Wel, y'all have had quite a heart-warming tug and forth. Very touching. Do y'all feel better? Are you ready for a group hug?
Well, I can tell you this, as I've said it before. Break-in is something recognized moreso readily by the basic electronic parts manufacturers than by audiophile equipment manufacturers. Break-in of the basic parts, such as capacitors, resistors and CMOS circuits are well enough documented. In manufacturing, there is now a process of chemical analysis and materials and manufacturing Q&A, such as did not exist some 35 years ago at all.
What the chemists do, such as the fellow I shared an office with, is to take a basic part and expose it to the equivalent of 4 years of life in 4 hours time. This is a process of materials testing, such that the ultimate product of manufacturing can be determined, in terms of what the product will become after 4 years of use. Break-in is part and parcel of an industrial revolution.
This revolution occurs in tiny, tiny increments. The advancements that people don't talk about are the tiny advancements in the basic parts, in terms of the quality and accuracy of what is being manufactured. By performing a chemical analysis of the materials involved, and what happens to them over time, it is possible to then manufacture parts that will become optimal in their performance after a period of break-in. That's how good we've gotten with these things.
Another aspect of break-in is actually the slow, steady advancement of the accuracy, or tolerance, of the basic electronic components. One might not realize it at first, but when the basic parts meet tighter tolerances, break-in becomes more acute - directly! These two phenomena are interwoven. Audio components built in today's day and age have the potential to be worse sounding out of the box, but also, to be engineered to sound better, as designed, over a period of time, and with the increases in parts accuracy, for the listener to actually notice the difference between one thing and another. Increases in accuracy facilitate consumer discernment of break-in.
Way back when, when I was still listening to a black-front Sansui receiver (circa 1968), I was listening to a modern marvel. Those guys would open a pack of 100 resistors, and throw away 90 of them. They would use measurement devices to acquire tolerances of things like resistors far beyond the accuracy of the parts rolling off the resistor assembly lines from which they consumed. You will be hard-pressed to find a Sansui that experiences break-in for a number of reasons. For one, the parts have already been broken in before they have even left the factory. For another, the overall accuracy of a piece of equipment that old isn't going to compare to the engineering feats of the present day. We're simply working with snail-like improvements that have crept up on us, and produced emergent effects such as "break-in" as consumers.
In my humble experience, the majority of break-in with Odyssey amplifiers occurs before the unit leaves the plant. I've found myself exposed to far harsher examples of amplifier break-in than this. I think it's funny, sometimes, to listen to all the to-do about break-in with Odyssey amps, because of the break-in I've dealt with that is simply worse on some order of scale. Sure, break-in is real, and it's a part of life for those of us who have to deal with it point blank. There are brands and components that will break-in very severely, and there are others for which very little effect of break-in will occur. In other words, for which the sound will seem much the same.
Sometimes, break-in is more prevalent, and other times, it will not be so much to speak of. Frank and Klaus are right, but I don't bank on either one of these people. They're radicals. Klaus's pronouncements of break-in are for me beyond how bad break-in really gets, and Frank's assessments sound more like self-fullfilling prophecies based upon a lack of background. Frank knows what he knows, and if he doesn't know it, he makes it true for himself much like so many audiophiles do. It doesn;t have to be real to be proven by an audiophile, it only has to be believed to be true, and the subjective act will fill in the blanks. Engineers do this all the time.
Imo, break-in is very real. I can see it on paper, so I can certainly respect it's occurence in life. Toasters break in, cars break in, golf clubs and so forth. You will not find anything that rolls off a manufacturing line that does not "break in". It simply doesn't exist. What we're facing in modern times is a condition where the ultimate product of break-in is the realization of a greater accuracy of manufacturing's end results, and its greater facilitation of our ability to discern its effects. There is no such a thing as that which does not "break in", and so I would ask you to present me with such a thing as that which does not.
Just my two cents -
Mark