I have read a whole lot of posts here. Again I would refer you all to my earlier post noting that when we have (rarely) replaced the whole circuit board on one channel of an older unit for repair reasons, we have never had a single bit of feedback from the client that one channel sounded different from the other, even when one channel was years old, and the other all new, but of the same design.
What does this mean?
I think it means that since the client was not expecting anything other than a properly working amplifier, and since the sound was essentially the same as before, and as expected, there was no subjective reason for the client to be critical about listening for tiny differences, if any. And, the client was already used to the sound of the equipment, nothing new to "learn" subjectively.
With a new piece of equipment, there is much subjective "learning" to do. The overall sonic presentation may be wildly different than what it replaced. There are many many new things to hear, to understand, to listen to. You simply do not learn it all at once. And, you may actually dislike something new and much better if you were used to listening to something really inaccurate. For example, the person here who was disappointed with the excellent Ellis 1801 speakers because the bass performance was not as "good" as a fat, boomey, muddy set of old stock B&W 640s. We, by the way, published a cure for the 640s years ago in Audio Basics. In that thread, however, it appears that the virtues of the 1801s slowly sank in. I suspect very strongly that the speaker did not "burn in" but the perception of the 1801s was burned into the users appreciation of them.
I am quite sure that electronics does not require any significant burn in time. Yes, vacuum tubes do change slightly during the first few hours of use, but in our experience, not enough to affect bias settings done after one half hour of warm up. High voltage coupling capacitors in tube circuits will need several minutes to form up completely, until then there will be slight DC leakage, contributing to sometimes noisy control operation in the first few minutes of play. And, of course, some circuit designs are only marginally stable, and may take hours to reach thermal equilibrium. I would suggest that is not very satisfactory design.
I do suggest that if a new piece of equipment is really better, you will hear it, as Jim Winey of Magnepan once told me, in the first three notes. The rest comes slower though, your appreciation of all the good things the new piece is doing (and of all the bad things it is not doing) will come over many hours of listening. The equipment is not changing, your appreciation of it is. I would suggest too that a major virtue of a "better" component is that it does not play what is not there.
Anyway, it matters not whether the equipment is burning in, or your ears are, simply enjoy the music.
Regards,
Frank Van Alstine
