Break in time that extends to months or maybe even years!!

While I hold the esteemed member who has been referred to in the highest esteem, IMO the only way to meaningfully test this claim would be to perform a direct comparison between two identical components, one of which has been broken in for 1000 hours or so, and the other of which has been broken in for a far lesser number of hours. And with everything else kept equal during the comparison, including the warmup state of those components and all of the other components in the system, the AC line voltage, and the temperature and humidity of the room.

Regards,
-- Al
 

Hmmm, actually the longest successful maturation time that I have experienced was on an SS digital component: about 3 months of mostly simmering at low volume 24/7, interspersed with actual listening sessions.

Saluti, G.

@luxmancl38   The size of the teflon cap almost certainly determines the amount of hours it will take to break in. The teflon caps in the ARC preamp were large. 

@cleeds  This isn't a court of law...so your post is a little off, IMHO. The claim that the member made was that he heard that the amp in question was still improving after 900 hours, and i am not going to call him to task for what he heard, not do I have any reason to do so, do you?. That is not the point of my thread, instead, it is as i asked above in my OP.

daveyf

This isn't a court of law...so your post is a little off, IMHO.

Why? Because I question the claim?

The claim that the member made was that he heard that the amp in question was still improving after 900 hours, and i am not going to call him to task for what he heard, not do I have any reason to do so, do you?

Yes. I'm not accusing anyone of dishonesty - after all, I don't even know who you are talking about - but I do question the claim. Sorry. And I'm basing that on my own first-hand experience. Again: correlation is not the same as causation.

I simply haven't seen that it takes months to break in an audio component, and it certainly doesn't take years.

Well first off if the gear cannot be enjoyed right out of the box then sorry but you bought the wrong gear. 

That said, everything improves with time. But its not like break-in is all that's going on. 

There is also warm-up. Some things warm up fast, others can take hours. Solid state gear is famous for needing to be left on 24/7 in order to sound its best. 

Then there is magnetization and static charges. Playing music, the rapidly alternating signal gradually and over time can magnetize regions within wires and components. Static electricity can also build up. As a result transients become smeared and grainy and the noise level increases. This happens gradually and most never do anything about it. Most don't even know about it. I do, and address it every session. 

The last big one is power. Sound quality improves along with power quality late into the night. 

So any given night you have the sound improving from this complex mix of warm-up and charges and power. Add break-in to that if the component is new.