Break in time that extends to months or maybe even years!!


On another thread, we have a well known and well respected piece of gear ( and great sounding too, IME) that according to the member who is reviewing it, needs in excess of 1000 hours to fully break in!! 

While we have all heard of gear that needs immense amounts of 'break in' time to sound its best, usually gear that involves teflon caps, I question whether this very long break in time is the job for the consumer? Is it reasonable for a manufacturer of audio gear to expect the consumer to receive sub-par performance from his purchase for potentially several months ( years?) before the true sound of the gear in question can be enjoyed? Or, is it ( or should it be) perhaps the job of the manufacturer of this gear ( usually not low priced) to actually accomplish the 'break in' before releasing it from the factory? Thoughts...
128x128daveyf
I prefer the "not yet broken-in" sound of certain things, and thus can never actually use those for fear of them breaking-in.
The sound early on tends to be a bit grainy and etched. This has the effect of making it seem a bit more detailed and exciting. 
heaudio123
There once was a speaker vendor who claimed that the poor performance / review of his speaker was because inadequate time was given to break in the wire in the speaker, and it was very special wire that took >200 hours to break in.

The vendor of that wire said the speaker vendors claims were poppy-cock.

That wire vendor: George Cardas.

>>>Sadly, perhaps, he’s not the only well-known manufacturer who is a couple paradigm shifts behind the power curve. We see this all the time. Amplifier manufacturers are probably the worst. c’est la vie, as they say in Brooklyn.
Bob Crump got a little bit upset 😤 with the speaker dude in his and Curl’s system at CES when Bob found him soldering the connections for the new version of the tweeters.
I had a Brooks saddle that was still not broken in at 1,000 miles.
Unfortunately, Brooks did not believe it was their job to send me the saddle already broken in.
That really chapped my ass!  🚲