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Seeking advice

I am up at our "summer" home in NH right now.  Woke up this morning to minus 17 degrees F.  It is a good time to be an audiophile.  So what in the heck am I doing here anyway?  Well I have put together an new system and it needed to be assembled, installed, and is now breaking in.  Since this is a second home, used mainly during the warm weather months, I wanted something good, but I didn't want to pursue an approach toward state of the art like I've done with my main system in Florida.  So the TT is one I have owned since 1986, a VPI HW19 MKIII with an SME 3009 Series II Improved that I had rebuilt by SME in Canada.  Cartridge is an AT20 and phono stage is my trusty PS Audio Stellar, which has been with me for a couple of years.  NOS amp and disc spinner are Marantz PM10 and SA10, both currently discontinued and available at blow out prices.  Speakers are NOS B&W 802 D Diamonds.  All wire from Audio Sensibilty out of Toronto, who supplies all my wires since years.  Anyway, it is a novel experience for me to have an almost completely new system all at once (TT stuff excepted).  I have had it up and running now 24 hours a day for just over 1 week.  The speakers are starting to settle in a bit.  How long do you think break in is likely to take?  I am thinking 300 hours or so.  Am I crazy?  So far the best break in disc I have tried has been an old Bach organ thing on Telarc.  My favored small acoustic jazz groups don't seem to exercise this system very hard.  Amazon gets things here fast if any specific recommendations are available.  Thanks.

billstevenson
knotscott's avatar
knotscott
966 posts
 

By 300 hours that system should be revealing 99.9% of what is has.  The first 4-8 hours should at least get the woofer suspension started to work in, but can improve more over a period of weeks.  If there are poly caps, some of those can take quite a while to clear up.  No reason not to just play music, listen, and enjoy it while it breaks in.

ghdprentice
7,187 posts
 

I typically will do straight breaking for 200 hours as that gets the majority of character changes. However I have carefully listened to many components Especially ARC. Slow improvement from 200 to 600 hours… then really small improvements until 1,000 hours. But at 200 all the major character is there there aren’t going to be big changes… just polishing and tightening. All in the long run important, but not worth hurrying in my opinion.

sls883
477 posts
 

I have friends in Maine where we lived many years ago. It was cold as heck there. 

Congrats on the new system.  I haven't done a complete system at one shot since I don't know when.  I've pretty much upgraded everything these past two years, but not all at one time. 

Do you only do vinyl at that location?  There's some good stuff to stream that would exercise your woofers.. 

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