Ozzy, the ALS does not sound good out of the box. You may even think there’s something wrong with the speakers. The sound will be too diffuse and the instruments won’t sound correct. It’ll almost sound like a defective Bose 901 at first. I notice improvement after 20 hours of continuous play with dynamic music. It will continue to improve to the 100 hour mark and will start leveling off. I wouldn’t consider them broken in until you hit 150 hrs.
When fully broken in, You’ll need to fine tune with the high freq and bass controls as their level is dependent on your room and electronics. The midrange control to me is not helpful. I have it dialed to 0.