How much does volume matter when breaking in amps and cables?

Fabulous question! 

I have been in the Consumer Electronics Industry since 1992 and have owned a high end retail store, worked as a rep, and now for a wonderful Amplifier and Speaker Manufacturer.  Having dealt with engineers and industry insiders directly for that amount of time, I feel I more than qualified to be an authority in answering this.

Just like a car, without question, there is a "Break-in" period on everything and if you are a denier of cars actually having a "breaking-in" period, then there is probably no way to have a rational conversation about any of this...

Different things have different break-in periods and no two things are alike.  However, just like with cars, you reach a point where you get what you get in relation to gas mileage and how the car reacts and works.  Electronics, Speakers, Cables, all of it, have that point. 

So the quick answer to the question is; how much volume you put through the system does NOT matter at all!  What matters is putting a signal through everything and simply playing it with no need to overthink this here.  If you can hear sound coming from your speakers, everything is breaking in. 

With electronics, particularly DAC's and Preamps, each input has it's own break-in time and you need to have a signal running through all of it.  The only time you need to physically hear something from the speakers is if you're breaking in speakers and amps.  Or, you can put a resistor on the output of the amps to break those in if needed, but you have to have a signal going in and physically going out for full "break-in".    

These are all good things to know when visiting dealers, because in today's world, where foot traffic isn't what it used to be, there is a lot of equipment on dealer's showroom floors that may have been setting there for a year and still haven't been played enough to where the equipment is fully broken in. 

So, what's the magic number for length of time?  Like I said, everything in the chain is different, but I know with our products that number is 300 hours.  That's twelve and half days of solid play 24/7 because we can physically hear it and as a team, we have all collectively come to that consensus.   I can walk into one of our dealers and play our equipment and know right away the moment I play something when that the equipment has not had a significant amount of time on it.  That just comes from experience of doing this ALL THE TIME! 

Other manufacturers may require more or less time and people who work for those companies or sell those products should know what that amount is.  In the case with Audio Research, some of their amps, they are actually recommending 600 hours of break-in.  Who cares what the amount of time is, just play the stuff and I guarantee you'll hear it change. 

The last thing is, some products are good out of the box and can actually get worse as you play them, only to come out of the hole and get better after a certain period of time.  We have amps that do that and I will also point to older 300 Series amps from Mark Levinson (No.331, 332, 333, 33H's, and 33's) were all like that back in the day when they were new.  They were pretty decent out of the box and got so bad at about 100-150 hours that we thought they were broke, and then they climbed out of the cellar and got great. 

So in conclusion, I hope this answers and clears up most of this for some or all of you?  I realize that there will always be skeptics out there, but until you work in this industry and are around equipment as much as we are, along with getting insight from the people who are involved in building it, you'll just continue to believe what you want - and that's ok!  I've said what I believe to be true and have no problem sleeping at night over what I've shared here. 

Thank you all for your time in reading this.
Chris 

In response to geoffkait's reply above; Some manufacturers, like me, actually do send "broken-in" product to our shows.  Sometimes if you hear something that isn't good at the beginning of the show and doesn't get better, then that's just a result of poor setup and not spending enough time evaluating the room.  

However, there are caveats to that as well;  Sometimes as a manufacturer, when you're trying to fill as many seats as you can, in the room you could afford to be in, you might sacrifice the better sounding wall in order to get more people in your room.  It's a trade off we all have to decide on as we're setting up, particularly in smaller rooms where we don't have much space.  We have to make the choice, do we sacrifice sound at the expense of making it more comfortable for the attendees, or do we go for the better sound and have people complain that they couldn't get a good seat or get into the room to really audition the system or people were always walking in front of them? 

Also, we can end up short on cables or there wasn't an outlet where we were told or thought it would be and can end up arranging everything based on those limitations.  We have to take a lot into consideration at shows like Rocky Mountain Audio Fest...just FYI...

Since there is SO MUCH misinformation in this thread, I am going to add to what I’ve said above:

First, I have to ask where did "reducing the amount of returns" come into play with "break-in"?

What kind of garage made stuff and low tier dealers are you people buying from and dealing with to think that break-in has to do with returns? Real manufacturers stand behind their products! As I stated earlier, if you run our equipment for 12.5 days straight and can’t tell if you like it by then, we give our dealers 30 days to return it.

So for those of you thinking it has to do with returns, you’re just simply wrong and my suggestion is to purchase things from dealers who stand behind what they sell as they should be selling brands that stand behind what they build.

Good dealers who sell good brands will tell you about the break-in period because good manufacturers know how much time that takes and are telling them so they can set that level of expectation for you.  

Phomchick: You obviously didn’t read my first post in this thread - equipment “break-in” has nothing to do with returns.

geoffkait: What kind of rooms are you visiting at these shows?  Manufacturers absolutely have control over who they partner with - excuse me, REAL manufacturers!  Maybe the hobby guys struggle with who to work with?  

aberyclark is correct: Models of equipment brought to the shows to play are current production pieces.  

And geoffkait, we are coordinated enough to contact other companies we like to partner with to get equipment we need for the shows, unless we already own it.  

So with that, I also have to ask - how are you drawing these conclusions and where are you getting your info from?