Upgraded from Ayre K5xemp to Ayre KX-5 Twenty short review

[enatai252]

Originally Posted by dbphd

Hmm. After the successful setting of amp to standby last night, the preamp and amp came up this morning with mute off.

On my kx5 - if I turn it off when on mute it powers back up on mute. If I power down when it is not on mute when I turn on it's not on mute

If it does power up on mute than I have to exit mute for amp to come on

And as I mentioned a long press is necessary to power down all linked components

Should be simple

[dbphd]

Simple it is. I'm a happy camper now. And that sound!

[will]

Seemed to have hit a plateau with my break-in. But my last few listening sessions haven't been full-on concentration. This is not to say it doesn't sounded splendid. It still does. It will need more hours to hit the next level of sonics.

[will]

Exactly a month in, I have an estimated 50 hours on the CD input of the preamp. Since I feed my TV audio through the preamp, that input has way more hours on it. But it is sounding great with my C-5xeMP, especially the last couple of listening hours.

[d_elm]

Originally Posted by will

Exactly a month in, I have an estimated 50 hours on the CD input of the preamp. Since I feed my TV audio through the preamp, that input has way more hours on it. But it is sounding great with my C-5xeMP, especially the last couple of listening hours.

Have you considered continuous play to accelerate the burn-in. You can put the player on other inputs to do them. And change the volume so you get various volume control resistors. You can put the VX-5/20 in mute mode, faint green light, not stanby mode.

[dbphd]

I didn't want to put the hours on the C-5xeMP laser, so I set a Sony HAP-Z1ES to repeat files 24/7. After a week, I exchanged the C-5 and HAP inputs. The VX-5/20 was in standby. Advice from Charles Hanson was to not make a big deal of break-in, just listen and enjoy while it continually gets better.

[Blackstone]

Oops wrong thread.

[will]

I prefer the as-you-go approach and not too concerned about "volume burn-in." It is sounding terrific even though I haven't been able to put in too many listening hours lately. But last night I went through the MoFi edition of U2's War -- not a great recording to begin with -- and discovered new things I hadn't heard before, and the sound was just so natural and organic.

[will]

Just moved to a new house and going through withdrawal. It will be another couple of weeks minimum before I can unpack my gear and set up again.

[Blackstone]

You only need to worry about break in if it sounds fatiguing or thin or bright. In my experience, components fill out and fatten up the more warmed up and broken in they are. I do not use standby, at all. If you can play it loud without fatigue you can break in as you go. Me personally, when I get something new I try and get 200 hours of playback of mixed Ayre IBE break-in tracks (noise) and music with good dynamic range (roon tells you) as soon as possible. I don’t even attempt to evaluate before 200. Just torture it while you are at work or something and get it over with!! It does change over time and it does get better.