phono stage break in?

If my stereo is playing I have to listen. I don't care how it sounds. A full orchestra usually has full spectrum of music. Use real music for breakin.
Every component(cables are not a component) I ever had not only requires breakin but except for speakers require warm up. Out of the box they are simply unlistenable.
The more expensive the more breakin time. I have also come to the suspicion that the reason so many great products sound awful at the store is inadequate breakin. Cheap products are playing all the time. Expensive products are turned on only for "special customers." Electrostatic speakers need to have thier transformers breakin and warm up.

Dan_ed, Nsgarch, Rauliruegas
I really do appreciate the time your took to explain it to me.

I used to be a firm non-believer in break in phenomena, until I recapped my preamp (ns-10). When I first got it it sounded awful, dry with decreased dynamic range. Over the next two weeks, it changed, but I was actually absent most of time and it was fed just statics from the cartridge...
Same thing goes for my new phono preamp.
Would an RIAA cd make it faster/better? maybe. however, The results that I got using the above methods were more than satisfactory to me.
As for the CARDAS sweep record, I am seriously considering buying it, so thanks for the warm recomendation!!

Noams, it sounds to me like you should get even more improvement as you continue to play through your preamp. What you describe is very much what I also hear as caps break in.

Think about this. Caps are voltage and time devices. This circuit is also affected by resistance, but I'll keep this simple for the sake of clarity. The time component means they are affected by signal frequency. If the signal is somewhat static as you describe then the range that the cap is operating in is limited to the frequency and amplitude of that static signal. Since this is probably nowhere near the range of frequencies produced by music playback, it is reasonable to assume that there are parts of the capacitor's capabilities that are not being exercised. This implies that the best way to break in compnents is to use a truly random sigal. That is random in both frequency and amplitude. This is why the test CDs and sweep records use tones that tend to sweep across frequencies.

All that being said, there is no evidence that I'm aware of that these test recordings do any better job at breaking in components than just listening to music. They're mostly a convenience, in my opinion, and probably do help speed up the break in by allow one to get those 200+ hours in just a few days of continuous CP play rather than spinning records for a month or two. I believe this is especially true for very low signal levels like one would see from many LO MC cars.

On the other hand, several folks that I trust have told me that they use the Cardas record on a regular basis, say once a month, and that they do notice an improvement in doing so. I'm just starting to do this so I can't say if I hear the same benefit or not.

Another advantage of the Cardas record (over, for instance, the Purist CD) is you don't have to get out of the house when playing it!

To avoid adding much to the length of this thead, I'll say that I agree with almost everybody!

Do we hear various components break in? Absolutely. Some more than others, as has been noted. Cartridges, speakers, tubes, capacitors, interconnects and cables (even if cables aren't "components"!).

Do we spend time spinning burn-in CD's to annoy the cats and drive us out into the rain (as Neil noted)? Very rarely.

Unless something sounds really bad, I'll listen to music and enjoy whatever comes out of the speakers. The only time we've used a burn-in CD in recent memory was to try and bring life to some dead sounding connectors lent to us by D**_**. Six hours of horrible noise later and they were no better, and we'd lost six hours of sanity.

Breaking in by playing music is not only more enjoyable, it's educational. As you hear and think about what's changing and why - you learn. This is a good thing, and not to be short-changed by cheating. Instant gratification is what Ipods are for.

Doug

P.S. I am on the Cardas LP monthly maintenance plan. That's not break in, at least in the normal sense. It's bringing the system back to performance levels we've previously heard.