Break in period

I am also somewhat amazed as to why you equate the phenomena of burning-in to something that is deliberately engineered?

I assure you that engineers do have to worry about these kinds of things when designing equipment and not just the performance of the device on the day it leaves the factory.
Often the part selection and design criteria are heavily influenced by the desired products useful life span. Nobody wants a "lemon" out there that hundreds of customers complain about; the cost to make a manufacturing recall to get equipment to perform properly as originally specified to customers; the cost to reputation.

Who's talking about lemons? Good grief.

(Now I'm doing it. Best find another thread.)

Dopogue says,

Shadorne has missed few opportunities (in the related posts I've seen) to repeat his break-in-is-all-in-the-mind nonsense

It is your prerogative to believe that it is all nonsense.

Dopogue adds,

It clearly takes a lot to penetrate HIS mind...

...the frustration in trying to keep him from spreading this mischief

Thankfully, you and many others do a great job of limiting the mischief I am causing!

Offense? That would be a little difficult Shadorne. I am rather enjoying your astute game of raising false targets, logical decoys, examples out of context, subtly corrupted induction steps, . . and projections of wishful thinking a priori of reality.

Jeez, I think you are all too harsh. My impression of Shadorne is that, far from spreading mischief, he is coming at these discussions from the perspective of an engineer heretofore unexposed to (or unpersuaded by) the esoteric beliefs of high-end audiophilia. He's being stubborn because it doesn't make sense to him. Why not gently try to persuade him instead of decrying him as a bad element (my term, but that's the vibe I get).

I swear, sometimes it's like being amongst a group of creationists who don't want any "wrong-thinkers" in their midst. Run 'em out on a railroad, boys! The difference being that creationism is entirely nonsense, whereas at least some of what we believe around here may have merit. :-)