I hope break in is true


This is the first time I ever bought a brand new out of the box Preamp. No, wait. Second but, the other doesn't count.
I had made previous posts about my decision to downsize.
I have, everything is kinda good. You know, Okay.
I bought a pre here. great seller, great store. Couldn't have been smoother.
I am just not used to this type of stuff. I wanted something with a phono included. I kept it well under a $1000.00
Now, I got to ask you guys. Will this thing get better???/
I have not had to worry about break in before. Does it really exist?
It is a very well built unit. Remote, I'm not used to that! That's nice. Has everything I need. Except it isn't alive. The music is there, presented very nicely. Clean, no extra stuff. Just doesn't have any dimension.
Please tell me this is going to get better:)
scottht
Don Hogland, Granite Audio, certainly would disagree with you, as he bills this as a "system" workout. This disk certainly improved my system, although I admit I can't determine specifically where. My speakers have 1000 hours on them, so I wouldn't have expected it to only work on them.

Also, I have used his Phono Burn in disk, which is specially recorded to allow your CD player to drive the phono stage during burn in. It also made a noticable improvement, and certainly a phono stage is not a speaker.

Apparently your experience is different, and I respect that.
Scottht: I would beg to differ pertaining to your claims that these discs do nothing to the electronics. I've used the Ayre disc to "break in" CD / DVD players with no sound being reproduced through the rest of the system. The improvements in the CD / DVD players were quite audible. Having said that, these discs will affect speaker performance, hence my previous comments pertaining to the rebuild of my Father's speakers.

As a side note, the only thing changed in the speakers were the wiring, solder and design configuration of the crossover parts, so these are all "electronic components". Otherwise, the drivers themselves had multiple thousands of hours of use on them. Sean
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Sean and all you other smart people: Do break-in discs have to be played loud to work, or will moderate or even low volumes work? What if your system already sounds really good and not bright, but still very detailed--is this break-in disc maneuver still a useful thing to do?
My experience is that this type of disc can benefit components at line level along with those operating at amplifier output / speaker level. As mentioned, i've used this on digital sources without signal making it to the speakers and i've always been able to tell / hear the difference as a component "settles in". Obviously, the more of a "work out" that you can provide for the entire system, including the amplifier / speaker ( without damaging them ), the greater the potential for differences in performance.

I have used this disc many times over on systems that have hundreds / thousands of hours of use on them. A short period on "repeat" is what i would recommend. In my opinion and those that have heard / experienced the differences before and after, the results were always worth the limited amount of time, effort and money involved. Sean
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I must echo Sean's warnings about audiophile break-in and (especially!) test CDs. At high volumn they can do damage and I blew out a set of new super tweeters when running such a CD at high volumn. Only then did I read the instructions "do not use high volumn..."