Burn in question and evaluation before burn in

If my story is rare, lightning strikes multiple times. Audiogon member and good friend Louis (Logenn) experienced the identical thing with his Karma Exquisite Enigma's.

As with my system, multiple people (about 20 in our group) visited both homes and listened and reported on outcome multiple times.

Some of these visitors listen only once every two or three months, some once a month and some once a week or more often. Considering the huge difference in equipment, solid state, tubes, electrostatics and cones among this group, to have everyone agree about the changes that happen with break in is pretty conclusive in my book.

Similar things with electronics, especially things that have big power supply and or high end caps.

I agree that some people change the personality of their system repeatedly by tweaking this and that. Entertainment value is about all that's good for. My goal is to try and remember every variation possible so I can correct things that are wrong with the system as I slowly upgrade over time.

A typical thing that requires adjustment is my new improved crossover, the Air Tight Supreme over the PC-1 and the Aesthetix Eclipse replacing my Signature models.

All these new items have potential to be better out of the box (as you state) but unfortunately they are not 100% right away. All the high quality moving coil cartridges I've had experience with require 40 to 150 hours before they sound their best.

I'm told by Aesthetix that the new Io Eclipse must be burned for over 100 hours before they can trim the RIAA accurately. Since that's done with an oscilloscope that should qualify as a true indicator of how much caps move after signal is passed through them.

Albert, I agree breakin occurs in most cases within a certain degree of subjective/objective criteria. I have found that gear which sounds off/not right/bad etc.., will not change enough over time to make it acceptable. All of this is very personal and predicated upon ones expectations and degree of discrimination. My best systems sounded pretty damn special right out of the box(es).

I have found that gear which sounds off/not right/bad etc.., will not change enough over time to make it acceptable.

All I can do is refer to the examples I've already given. If you don't accept my experience as believable, that's OK. It obviously differs from the path you've chosen.

I was a believer of burn in before, much more so now than before. When I started the thread two days ago, I noticed my new preamp turned from good sounding to intolerable after about 30 hours of playing. I played several my most familiar music, the treble was so bright and thin, and the bass was absent, that I had to check all my set up and connection to see if anything wrong; I found nothing and concluded the change in sound was most likely due to a certain burn in stage, I was not sure though, and hence posted my thread out of my curiosity.

After reading Albertporter's posts, and especially his prediction on burn in stages on transistor based design, I was more assured of that what I heard was not just my ears playing tricks on me.

After another 20 hours of play time since my first post, sure enough, the bass came back, and the treble became more focused and detailed. Actually, I found the bass is now actually a bit too much, I am hoping it would become slightly better controlled. Anyway, those are dramatic sonic changes in the last few days. I would easily dismissed the preamp if I only heard it during its worse burn in period.

Come to think of it, I seldom owned brand new equipment, and maybe that was one of the reason I did not experienced such dramatic burn in change before. Also, although the preamp was not totally new, the main board was replaced with brand new one, and that the unit I purchased came with brand new Linn silver interconnects and power cables, which I also put into use at the same time, all would attribute to more burn in changes.

If my current experience about burn in is jusitified, I would not judge a brand new equipment just because it does not sound good right out of box.

Maybe I'm not being clear? I agree wholeheartedly in burn in being significant overall. All I'm saying is that a sow seldom transforms itself into a goddess.