OK I know this might start a firestorm but hopefully it will not.
I have been in the crazy hobby more years than I want to count. The one thing over the years that seem to be constant is the good old "gear needs to be broken in to sound it's best". Now I'm a believer that gear sounds better/different when warmed up. But when I hear people say something needs hundreds of hours to break in I'm not sure about that. I tend to think what happens is people get used to the sound after so many hours and it is "broken in" at that point. Or a better question is at what point does one believe the gear is broken in? Say a dealer says the new DAC you bought needs 300 hours to break in. So at what point in the 300 hour process does it happen? Heck how does one even remember what the DAC sounded like 100 or 200 hours into the break in process? Maybe my brain is just too old these days to remember specifically what something sounded like after hundreds of hours of listening.
I have been in the crazy hobby more years than I want to count. The one thing over the years that seem to be constant is the good old "gear needs to be broken in to sound it's best". Now I'm a believer that gear sounds better/different when warmed up. But when I hear people say something needs hundreds of hours to break in I'm not sure about that. I tend to think what happens is people get used to the sound after so many hours and it is "broken in" at that point. Or a better question is at what point does one believe the gear is broken in? Say a dealer says the new DAC you bought needs 300 hours to break in. So at what point in the 300 hour process does it happen? Heck how does one even remember what the DAC sounded like 100 or 200 hours into the break in process? Maybe my brain is just too old these days to remember specifically what something sounded like after hundreds of hours of listening.