Burn-in CD

I am not familiar with your piticualar burn in CD. It might work, it might not.

I think you are right in saying that burning in is going to take 250-300 hrs. My studio 40s took at least 200 to really start sounding thier best.

I would go easy on your new speakers for the first 50 hours or so while everything settles in. You could also try just leaving your speaker on for 3-4 weeks playing quitly at night and louder by day. You can have the things well broken-in inside of a month. Thats what I did.

If you are in a real rush I think Sterophile has a speaker burn in disc, but personally I would just wait out the burn in proccess. Within a week they will sound quite good and are very listenable. After that you will notice inprovemets but is probably not spending money on a burn in disc to rush you through this time.

Hope this helps and enjoy your new speakers.
Cheers,
Nick

How does the PAD compare to the disc from Ayre?

Although I had already used multiple plays of the 74 minute PAD CD-R for burn-in, there was a rather dramatic further improvement with the dedicated machine burn-in from George Saubon of cableburner.com for two sets of Marigo analog interconnects.
My interconnects had been stored away for six months, and I cannot tell whether any previous factory, or PAD burn-in may have evaporated by the time I sent off to George for further professional burn-in.
I found the PAD CD-R seemed more effective than my Densen 3 minute break-in CD, even when playing the Densen over, and over, to accumulate same total burn-in time. However, it is hard to compare break-in products, unless a successor burn-in procedure seems to create a further improvement.
I am in the camp that believes simply playing components may never break them in fully, as buying used equipment on Audiogon never prevented attaining further audible improved performance with any of the dedicated break-in ideas mentioned above.
Most recently, I have become a fan of Lloyd Walker's SST contact enhancer, which upgrades the listening experience still further, within seconds of being applied to any metal signal, or power, contact points in my systems.
It is fascinating to hear upgraded sound just by optimizing components, and wiring, rather than having to replace.

Interested to hear what others say about thier impressions of the PAD, but as far as music goes , techno , for break in purposes, is tough to beat. Stomping bass. Computer generated sounds coming at all frequencies. Im not necessarily a fan of this type of music , but I pick it up off my digital cable box, turn it up, go out to dinner and work out my speakers while Im away. I live in a detached house so it does not bother anyone.