re-burn in? is there such a thing.

It's an ongoing debate. There is no way to prove the benefits of burn-in. Does the component change or do we adjust to the way it sounds? I believe burn-in is real but can't prove it. I've found that used components that have been off for awhile adjust pretty quickly.

Wendell

I tried starting a thread about this very subject last week but it never showed! If burn-in wears off after a period of time, how long is this period of time? Is the equipment that get's 'retired' to my 'spares' closet still 'burnt'? When you move to another living arrangement, does your equipment lose something in transit? Do the rules of equipment 'burn-in' include cables?

In my experience, every time my system is down for any extended period of time (e.g., a move to a new home), it takes quite a while for it to start sounding good again (30-200 hours of music playing time, depending on the down time and storage conditions). On our last move where the equipment was in storage for 8 months, everything sounded pretty horrible when we first set it back up, and it was a good 200 hours of music playing time (probably more) before the system was sounding as good as it sounding before the move.

Note that I'm talking about the entire system and not narrowing it down to a specific component. Break in time for speakers to come back to life after extended storage is probably the biggest piece of this break in effort, not the CD player.

If my system is off for just days or a couple of weeks, I typically don't notice anything different than the normal "warm-up" before any listening session of 30-60 minutes. I always hear that warm-up period of improvement after the system has been off for 12-18 hours between listening sessions.

I also find that any time I move the equipment around, or connect or reconnect cables, there is always some "settling" time before the system is again sounding as good as it can sound (often just 30-60 minutes of playing time).

Ultimately the answer to this question comes down to "What do you hear?"
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You know I think it does. I recently had to sale two of my CDPs (NAD C542 and Jolida JD100), and go back to an older (90s era) Onkyo changer that I hadn't used for about three years. Everything else in the system stayed the same. At first, the changer sound was somewhat thin, not a lot of body at all, and the soundstaging depth was almost non-existent. Recently I noticed that soundstaging depth and imaging had greatly improved, and that the overall sound had develped some decent body to it.