Speaker Break In...? Or listener “Break In”?


Im interested in opinions regarding which has more impact; a speaker changing sound over the first 100-200 hours or a listener becoming more in tune with a certain speakers qualities and characteristics.


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I'm not sure which is more important but I attend a lot of live music events and have always found that the music quality as well as even speech intelligibility from sound systems, especially in many reverberant venues, improves in, say, the first 20 minutes of a concert.  I've attributed it to my "learning" the acoustics so that I can process the sound better.  A similar process may well happen with loudspeakers in a reverberant domestic room - after all most domestic listening rooms are quite reverberant unless heavily treated with sound absorption.  In fact, professional acousticians (like me) often refer to them as semi-reverberant rooms.  Most laymen are unaware of just how reverberant their and other's listening rooms are because they are so used to experiencing the reverberation, but it has to have an important effect on sound quality, if in  different ways and degree than that compared to a concert hall or auditorium.
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It's listener break-in. I've done A/B comparisons on identical speaker models before, with one pair being new, out-of-the-box and the other pair being 1, 2 or more years old, with no discernible difference in sound. 

I dont think I've ever heard someone say that the speakers they bought used, do the same thing. In other words, their new-to-them used speakers sound quite different than the speakers they have been using, but they just get used to the sound after a few days/weeks. The speakers were used, so if there was "break-in" associated with them, it would have happened long ago. 
The only difference I can hear consistently, every time, is how my system sounds immediately after start-up and during the first twenty minutes or so. Definitely improves during that time. Have never been able to positively, consistently hear any improvement over hours of use with any gear except my cables and ICs. I also note the system sounds different at various times of the day or night and seems to sound its best on Saturday mornings before 10 AM. 
Not taking sides in this thread, just stating what I've heard over time.
As always, YMMV.
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