Any reason why my system takes up to 4 hours to warm up?

IME, burn in of the components of the dedicated radial would be likely to take place over a period of weeks or months.

I would not expect it to create the daily effect that you are experiencing.

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Understand what you are saying, just running through some possibilities.
It definitely feels like something comes into play as the system warms up but 4 hours just seems so long.
I do worry about the 282 being 2004 vintage but there are many people on here that have older equipment than mine and I haven’t see this issue mentioned before.

Definitely a bit of Voodoo maybe but one thing I have learnt with Hifi is to keep an open mind , well most of the time :joy:

How long ago was the new circuit installed? I’ve found it takes around four months for a 10mm cable to settle and give its best.

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Surely this is just plain logic in some respects. In a cold room plastics ,rubber etc will stiffen up and when warmer will be more flexible so bound to affect the sound.
A
So just a thought can the humidity of the air in the room affect the sound?
If it’s high then won’t the moisture in the air affect how sound waves travel.

Isn’t that why foghorns are low frequency because high frequency doesn’t travel well in foggy weather.

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See this:

As for the OP’s problem and your response, the question is, is the room starting from very cold each time the system is turned on, or is the room fairly constant within just a few degrees from or before turn on to the time it sounds good?

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I believe humidity affects the sound, probably because the more humid, the less static can build up on components. I also found that 21C is the optimum temp. If I pre-warm the room to this temp, SQ is pretty much spot on from the go. I leave my equipment on 24/7.

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Interesting. I’ve never thought about how much the temperature of the room itself might affect sound quality.

But when you think about it, it must affect sound quality.

We don’t use the heating very much in our house.

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Temperature is another condition that affects the speed of sound. Heat, like sound, is a form of kinetic energy. Molecules at higher temperatures have more energy and can vibrate faster and allow sound waves to travel more quickly.
This is room temperature.
Component temperature has an optimum too.

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Maybe “system disc” can speed up this process? Personally, I was impressed by how it changed the sound in my setup, which I had had for about 2 months at the time. However, they have disadvantages in that they cannot be turned on comfortably if you have an open-plan house/apartment and you intend to stay indoors - the noise is too irritating. But if you have a dedicated, separate music room, it may work. Many cable and audio equipment manufacturers provide such recordings. I personally tested Tellurium Q System Disc (but mainly because I have their wiring). There is a 10-minute wake-up track.

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Circuit was installed in November last year, so coming up to 3 months.

I’m probably more sensitive to heat/humidity because my listening room is a log cabin in the garden. Over winter the temp gets down to about 10C which is when the heater frostguard kicks in. I also used to have plants which couldn’t tolerate temp below 10C so I monitored the temperature max/min over time. It was kind of an accident that I discovered everything sounded better at around a pre-warmed 21-22C. The humidity thing I discovered when thinking about static and messing with anti static fluid and Acouplex. When the humidity is above about 85% everything sounds totally together, below that and the urge to tinker comes about. I’m not usually a tinkerer but sometime even I can be convinced.

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To add a little more detail, I totally get the room temperature reasoning, our system is in the lounge, south facing window so usually keep a reasonable temperature, if I start a listening session it will usually be early afternoon with the doors to the lounge closed so temperature about 18-20 degrees (heating on all day) so not a cold room.

There are a couple of things I have thought to try, as suggested earlier, playing the system for 4 or 5 hours with the volume turned down before starting a listening session, not too sure how that will work with the volume very low but easier enough to try.

Plug everything back into the mains block which would be connected to the original house circuit, again bit more work but straight forward enough.

Then lastly remove the ndac from the system to see what effect that has, this was the last item added and with it being a 2010 vintage could it be it’s due a service, I don’t know but again easy enough to try.

I hope I can highlight the problem as when it does come on song the difference is so much better, well to my ears anyway.

Thank you, that’s an interesting table of speeds.

I’m aware that the heat of the air in a room is a measure of the energy of vibration of the air molecules in that room.

And I’m aware that the temperature of components and cables changes sound quality.

But I hadn’t ever thought how much influence changes in the ambient temperature of the room might have on Sound quality.

But of course the ambient temperature in the room affects the temperature of all the cables and components.

And therefore room temperature will affect sound quality, as long as the system is good enough to show up that difference.

Would you explain a bit more about those cited speeds of sound waves through air?

Are those average speeds?

What are the main factors that change speed apart from temperature, e.g. Humidity, pressure, etc?

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Thanks this partly answers some of my questions in my previous post.

How do you measure humidity in your cabin?

Also, do you think there is a high level of humidity above which sound quality might be worse?

I mention this because my system has been sounding a bit ‘off’ in recent weeks.

And during that time the temperature has been fluctuating a lot in that room, and also we have started using a drying rack in the room, so humidity must’ve been a lot more variable too.

Mine is left powered on all the time. The gear is in a small cupboard under the stairs with the door left ajar for air circulation. The cupboard is always reasonably warm so I do not notice any ‘warm up’ performance improvements.

The speakers are in the kitchen/diner with a tv mounted on the wall between them. They are used for tv sound as well but again, this room is always reasonably warm.

I do notice a slight variation in sound (or did with my NDX2/SN3) in the summer - very warm weather seems to make everything sound a wee bit better.

Not sure why yours would take 4 hours or so though. Unfortunately I do not have any suggestions for improvements.

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I don’t actually measure the humidity, just take an average from a couple of weather apps for my area. It roughly equates to the days when my system sounds awesome (high humidity) and when it sounds good but isn’t blowing me away (low humidity). I’ve not been very scientific about it but it seems to be consistent.

I think it really matters in the air travel.
I first noticed this as a penny drop moment one time in my car in winter.
Itv was very cold - figures and the car radio came on and it was bright as hell.
I left the car to warm up and upon returning and the temp was nearly 20 degrees all the bass was back and no brightness.
So I defo think air movement in speed is far more important.
Components etc do have an optimum temp but one time I had my Speaker cables going through to the underfloor and then back up into the room at the speakers and was fine.
We redecorated and I thought I could doa tidy job of the cables but keeping them in the room and blocked the holes I found the musical experience much more together.
Whether this was expectation bias or not I’m not sure but I think all in the same space and temp is better.
:+1:t2:

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If you read the post link above, you might find what you’re after