Puma Cat |
07-25-2012 11:12 PM |
Premier 350 and CT-5: It's time to get systematic
and behave like a proper scientist.
The "optimization" (read: capacitor burn-in time) of my CT-5 has been a long process, much of which I've documented here. When I first got it in Feb 2011, with a reported 300 hours on it, the CT-5 upon arrival at Puma Cat's cave sounded flat, hard, threadbare, and at times, downright unpleasant. While C-J's guidance is that the Teflon caps require 300 hours burn in, I (and Turntable et. al.) are of the opinion that closer to 1000 hours is really required to fully burn in the Teflon caps. The CT-5 took a big jump forward one night in July 2011, and another big jump forward to "deliciousness", as Alberto would put it, around the October/November time frame. I don't know how many hours were on it exactly at that point in time, but guess it was in the ballpark of the 650-700 hour mark. Paired with my LP70S, the CT-5 really developed into very, very fine and nice-sounding preamp, not as warm as my Pr17LS pre, but overall, really nice.
The recent addition of my Pr350 power amp has only complicated matters. I really don't know how many hours are on my Pr350, but I'm hearing some of the exact same sonic attributes I heard with the CT-5 when it was first acquired with ~300 hours on it. The distinction being that with the CT-5 I had these issues throughout the frequency spectrum, with the Pr350 the issues are limited to the treble/high upper frequencies. On very high quality material, the highs and upper frequencies sound natural, accurate, and just right, but on other material that is not the créme de-la-créme sound quality or mastering-wise, the upper frequencies can be a bit too hot, thin, and not "delicate and refined" as Martin Colloms' might put it. Also, pairing the CT-5 with the Pr350 in it's present state is just a bit too much. I think Joe very accurately described his experiences using his GAT with the Pr350 on his CR-1s, which are even more resolving and transparent than my Dynaudio Contour S3.4s. This all would be a lot easier and clearer to deal with if the Pr350 were not so spectacularly good in all other categories: it has a gorgeous midrange, excellent imaging, outstanding bass output, definition, and articulation, just ridiculous amounts of overall power and transient current delivery, superb macro- and microdynamics and just an insane, I mean insane, capability for dynamics and slam. This amp can, and does, go to 11.
Bottom-line: I need to know if what I'm hearing is due to lack of burn-in or is intrinsic to the sound of these components. So, I"m going to eliminate the burn-in variable.
So, I decided to get systematic and create what I call the "burn unit".
I've setup my Oppo on continuous play driving the CT-5 driving the Pr350. I've set up a countdown clock on my iPad, so it will accurately track overall accumulated time of the burn-in starting today. I'll go with the null hypothesis both components have zero hours on them, and feed many different CDs on continous all-content repeat for a measured 500 hours (about 25 days at 20 hours per day). The system will be on from approx. 11 PM through to roughly 7PM the next day when I get home from work. I will then shut it off for four hours during the evening, and listen to the LP70S and Pr17 during that time or watch some television. Once I reach the documented 500 hour number, I will hook the CT-5 and Pr350 back into the system and spend a week or two on a broad range of source components and content to make an assessment; this assessment will drive my decision about what to do long-term.
I started today and racked up 10 hours on the Burn Unit while at work today, and then shut the system down until I retire for the evening.
Right now, this evening, I'm back listening to my "legacy system", my Premier 17LS and LP70S, and I gotta say, while the LP70 cannot match the Pr350 for the overall magnitude of power, slam, dynamics, force, bass detail and power, badda-bee, badda-bah, overall the Pr17/LP70S sounds absolutely wonderful: natural, with the just the right amount of detail, superb holographic imaging, and most importantly, like music.
Stay tuned....will check back in in three weeks or so.
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