How much does volume matter when breaking in amps and cables?

Try this. Wear earplugs for about 3-4 hours straight. Pull the plugs out and listen to your system. With your ears halfway rested, your system waill sound much different than you are use to. Same if you wore no earlugs cutting the grass for two hours. Chances are, one is attending an audio show out of town. Maybe travel was noisy, airplane cabin pressure or city altitude. Hotels are generally busy and noisy. Most likely one’s ears have to adjust for something different. 

Hey, Doc, is this the guy you’re backing? You sure about that, Doc? Well, I hate to judge before all the facts are in but I wouldn’t get behind him 100%, if ya know what I mean.

Maybe the wires were all connected in the wrong direction on the first day of the show Lol- i crack myself up

@ geoffkait15 said:

Isn’t it pretty to think so? Look, even IF one manufacturer comes to the show with a completely broken-in component, a speaker or amp or whatever, which they actually don’t because they want to show their latest model, and one that’s not all banged up, they cannot necessarily control who else they exhibit with, you know, the guy who provides cables, the guy who brings the Turntable, the guy who brings the CD player, power cord, etc. They aren’t that coordinated, trust me. The best laid plans of mice and men oft go awry.

@aberyclark replied:

True. What you are hearing is not break in. Maybe tweaking as the show goes on, crowds, changing speaker positioning, your ears adjusting to the environment etc.

I can’t begin to tell you the coordination problems I’ve had with gear coming in from all sections of the country - mating up for the first time during setup day at a show. This doesn’t even take into account the lack of preparedness of some partnering exhibitors.

Sure, minor to major tweaking occurs during the course of a three day show, but at shows where we "nailed" it from the onset (with only minor tweaking throughout), things got better and better - right up until we were ready for teardown on Sunday afternoon.

I advise show goers to visit their "shortlist rooms" on Sunday mornings for this reason. It tends to be quiet and the gear has had some 72 hours to settle in.

Audio gear takes a terrible beating when being transported to a show, and for vacuum tube gear which doesn’t require 4 days’ warm-up (this has been my experience with some s-s amps as well), multiple power cycles over a few days help to relieve the mechanical stress that have built up over the course of the gear’s journey to a show.

Yes to earplugs during plane travel ;-)

... Thom @ Galibier Design

Phomchick: You obviously didn’t read my first post in this thread - equipment “break-in” has nothing to do with returns.

geoffkait: What kind of rooms are you visiting at these shows?  Manufacturers absolutely have control over who they partner with - excuse me, REAL manufacturers!  Maybe the hobby guys struggle with who to work with?  

aberyclark is correct: Models of equipment brought to the shows to play are current production pieces.  

And geoffkait, we are coordinated enough to contact other companies we like to partner with to get equipment we need for the shows, unless we already own it.  

So with that, I also have to ask - how are you drawing these conclusions and where are you getting your info from?