T+A DAC 200 Burn-in

Burn in and settle time is real and applies to electronics as much as it applies to our brains and our ability to adjust to new sound. 
Usually if the sound of new component is terrible right out of the box no amount of burn in will fix that. If you like it overall it should just get better. With experience you begin to recognize the early signs. Good tone but closed it, dull, lean bass…that usually gets addressed with burn in. Bass defelops, top end opens up, mids get clearer. At 24-36hr mark I’ve seen things go to absolute crap then recover around 100hr mark and continue to get better. At 200hrs you will have a solid idea. It might continue to improve after that up until 300-500hrs. But that improvement is no longer dramatic. Just my experience. Components and cables same concept. Important to refuse the temptation to swap cables, etc. Just let it be

Most manufacturer's don't print break-in/burn-in information for their converters, but one of the best in the business does, this is from Playback Designs owner's manual: 

BREAKING IN THE MPS-8

Breaking in the MPS-8 is time consuming but well worth the effort. It would be a mistake to pre-judge the player based on what you might hear at first listen. This is what you can expect to hear at different intervals during break-in:

1. Out of the box: The player will have good clarity, but the highs can be recessed. Bass might appear to be a bit muddy and lacking punch. Soundstage might sound closed in.

2. 50 - 150 Hours: The sound will open up a little bit, but can still sound a bit brittle.

3. 150 - 350 Hours: Midrange will start smoothing out and clarity will increase, but highs might continue to remain recessed. At this point, there probably will not be much change in the bass. You will probably wonder how the Playback Designs converter will ever sound like others have described, but we assure you that you will start to hear substantial changes within another week of play.

4. 350 - 500 Hours: The magic will be starting. Highs will be open and airy. Midrange will appear much more full bodied and natural. Soundstage will be huge and the image presentation will start appearing very holographic. Bass will be incredibly deep and tight with texture and detail galore.

5. Over 500 Hours: The player will continue to change subtly over the upcoming month of usage, but you should be recognizing a very life-like and natural sound. During break-in when you do not listen to music it is best to feed an external digital audio signal into any of the digital inputs of the MPS-8, rather than loading a disc and setting the internal drive into REPEAT mode.

@OP the T+A DAC 200 is highly transparent, good digital cables are important. 

And as @mgrif104 was stating, find a way to send it DSD files, it is actually 2 separate DAC's in one box, the PCM DAC is pretty good, but the 1 bit DSD DAC is outstanding. Selfish plug: Mine is for sale by the way, if you want one for $6400 CDN (4654 US)- I thought it would have sold by now honestly! 

@sealegs,

I personally feel that the DAC200 needs close to 175+ hours to start sounding it's best. While this DAC sounds awesome with DSD material, you can check a few threads online where people have used it to stream PCM files and they like it. I feel that the DSD and PCM circuit might need separate burn-in times.

I personally use a Windows 11 PRO desktop and stream everything to the DAC 200 via the HQ Player. It converts ALL sources to DSD 256. I have found specific filters and shaper that I like with this DAC. But you absolutely do not need to do this to make the DAC200 to sound great. Just a disc transport or a streaming service fed through it will sound awesome. Good luck and do keep us posted on how it goes.

@mgrif104 ​​@audphile1 ​​@mclinnguy ​​@milpai 

Thank you all for your comments.  This evaluation has been much more difficult than any I have performed in 35 years.  I didn’t bring the DAC200 into my system until I had logged 120 hours of burn-in time. It sounded great on my old college speakers.  The DAC200 now has 250 hours on it and it sounds the same as when I first started evaluating.  

I’ve played with all 6 combinations of filters and oversampling.  I much preferred FIR1.   Detail from the DAC200 is pretty amazing.  I thought my digital playback was providing very good levels of detail in its presentation, but the DAC200 is far superior to the Krell Studio.  High frequency playback is much better through the DAC200 (I thought it was my old ears that were cutting off high frequency playback).   Midrange frequencies and above are much clearer than through the Krell Studio.   On great recordings with vocals and acoustic instruments, the DAC200 is outstanding.  

The down sides (on my system) are that the upper midrange has become more forward.  Consequently, on lesser recordings, multi-instrumental group recordings, and just about anything with trumpets and saxophones, I find myself turning down the volume to less than 70 dB in my seat just to keep the music listenable.  My second concern is that while I was performing the initial burn-in, I was learning about my system with the new REL T/9x subs installed.  They’ve been a great addition to my stereo.  My finding is that the Krell Studio provides superior bass reproduction compared to the DAC200.   Through the DAC200, I get the same low frequency thump in just about everything I play.  The Krell provides better bass detail and I find it easier to distinguish the different bass frequencies being played.  

The bottom line is that with the addition of the REL T/9x subs to my stereo using the Krell Studio as my DAC, I found myself bringing out and enjoying a lot of music I haven’t played for a while.  With the DAC200 in the digital chain, while I find the increased level of detail seductive, in the end, I don’t enjoy listening as broadly across a wide array of music styles and recording qualities.   Of course, the faults/issues may well lie in the rest of my stereo system.  But I am not looking to get back into that race.  I tried to follow @audphile1 ‘s advice and not change the set-up.  But I did switch the DACs back and forth to make sure I was hearing what I thought I was hearing.  The results were the same.  Unfortunately, I don’t have capabilities for streaming and I won’t be able to evaluate DSD reproduction through HQPlayer.  I think my evaluation is done.