"Burn in" Are you serious?

Hi Waldhorner, Yes I think I would expect a difference between an old receiver and a new high end piece. Would you expect a different ride from a new Mercedes when compared to a 78 Chevy? Of course. But that would not prevent me from acknowledging any aspect that might turn out to be superior in the Chevy. Over time and thanks to a few unusual experiences of mine I have learned to trust my ears before trusting my eyes. I know this is hard to do. One example: 28 years ago my band was making our first album in the studio at the top of Radio City Music Hall (same one where Toscanini conducted the NBC Orchestra). I had a "name" producer and one of the most experienced and sought after engineers at the time. The pressure of performing and of being surrounded by "more experienced" ears than mine did not stop me from complaining constantly about something being wrong with the sound. I did not have the tools to describe it but I insisted that they pay attention to my feelings. After a few hours of recording the engineers reluctantly checked into it and found that a 5 hertz tone was being put on tape unbeknownst to them. This discovery prevented problems later on down the reproduction chain, and saved us from losing many takes... I began to trust my ears and my hunches after that and hundreds of similar experiences. It was also a lot of fun watching the Rockettes run around the changing room next door! I would be interested in a clear scientific explanation of break in, but I would not deny its existence in light of my personal experience and the thousands of testimonials here and elsewhere. Objective testing has as many flaws as subjective listening.

Redkiwi and the rest, I will postpone my veredict on burn-in until I have a better room. All I am saying is that at least some of those who are hearing burn-in effects can't possibly because they do not have a revealing enough system-room combination.

By the way, I am not referring to speaker break-in, which is obvious. I am referring to solid state and cable "burn-in" which I cannot really detect.

Joe: The room would explain it if many people did not listen in the near field. I don't ordinarily, but do when I am testing new stuff to buy at home. On the otherside of the coin I have also experienced "burn out" on older tube stuff that I have kept for over ten years. It was, I thought, well maintained. I don't know how revealing the systems were on a whole, but they weren't a match for my ears, that's for sure. If you still have the Silverline's that you mentioned in another thread, I am suprised that you do not hear a difference in new cables. Try reversing a pair of IC's sometime when it's quiet and you have the time to listen. I did this by accident once with a pair of silver IC's and was very upset with the results until I figured out what happened, which only took a few mintes of backtracking.

Joe C.: It has nothing to do with your room. Burn-in is popular with dealers (and some manfuacturers, though certainly not all) because it gives them a way to talk customers out of returning things. It's popular with many audiophiles because it feeds their "everything sounds different and my ears are good enough to hear it" egos. In truth, their ears are probably worse--since they've spent their lives imagining nonexistent differences, they wouldn't know a real difference if it jumped up and bit them on the earlobe. Mechanical systems, like speakers, do change over time--gradualy and perpetually, not suddenly reaching perfection after 100 hours. But it is incontrovertible that people do grow accustomed to a certain sound over time, which is what makes any and all testimonials to these remarkable changes suspect.