burn in - how important?

Not only burn-in but warm up, figured this one out 30 years ago. First someone said SS should be left on, sounds better. My vintage 1970's Kenwood integrated, how is it gonna get any more burned in? Left it on 24/7 a few weeks. No difference. Or so I thought. Until one day turned it off and then the next day, WTF? Why's it sound so crappy? Oh. 

McCormack DNA1, Herron VTPH2A, Benz, Koetsu, Origin Live Sovereign and Enterprise arm, I wouldn't say any of them sounded bad they were great right out of the box but it was a trip hearing them change so much the first few minutes and hours. Many times they would sound different by the end of a song than at the beginning. Then slower improvement as time goes on until finally they reach a sort of equilibrium. From then on it is a nightly warmup routine. 

Nothing ever sounds the same twice. If you think it does, you either are not listening closely enough, or your ears or system aren't there yet. 

I have 3 power cables hooked up in series on my refrigerator. They will stay there for a month (30 days). They go from there to conditioner for 2 more weeks. OCC copper with mill spec 5N silver and PTFE. Red copper male/female terminal ends.

When I plug one of those in vs one not conditioned, they never do sound the same or BREAK IN in 1/4 of the time. They sound good as soon as they are plugged in after 30 minutes. At 100 hours that silver clad is sounding great, compaired to another 2-300 more hours it would take for unconditioned cables.

I'm not sure some will ever break-in, in a real low tickle situation. Tone arm wire, that kind if stuff.. I HATE breaking in a new tonearm. I feel like I wear out a cart breaking in the friggen cable, to finally sound great at 500+ hours.. A lot of newbies give up on the thin sound untill, MAGIC. The issue is just being plugged in dosen't condition that type of cable, like a PC does, you have to actually put a signal through the cable.

OFC copper with gold plated terminal ends. 50 hours.. They are ready to work in a tonearm...:-) 10 hours on speaker cable.. Just the nature of the beast.. Break-in time are a LOT shorter..

Equipment, there is all kinds of different cables with different dielectrics. Teflon caps, good Lord, forever to breakin'.. And they sound wonky, for 500 of that..THEN they last for a 1000 years.

Regards

Definitely burn in, break-in, whatever you want to call it, is real. I can't explain it, but any seasoned audiophile hears it.

ozzy

@millercarbon - indeed! When I got my Herron phono amp and line-stage amp, Keith said they'd need 150 hours or so to sound their best. As you say, they sounded just fine out of the box, but Keith was not wrong....

As far as I can remember burn in has been very obvious on all new stuff I have purchased, since I got high end gear… 40 years. Over the last few years I have (for various reasons) broke in about five new pieces of Audio Research Reference electronics and the pattern has been identical. Hugh difference (starting from thin, closed in, limited bass) for about 100 hours… then remarkable improvement, then switching back and forth from good to bad and visa versa around 120 hours… then slow improvement through 600 hours (fastest at first). This time, I did notice improvement over 600 - 1,000 hours… small but noticable… I had read about this before but never experienced it (usually because it was covered up by me switching power cords or interconnects or something.

This has always been a real pain because I usually go through an upgrade cycle… and want to get through it as fast as possible…. But I never buy everything at once so getting hundreds of hours in is hard. I have an extra Schiit system just to break in stuff.