"Burn in" Are you serious?

To conduct an experiment with new -vs- broken in on the cheap... Pick up two sets of Radio Shack Gold IC's. They are are sold in sets of two for under $15.00 at my local RS (mine were different primary colors). Break in one set and then compare them to the other. If you have SS equipment I would say that the sound that they have before break in is "tuby" (not good tuby, but tuby nonetheless). I once used then to patch our mini system into the main rig and found that in the beginning they sounded like my old tube equipment (like the equipment used to sound when I had replaced "all" of the tubes at once with new ones). Tubes used to be inexpensive and I used to replace then all at once (did the same with my guitar amps as well). The "tube" sound wears off as they break in (quickly in the first 12 to 20 hours from my experience). I even switched to the unused pair at one point just to hear this sound again (kind of liked the illusion).

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.

Jostler: Expectation Bias is a two way street and may explain why you do not hear burn in. Although it seems that many of the members at this site appear to be well versed in white papers, most have progressed beyond their limitations to the real world of hearing and believing -vs- reading and believing. Many of our scientific principals are also in fact faulty and have been proven to be so over the past 25 years or so not necessarily to be replaced by new correct theories, but disproved nonetheless. IMO much of the modern technology that we take for granted today crashed to earth in the late 40's and has been being reverse engineered for the past 53 years or so (yes, I am one of those). If you do not hear a difference, then fine, but how about letting us in on more of what you do hear for a change? Don't you think that this approach might be a little more rewarding to everyone involved.

I think that you may be on to something Redkiwi. While many burn in beleivers think that they have been upgrading their systems all of these years, they have in reality been doing just the opposite. May as well just chuck it all in and go back to the crystal radios of our youth. I wonder if they can be tweaked, upgrade the crystal, find a taller floor lamp to clip it to...