Does a new cd transport require break-in time?

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.

@cleeds I agree completely. Changes are subtle and systems are complex. You have to know a system well before you'll be able to hear any changes. From there it takes more time to decide exactly what those changes are and whether they are an improvement or not. It takes time, the mental space to listen and be focused and a lot of different music to ascertain subtle changes in a system.

There is a misunderstanding, but perhaps I did not express myself clearly. What I meant is that if something needs to be burned in over a few days or a few weeks, it is impossible to compare the ex post to the ex ante state. You cannot go back in time to when the very same unit was not burned in. Human audio memory is just not good enough to remember exactly what you heard days or weeks ago.

Audio memory is a debatable subject IMHO. I don't believe for a second that most experienced audiophiles do not (rpt not) have excellent audio memory. I know I do. I do think that tracking the sound over long periods of time is made rather difficult however due to the influences of a large number of variables including but not limited to weather, time of day, day of week, how many other changes are made to the system or system configuration. I kind of doubt many audiophiles actually keep logs of their changes/additions/deletions, whatever. So in that respect their memory might get a little bit confused or forgetful.