For Your Edification and Enjoyment re "Burn In", etc.


Just published at Dagogo.com, my article "Audiophile Law: Burn In Test Redux". 

Validation of my decision ten years ago.  :) 

douglas_schroeder
@douglas_schroeder 

Hmmm, I can only comment from admittedly limited experience. I have upgraded from a well run-in Antelope Audio Zodiac Gold to a Zodiac Platinum. For the first 500(!) hours I thought I had made a mistake until literally all of a sudden the fog cleared and I had substantially enhanced micro-detail, soundstage width and depth as well as significantly improved impulse performance.

In a similar vain, I replaced JAN Philips 7581a tubes with NOS cryo‘ed Svetlana Winged-C 6L6GCs in my Wavac EC 300b amp.
The goal was to eliminate a slightly forward, discant emphasising sound. What I got for the first 50 hours was numb, incongruous sound and I was ready to give up. All of a sudden though, holographic soundstage, sweet but intense violin sound and an overall organic presentation that I was looking for.

In summary: while I agree that for basic ‘good-better’ comparisons, burn-in can be largely ignored, for real fine tuning it is essential to account for it.
I agree with antigrunge and my experiences with most components has been that use makes a serious difference in sound. I dont even care why this might be. 

However, I read most of the article and I dont think that anything schroeder said was objectionable.  In fact I am not sure he said much of anything. Kind of milquetoast. I agree with most of what was written, but am not sure why he felt the need.
It matters not whether the individual is an industry member or not. Their assessment of change of the sound of a system over time is pretty well worthless. The longer the time period, the less worth to their opinion of the change to the system.   :)