Do solidstate pres and mics need warming up

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CyanJaguar

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I know that one should warm up a tube mic for about an hour for best results.

Does this hold true for solidstate preamps and mics, or can I just plug in cold and get equal results?
 
Five minutes will do it just to let everything stablize.
 
As long as it's not terribly cold or moist it should work perfect. If it is, turn it on and leave it alone for quite a while, so that the moisture can leave the unit. The reason one should warm tube units up is that the tubes need to reach a certain working temperature to work properly.

David.
 
This raises a similar question. The literature that came with my Hafler reference amp said something like for best results let it warm up for about 30 minutes before using for serious monitoring--something to that effect. I was a little surprised when I read it.
 
I will admit that my Muse amps sound better after they've warmed up, and if I'm planning to do some serious listening in the evening, I'll turn them on before I leave for work in the morning. It's not that they sound bad cold, it's just that if I'm doing *comparison* listening, I don't want the slight differences in sound between cold and warm amps to affect my observations about a certain recording or another piece of equipment.

I do leave my Melos tube/SS hybrid preamp on all the time, but considering how seldom I change my tubes, it may not make much difference that I do so (in other words, I may just be degrading my tubes' performance faster and not notice their deterioration over time, while if I turned it off, the tubes might last longer even if it did take them an hour or so to stabilize when I wanted to listen). The last time I changed tubes, I looked it up and it had been 5 years. The sound of a new pair of tubes from Audio Advisor was like getting a major system upgrade by that time. :-)

Mark H.
 
It's been my experience in over 30 years in music that tubes warmed up and stabilized faster than I ever did.
 
Well let me tell ya....

Does this hold true for solidstate preamps and mics, or can I just plug in cold and get equal results?
Click to expand...

This is tough.
My experience is that this is true only on fridays and holidays...no wait...that's something else.

Oh, I know...it's true only when it rains!
no...that's when Shirley Manson is happy.

I met her ya know....Garbage was recording V2.0 upstairs at Butch's studio while we were downstairs recording....man she's sexy!

What was the question, now?:confused:

Oh yeah....I don't know technically but I DO know that I tend to let EVERYTHING warm up before use just for the good juju of it. It just seems right and none of my gear has left me yet. (I don't think)

heylow
Rock Jedi/Indie Snob
www.heylowsoundsystem.net
 
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