Does a new cd transport require break-in time?

Oh, no, not again! The dreaded Double Blind Test raises its ugly head! 👹 The threat of double blind testing has done a great deal of harm to the hobby by preventing progress and suppressing innovation and creativity. Double Blind Testing is the favorite weapon of died in the wool pseudo skeptics and knuckle dragging naysayers, as if they automatically win any argument by declaring, "But it can’t pass a double blind test!" Ironically, the knuckledraggers never actually do double blind testing themselves. That’s for someone else to do. In fact the naysayers don't even know how to conduct a proper double blind test.

Anything that changes the risetimes and falltimes of the output of the transport (i.e., the amount of time it takes the signal to change between its two voltage states), or that changes the amplitude or spectral characteristics of electrical noise that is riding on that signal, or that affects distortion of the signal waveform that will inevitably be present to at least a small degree, could conceivably end up affecting timing jitter at the point of D/A conversion in the separate DAC component. The degree of any such effects, if present at all, would certainly depend on the specific designs of the two components, and perhaps also on how they are interconnected and on how AC power is distributed to them (which in turn can affect ground loop-related noise).

But is it possible that breakin of the electrical and/or mechanical components in a transport could affect these characteristics of the output signal to an audibly significant degree? I don’t think any of us can answer that definitively, but I also don’t think the possibility can be categorically ruled out. On the other hand, though, it certainly seems possible, and in fact likely, that **some** reported findings of breakin phenomena are due to unrelated changes in the system (such as ongoing aging or breakin of other components), or in its environment (such as changes in AC line voltage or noise characteristics, or in ambient temperature). Not to mention the possibility of inaccurate recollection.

Personally, I don’t use a separate transport so I can’t speak from experience. And in any event I would by no means extrapolate experience with a particular transport/DAC combination to other designs and other systems. But given the foregoing my expectation is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle ground between the opposing points of view that tend to be expressed on such matters. In other words, IMO the answer to the original question is a definite "maybe." :-)

JMHO. Regards,
-- Al

I  would give a hour or two to warm up and you are good to go. If a solid state device drifts audibly in performance over 50+ hours then it will probably never stabilize reliably and you may as well return the faulty device.

Oh, please! Give me a break. Even Oppo, one of the largest manufacturers, recommends 200 hours of break in. 

geoffkait

... The dreaded Double Blind Test raises its ugly head! 👹 The threat of double blind testing has done a great deal of harm to the hobby by preventing progress and suppressing innovation and creativity. Double Blind Testing is the favorite weapon of died in the wool pseudo skeptics and knuckle dragging naysayer ...

That sounds a little bit harsh to me. I think double blind testing, such as abx testing, is a very useful tool. But it is just one tool. Oddly, many of its advocates insist that it is the only reliable way to evaluate audio components, and now williemj narrows that even further, proclaiming that "comparing a product over the course of many hours is an invalid methodology."

Double blind testing has its place in many fields, including audio. But for actual audiophiles, I think it is of limited value. If it is applied with a strict time constraint, I think its value is near nil.