Absolute top tier DAC for standard res Redbook CD

My amp seemed to continue to sound better up to 1.5yrs from new. I used it about 15hrs a week. I am not sure why but here is a theory. The better amps eventually align all the molecules and atoms and other things all the way back to the power plant and out to the speakers. Thus creating a more coherent non nasty flow of atoms and molecules and stuff. Why else would it take so long? Yea that is it.

Perhaps it is just me Grannyring... But most pieces I had had in my system took that long, or even more... Esoteric X-01 and K-01 for example, both about 1200 hours... And my Vienna Die Muzuik speakers took 1500 hours... Even my old
ARC Ref3 took about 1K hours to fully bloom. I remember evaluating a very expensive twin-box player once upon a time... I did throw in the towel when I reached the 2K hours mark and realized that the device had stabilized, with no musicality to show for the effort.

I fully admit that I am excruciatingly patient when evaluating a component... If in the end I really like a device, I then use it for several years... So, even 1500 hours, becomes a perfectly reasonable investment of my time, when I consider it against the long run enjoyment.

I suspect I do not even know how to spell cwik gruddiphicationn *grins!*

G.

Hi again Grannyring, When I break in a component, the device is exercised 24/7 until it stabilizes... For Aeris, I fed a signal into it, such as a break-in CD, and let the DAC feed into the Criterion preamp on 0 volume.... In one week I had 168 hours already... The 1K hours mark was just shy of 5 more weeks away, and after one more week I was close to 1.2K hours... I sampled results every few days. G.

Long break-ins are usually a result of a LOT of plastic dielectrics in the design; capacitors, cabling and circuit boards. IME, its better to use non-plastic dielectrics like ceramic, paper-in-oil and cotton. These require virtually no break-in and actually sound better than the plastics, even when the plastics are fully broken-in.

This is why I really like Jensencapacitors.com air-core inductors, ceramic caps and the Duelund caps. Great for speaker crossovers, actually the best on the planet.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I personally have only had 1 piece of equipment that I heard break in. Oddly enough it was a Roland Capri. I don't know how many hours it had on it but it was almost new. I had it about a month and pretty much hated it from the beginning. Then one day I was listening with the volume up a bit and boom, the right channel just changed in tone and one second after that the left channel changed. A veil had been lifted and the harshness on the top end went away. It was like night and day and it changed enough that I kept it for a couple of years before I moved on. I didn't believe in break in before that and have not heard a change like that again. My guess is that it was the capacitors burning in at that moment but I don't claim to know. Other than that I'm with Grannyring, I think more likely it's us who changes and we just simply get used to a different sound of a new component after a certain amount of time. I also believe for me anyway the sound changes from day to day or hour to hour depending on me, not the gear. I mean what's more likely, the equipment is changing or the life form that's listening to it?