Burn in question and evaluation before burn in

Albertporter,

Your guess seems to be spot on, at least so far. When I first put my newly upgraded Linn Klimax Kontrol preamp back in my system, it sounded polite but precise, very musical actually; however, after about 30 hours playing, it turned to shrill with very little bass as you have guessed for a transistor based design. It became not enjoyable at all to listen to, and I thought something was wrong with my system. Only after another 10 hours playing today, I began to feel the music is slowly coming back a bit. I hope that my preamp would really smooth out and shine after 450 to 600 hours as you predicted may happen, again, for a transistor based design.

The preamp I have been using for the last two years is a Linn Klimax Kontrol. Linn just recently offered an upgrade kit---mostly new board(s)---and I went for it because I believe Linn would not offer it if not for real sonic improvement. I would of course rest my judgment until my upgraded preamp is fully burned in---(the kit and the preamp are not returnable anyway). And I will report back to you.

Anyway, my original post was mostly out of my curiosity about burn in, it seems to be a black art. But if your prediction is true, it means although a system or a whole equipment burn in maybe generally too complex to predict, there is still some basic component burn in rules to go by.

The kind of knowledge and experience you had is exactly what I am hoping to learn out of my original post.

I know of no contributions from Mr. Self that rival these
designs, In fact he's probably one of those that think Radio Shack, Cardas and
Nordost wire all sound the same with no audible effect on a high end system
and the music it produces.

Fair enough. Here is another comment from the
[url=http://www.theaudiocritic.com/downloads/article_1.pdf]Radio shack
camp[/url].

As far as I am concerned, I don't agree with Peter but I do suspect that too much
audio gear is based on inappropriate designs for the kind of precision needed to
avoid burn-in. (Examples are "no negative feedback",
"amplifiers with monster damping factors", "amplifiers with
incredible (and useless) flat bandwidth to several hundred KHz", designs
with "capacitors in the signal path" and so on and so forth...)

One thing I've learned over 40+ years is that initial impressions can tell you alot about a system and or it's componentry. If it sucks from cold, it may get less sucky, but it will not be transformed during the breakin process. If a system "WOWS YOU" in the gut from new, you are on the right track. Most aplogies and breakin stories come from people who have chosen poorly and can't deal with the awful truth (I've been there myself).

Most aplogies and breakin stories come from people who have chosen poorly and can't deal with the awful truth (I've been there myself).

Dave, are you saying break in is not real?

I have a break in story, my Dali Megaline speakers were so bad when I first got them that members of my group said I could not "fix them."

Now they say I have the best sound they have ever heard. It did take over 800 hours before they stopped changing. Bass was NON existent in the beginning and I mean absolutely non existent.

Very rare is the story such as yours Albert, and no I do not deny breakin at all! What I have experienced is that great gear sounds great to a certain degree, right out of the box. Time, self-delusion and tweaking will make us feel better for awhile, but in the end reality bites.