How long does a DAC take to burn in?


Up until recently I always owned CD and or universal digital players.

I purchased a new Marantz 11S1 network player and it's taken 6 months,
but it's noticeably warmer and cleaner sounding.

Thoughts...?


octet11

More expensive gear = higher expectations = longer (break in) time to meet expectations

Cheaper gear = less expectations = shorter (break in) time to meet expectations

That's of course my completely non-technical analysis.

My Benchmark DAC1 was bright sounding at first, then a little bit muffled and then open, smooth and more extended.  It took about 100 hours at least to this point.  There were still very small changes after that, I'm sure.  My class D amp went to about the same changes but it was very slow - about 4x that (400 hrs).
As others have said it really depends on the unit and design and really more than anything the capacitors used. Also keep in mind as most Dacs get left on all the time it can help breaking in caps to cycle the until off and on from time to time.
It's a combination of initial break in, and warm up. Unless the manual says otherwise, leave it on 24/7.