Break in period

I truly believe if and when "break in occurs" is basically you can kinda tell by the system just being more efficient and less congested sounding, whether turning up the volume or not.. Its got a looser feel to it, more detailed without feeling like your trying to push it out as hard.. This is my experience, now whether technical measured parameters can be prove on this or not is pretty much a pointless point. I have noted in the past there is a certain fluency that comes with a decent amount of hours on a system after time.. Cable break in is much less realistic, but in electronics a little can occur I feel, and definatley speakers I have heard become more fluent and intergrated with a better bandwith, now I guess if you measure a speaker for 20 - 20 without breaking in its all there, but some frequencys start to become more effortless and increase presence in time…

Why How or whatever reallly makes no difference to me, I mean I just don't get why this is such a Sin in audio to believe that such a thing can occur, No doubt its possible some systems simply sound great and maybe what one would think their best right away and they expect no more, but some can come into their own in time as well… Maybe its just you end up getting use to it, maybe cause all of a sudden your power company is supplying better power, and break in is just simply B.S. I guess some people look at this as an excuse for a not perfect performing out of the box design. So this is the only measurement I can give, if you feel 3 months later your system sounds more effortless and you don't think about it so much as to what you can improve, you have started your "Break in" period. Might happen for some, maybe not for everybody that has the sound they want out of the box already.     

Due to thermal cycling and mechanical flexing, some components may change slightly. I would not lose any sleep over this.

i have spoken to a technician at Mcintosh. he asserts that for a tube component, after dissipation of tube impurities, the electrical characteristics of an amp or preamp will measure the same during the life of tubes. in the case of a preamp, 12 volt tubes last between 2000 to 4000 hours. power tubes may not last quite as long.

so, the perception of a change in sound of a component is anecdotal and subjective.

is it possible that since one expects a change in presentation during say, the first 300 hours that one will hear it ?

suppose one does not expect to hear any differences after 3 hours, when the impurities of tubes have dissipated. might it mean that no difference will be heard ?

how much is a placebo affect and how much is real ?

Mrtennis

See my comment. Asked and answered.

so, the perception of a change in sound of a component is anecdotal and subjective.

Any electrical design engineer will tell you much the same thing. No respectable engineer would deliberately design an amp with a significant drift in electrical response characteristics over 100's of hours. A lot of design effort is spent ensuring reliable and consistent sounding products (feedback loops not only provide great linearity but also allow for much less variation in response to environmental conditions such as power supply drift/changes, age and temperature drift during warm up). This is just one of the many reasons that modern electronics designers mostly use SS amps with feedback for low voltage level applications (tubes are still used in some very high voltage applications).