[Fluty]

Introducing myself with my first post. I'm a professional classical musician with a lifetime of experience as a member of symphony orchestras. This makes me seriously handicapped as a HiFi enthusiast as I'm always searching for an absolute and unachievable  realism.
I've upgraded my system over the years, just about everything except speakers has had multiple upgrades & I finally worked out that the speakers were letting me down. It was either the speakers or my ears. I seriously wondered about my ears, since they've suffered a lot of abuse in a situation which, if a symphony orchestra was invented today it would promptly be declared illegal because of the intense sound levels within. I spotted Danny's video on YouTube quite by accident, never having heard of GR Research, showing his opinions (not too good) and upgrades on my exact model, the Sonus faber Electa Amator Mk 1. They're 40 years old - what a surprise seeing them here with Danny on YouTube! I took the plunge, had the crossovers assembled most beautifully by Frederick del Rosario (thanks Frederick) , installed them and the result was - terrible. I despaired for a while, contacted Danny who said I must have connected the tweeters / woofers out of phase. I "corrected" this, momentarily thought that fixed it before realizing it did not, so put the phase back as it was - and it was sounding better.
I added a bit more damping, took it out again, then realizing the speakers were now sounding good - and now after a few weeks running they sound fantastic, like never before, and I'm thrilled to bits. Talk about "burning in". Now every day they're sounding better & better! Many thanks to Danny (& Frederick) for giving my Sonus fabers a new lease of life!

[Danny Richie]

The ups and downs of burn in can be a real pain sometimes. I have dropped in some Copper foil caps a few times and thought they sounded awful. Hundreds of hours later, they sound beautiful.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Tyson]

Agreed, burn in is a real thing and can be rough.  But absolutely worth if for the ultimate performance you get once burn in is done.

It's not just caps.  Inductors, connectors and wire, all of them have burn in they need to go through before sounding their best.

[Huskerbryce]

I am learning on the fly about burn in.  I built some crossovers for my NX-Oticas using copper foil caps and some v-cap odams.  I wont say my speakers ever sounded awful but with each listening session I get new experiences.  Some amazing and some not so much.  My crossovers might have 180-200 hours on them.  Right now I get a very apparent undesirable almost like saturation around 90-100 hz on many tracks.  This is a new development.  Prior to this I had very flat tweeter staging.  Like instruments were stuck in a 2D plane.  No depth.  That has subsided and now im dealing with strange resonant like dominance in lower registers.  I assume it too will pass.  Rather than just let the system go on for hours at a time while I am not home, I am burning them in hour by hour.  Im intrigued because I never knew burn in was such a thing.  Its like taking a journey of ups and downs.