Bass leaves after amp warms up?
Krellman, Well said. FWIW, I agree with I with you on all three points. One of the reasons I recommended the SPL meter was for the OP to see for himself that his problem was not with absolute volume level of the bass. He just likes his system's sound when it is cold and the HF's dominate the sound and the sense of speed that can impart to the bass. Most of us, I think, would not consider this to be a balanced sound, but he does and that is why most folks couldn't really figure out his problem or how to solve it, we just don't listen to things with his ears nor his preferences. We have just assumed that he listens with our ears and priorities. As someone suggested, if that is a sound he really wants, he needs to evaluate his components after they have warmed up and select components that will give him the overall sound he is seeking. A daunting task I suspect. |
If you read Atmasphere's and my posts, you will discover that with this school of thought, a warmed up amp is in fact detrimental to optimal sound in that the outputs are then operating with reduced current. It does perform better when cold. But only because factory settings are deliberately conservative in an effort to allay future warranty issues. As I stated, most people don't care about this even if they notice. Factory settings are typically lower than optimal even when cold. Published specs have nothing to do with this issue so the manufacturers just cover their ass. In a class A/B amp for bi-polar devices, about 150ma per ch. is optimal regardless how many outputs there are. Mosfets are a different story. Typically between 200 and 300 ma per ch. Bottom line is heat is the killer so whether they're bi-polar or mosfet, if the temperature of the heat sinks at idle is around 120F, that amp is going to sound great for a long time. I don't believe this is an issue with class A amps, however. |
Csontos, you may have missed the post where Al found out that all three amps have bipolar output devices. My understanding of bipolars is that the hotter they get, the more current they pass- which leads to more heat. This is why they have to have large heatsinks and some sort of bias feedback circuit to control temperature, else they go into thermal runaway. I think it might be interesting nonetheless to try a set of ZEROs on the system and see how it behaves. http://www.zeroimpedance.com Then we could put the whole 'system overheating' idea to bed once and for all. Right now I am thinking that Fishing does not like the sound of the system warmed up. Right now if it were me I would run the system for at least one hour and see how it sounds, and then see how it sounds 3 hours later, after it has warmed up for all that time. I've seen some amps that you don't want to turn off because they need 24 hours to sound right... |
