 3 and Capri took over 500 hrs to settle. While Ref 3 was quite hideous in the very beginning until about 150 hrs after which it started progressively to sing, Capri was initially already reasonably listenable -- perhaps because of factory burn in of 75 hrs -- then I thought steadily improved until well over 500 hrs.

Dave,

in the end I have to trust my ears. I know "pro" reviewers and even equipment designers believe in break in. Let me ask you a question. Say I took 2 identical continuum integrated amps, and broke only one of them in...could you listen to both and reliably tell me which one was broken in and which one was not ?

Perhaps you can, or you believe you can (it is immaterial if you can or think you can....what matters is that you think you can) tell the difference. Also, you probably have better hearing since you are a musician. I am not sure I can tell the difference. Hence my scepticism about break-in.

And no offense taken about your advice. However, I will say this...if Jeff believes his equipment needs break-in, he should certainly put it in his manual. Has someone asked Jeff about his opinion about equipment break-in ?

Yes, I have. Jeff has in fact suggested that significant breakin may needed because of power supplies, transformers and other components being initially 'magnetized'. As such, Jeff was not at all surprised that even the 312 I have in the system, which is not at all new with several thousand hrs of operation, but had been in storage then truck plane/cold/vibration for a spell required several hundred hrs to restabilize. Rod and Mark at Soundings also suggested to me that Capri -- like most other pres -- may require over 500 hrs of operations to stabilize.

Comparing a well broken in Capri or any other device with its counterpart fresh off the factory floor would be a fascinating experiment. If I have the opportunity I will attend it. . . no need to put too much effort into making it a blind experiment either, all Capris look identical to me, regardless of livery.

G.