Tannoy anyone? Cheviot Legacy vs. Stirling GR

My experience, going through a lot of audio gear: Companies make production mistakes all the time. Sellers of used gear sometimes either "miss" things wrong with it, or try to pass the buck. And stuff happens in shipping! I think the "burn in" panacea is bandied about a lot of times when the gear really needs to be checked out for operational health. Your brain can adapt to a skewed sonic balance over time, but only so much!! I once had a tube headphone amp fixed by a guy who erroneously put small bypass caps IN SERIES with the big output caps. It sounded like sh**t and his brilliant response was "those big caps take a LONG time to burn in!". At that point I opened it up, and even with only the most minimal circuit knowledge, this doofus’s mistake was clear as day. The classic roll-off formula indicated that with the values involved, the bypass cap was acting like a high pass filter starting at 1kHz! NO bass and very little midrange. Went to another tech who got that (among other things) right.

In all my history there is ONE TIME I can remember a piece of gear that sounded mediocre out of the box and then improved wildly after ~300 hours. It was a set of Audio Technica L3000 "Leatherhead" headphones. It didn’t sound broken out of the box either - just not inspiring like it eventually did. That’s the only time something has changed enough from burn-in to completely reform my opinion of it. And I DID have an older burned-in one to compare. I think they did something weird with those L3000 drivers - that model sounded way different than any other AT headphone of that time period. 

I had Cheviot recently and returned them. In part because they were too large for my space. In part because the definition was muddled to my ear. I’m used to Revels with berilium tweeters which give silky smooth very articulate. Was using PrimaLuna Dialogue Premium HP Integrated and Pass Int -25. Loved the tone from the Cheviot. Bass was wonderful. But any music that was very complex seemed kind of muddled. Think is has to do with the crossover at 1200 (if I remember correctly). It’s asking this 12” driver to go too high and the tweeter to go too low is how I was guessing at it.  They asked me to give it some break in which I did maybe 100 hrs and it did improve. Still on some music seemed less than optimal, but on other music particularly acoustic was wonderful. I miss those speakers now. Still, bottom line they were just too big for my space.  

Checking back in. I found some of the same. The Stirlings sound MUCH improved at 150-175 hrs. They started to change for the better around 100hr. What a relief!

My Leben CS600 at 30wpc is underpowered. It's an amazing sounding piece of gear, but won't suffice. It's hard to judge with the underpowered dynamic compression and it does still fall apart with complex passages. I imagine the class A Primaluna and Pass would take care of that and, to my ear, that's the case with them driven by my friends Primaluna EVO.

The Tannoy are super engaging with whatever that indefinable draw of involvement is that I just call 'musical' for want of a different term. So, I'm thinking of (GULP) selling my Leben....

Pass seems like a good match - I'm consider the INT 60 or a First Watt J2 with a Supratek pre...if the impedances match well. I haven't finished my research there and am open to suggestions!

The INT 60 might be enough. I found that a Pass XA30.5 was too underpowered for my Tannoy Turnberrys. They are sounding wonderful with a Benchmark AHB2.

@leotis I was (pleasantly) surprised at the improvement after 100hours. The falling apart continues to come back together, even after 150-175 hours. It's a crazy torture for sure. The low crossover also felt like a potential contributor, so Robert Lee at Acoustic Zen was kind enough to chat me up and send a pair of Hologram II biwires designed for lower crossover speakers. They made an immediate difference, smoothing things out and make the spectrum more coherent. I'd recommend them (and him!) very highly for the speakers!