[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.

[johnwoitalla]

I get schooled on the inadequacies of my system every time my wife plays her violin. The sound of the bite of the bow on the strings- for my system, trying to recreate that sound, is like a high school junior varsity golfer trying to keep up with Tiger Woods. I just have to accept the fact that there are factors beyond my control, that at this time, simply cannot be addressed...namely my listening room. And as far as break-in is concerned, now that I have had my NX-Studios for a year and have played them virtually every day since getting them- I cannot hear one iota of a difference today in comparison from the day I hooked them up. But don't be confused, I am not claiming that break-in is hogwash. I have a motto by which my skepticality is driven- "The plural of anecdote is not evidence." Just because I am not detecting a difference doesn't mean none exists, it simply means I do not claim to hear differences between my speakers from when they first came out of the box to today. After reading Robert Plomin's book "Blue Print," I adopted another saying that applies to so many situations in life, "It(put your subject here) matters, but it does'nt make a difference."

[AllanS]

Welcome aboard Fluty!
I don’t know that it’s the same mechanisms at work, but the closest I’ve come to experiencing noticeable burn in  was plugging in an integrated amp and hooking up a pair of speakers that hadn’t been powered up for a few weeks or so.  I was surprise at how crappy and disjointed it sounded because it wasn’t anything like the sound I remembered.
 I was actually pretty ecstatic because I thought the reason for it sounding so bad was actually because my new system just sounded so much better.  But alas, no.  After a couple of hours the old magic was back and the new system didn’t sound any better, just more expensive.