Aging for SOtM products
The aging means that the product is enable to focus on the function fully by flowing the current which have effect on the component physically or chemically. Almost components such as resistors, capacitors, wires, etc need this aging.
Especially for the audio product, the components have chosen by the engineer not only for the operation, it has selected in consideration of the aging time, so when customers purchase the audio product, they should spend times for aging to fulfill the performance accordingly.
The aging time is different depending on the types of components, some take from several hours to 1 or 2 months. In my opinion, the aging should take at least 1month even though people think it takes normally 1week. Compare the units, for example, the unit which has been aging for a long time around 1month sounds better than the new unit which I’ve been hearing for a testing in a week. Of course, the aging time will differ slightly depending on the products, but the sound will be significantly changed from several hours to 24 hours after the power on, and gradually the changing will be slowing down. After a week, the changing will be too slow to recognize. The most important point is the changing is continuing even though the pace is slow.
In fact, this change keep continuing until the product’s life runs out, especially the electrolytic condenser is sensitive about this change and has a short life, so I can say if there is no special defect on the product, the life will be the same as the electrolytic condenser’s life. In my case, I don’t’ have in mind to buy the second hand product which is more than 10 years old, since the electrolytic condenser of the product is definitely too old as well.
We have selected some of electrolytic condensers for our products which guarantee a lifetime of 10,000 hours at 105 `C, so compared to other brands, our product life time is longer at least 5 times and up to 10 times when used in room temperature. And these condensers which have longer life normally take a longer time to aging than the normal condensers.
People normally power on the product and then playback music to aging the product, but depends on the music genre, the effect will be also different. I recommend the music for aging of our products is wide range of bandwidth and played by many instruments. In order to describe the wide and flat bandwidth, our product has made by several different types of capacitor, so it’s the important point to playblack these kind of music which can be describe the whole range of bandwidth while aging accordingly. Also, I recommend the volume level should be suitable for listening, but if it’s not possible, please turn down the volume instead of powered off the amp.
Those who have experienced with the audio for a long time say that the aging from 5-7months will be the good time to understand the developer’s intention for the sound. I also think it would be the enough time to aging and try matching the various audio equipment such as audio cable.
