I could never understand the subject of break in or burn in. I have experienced break in with speakers, but there was actual, physical motion of drivers involved. And it took under 200 hours.
Does break in actually happen and how long does it take with:
- electrolytic capacitors in amps?
- turntables?
- DACs?
- Transports?
- Cables? this should be among the easiest things to verify
Or do we just get acclimated to a new and different sonic signature over several hundred hours?
Do brands that market themselves from an "engineering" positioning, such as Sanders amps, Spectral, etc., believe in break-in?
An electrical burn-in actually occurs and the associated audible transformation can occur in a single moment-in-time or it can over the course of several distinctly audible bumps. The number of distinct audible gains is ultimately determined by how dedicated the listener is. If the listener ever leaves the room, there could always be 1 or a series of audible improvements but when the listener returns to the listening room, he can only acknowledge 1 distinct audible improvement.
Electrical burn-in observation depends primarily on one's hearing, one's interpretive abilities, the quality of the component burning-in, and how well-thought-out the overall playback system is generally determines the significance of the bump. A significant shortcoming in any one of these sectors can render a burn-in process inaudible.
Are audible distinctions before and after burn-in real or imaginary? Assuming all the aforementioned areas are up to snuff, electrical burn-in is real enough that its transformation is most always predictable. For example. Simple electrical parts like fuses, inlets, outlets, connectors, and plugs in my experience most always take roughly 53 hours to fully burn-in, give or take 1 hour.
The more conduits, the more lengthy the conduits, and/or the more complex the product the longer the burn-in process. For example. A one meter pair of interconnects is generally 5 full days of burn-in. A 2-meter pair of speaker cables, roughly 7 days. A power cable, roughly 5 full days. A component roughly 150 - 200 hours with exceptions. I had one amp that took over 500 hours, a CD player - 275 hours.
I assume anything that passes current of any strength will go thru a burn-in process of some sort. For me, replacing a single fuse I'd be pretty lucky if I could hear any audible difference. But if all the fuses everywhere were upgraded at the same time to multiply the burn-in impact, I most likely would hear a nice little improvement.
Should any of these electrical parts or components be cryo-treated, its burn-in process must start over again from scratch since the conductive materials are altered and returned to an like new or unused state.
The kissing cousin of electrical burn-in is mechanical settling-in and there are some surprising similarities between the two processes. Since mechanical energy and electrical energy are both of the same family i.e. vibrations, a few even speculate that in the end there is no such thing as real electrical burn-in as it's just another flavor of mechanical settling-in. Especially since electrical conduit vibrates when current is passing thru it.
There exists at least one distinct difference between electrical burn-in and mechanical settling-in processes. Once an electrical object is burned in, it stays burned in and if cold for a time only needs minutes, a few hours, or perhaps a day to perform at its optimal once again. Not so with mechanical settling in which has no settling-in memory. If an object is moved at all, it must go thru the entire settling in process all over again. But then again, physically moving an object in any direction is like unto an electrical object just coming back from being cryo-treated in a like new or unused state. Likewise, the mechanical conduits between two normally disparate objects, with every physical movement of one or both objects, the new mechanical conduit is back to a like new or unused state. Even if that movement is 1/64th of 1 inch.
Note there is little to no hope for any mechanical settling-in benefits if vibration isolation is the preferred methodology. Internally, there could be some settling in but vibration isolation breaks the mechanical conduit so that vibrational energy remains trapped within and must fully dissipate or release its energy somewhere within the object. IOW, if the vibration isolationist did his job, it's near impossible for the mechanical energy to travel between two disparate objects, hence there's nothing to settle in.
