Hahahahahahahaaha that was a good one Gonk! I laughed out loud here at my clients location. Of course, before you buy an amp you have to smell deeply into the vents to see if its good quality. (NOTE: Only the finest amps come precut with a nose hole for this purpose.)

I was looking through an audio advisor catalog just a little while ago, and came across this one:

"The Irrational, But Efficacious! test [and burn-in] CD...the main tool is a five-minute glide tone, that when played through your system at moderately low volume, will improve its sound....[the] tone helps demagnetize residual fields that build up in your components over time."

Who knew? :p

Burn baby burn!
http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf

Interesting note about your professor. It's been a number of years since I did analog audio circuit design, but I remember one rule of thumb from the articles I read in the "hobbyist" DIY audio publications: avoid tantalums in your signal path.

I can't find the articles I read in the past, but a quick web search does yield information. One in particular seemed to cut right to the chase:

"I'll be dogmatic about this: tantalum capacitors _stink _for audio use: they should never be used in any signal-carrying circuit. They sound tubby in the bass, harsh and gritty in the top end, and
compressed in their dynamics—mirroring their poor engineering performance in such factors as dielectric absorption." -- from http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nebula/3736/improve_audio.txt

This is, of course, far from a known trustworthy source, but it does confirm what I remember reading and researching at the time.

Back to your point, though: I agree that any capacitors used in a typical reasonable quality piece of consumer gear, running well within tolerances (don't forget, we're talking about signal levels nominally of a few volts here), shouldn't be changing dramatically, noticably, or probably even measurably early on in their life.

How do you "spit out" what you've listened to, as you would after having tasted wine?

So I spent my first real amount of time listening to music Saturday, just after I brought my NAD in for service. Anyway, the great thing is that this unit is completely and utterly quiet. You won't hear any hum or white noise. It's music to my ears after owning an NAD which is amazing in analog mode, but I cannot say it was amazing in digital mode. Ok, the other thing I enjoyed was listening in bypass versus the upsample. It has become kind of an odd listening experience for me. To explain it is hard, but I find that in upsample mode the music is a bit more warm. In the bypass mode, it is cleaner to me. But it can be a bit harsh. In Radiohead, I want that pure sound. On Gershwin, I liked the warmness of the upsample. Hard to explain.

Shawn

Good question, indeed. White noise generator? Recording of air raid siren?

A quick question...

Does the 990 experience the same annoying 2-3 second delay when trying to sync on an audio source as the 950 does? Or does it lock on quickly and stay locked on. I need to know to help me to decide whether or not to put in my order. Any feedback that you can give would be appreciated. Thanks.

Jeff

I have never had that problem. I guess I don't totally understand the question. So long as the unit is on, I have never had a problem. If I hit power and the source starts playing at the same time (my CD-player is always on becasue it has no stand-by, just the button), it won't play until the pre-amp and the amp cycle on.

Shawn

So is this statement correct: