Burn in time...Reality or something else???

Burn in for many products is physics. I sure wouldn't expect much difference from the first day to the hundreth day on my digital DVD player, but on my amps,cable, interconnects ect. The molecular structure of the wire in conjuctunction with the other associated material is altered by the introduction of the current. I don't necessary buy all the buzz about some small tweak here or there having dramatic impact, but I recently experienced an unequivocal burn in result from my amps. It wasn't just my ear. When I demo'd them in my home system they sounded dull and under powered for my system. I was ready to send them back. After several hundred hours of burn there was a dramatic change in the sound both from a power standpoint to the total sonic picture. My wife has no knowledge or interest in this gear and she thought I bought a new amp after hearing them before and after breakin.
Its real. Some equipment can have a thousand hours of breakin and not sound good.

I would say that burn in is real more or less for the component (being speakers, cables, amps) at question but definitely there is a listening "burn in" for your ears as you get acustomed to the new equipment. How you assign the "improvements" (on burn in or listening experience) after some time is really quite subjective, as most things in high-end audio. Most of the time it is both unless you get a chance to try both burned in and not equipment.

But Pbb, you've refuted your own position on this matter. Since the nose is stronger than the ear and components smell different after they are broken in (they do, don't they?), that proves the burn-in phenomenon is real. Doesn't it? Oh, wait, the imagination is stronger than the nose, ear and eyes, being unlimited, while the senses all have limitations, therefore, ipso facto, it's all imaginary.

That earlier post to which you refer was the funniest I've ever read here. I have tried to diagram it, but it's beyond my ability.

Paul

Bomarc's got it: human ear/brain adaptive filtering takes what, 20 minutes? Speaker surround, spider and dome burn-in can take hundreds of hours. Cable/electronics burn-in is something I don't quite understand on the molecular level (except the dielectric-easing bit), but I've experienced it too.

I'm in Denver on business this week and I've rented a Volvo S80. Driving from the airport, I thought the radio sounded really poor. After three days, you know, it sounds pretty sweet. Was it breaking in?

Not that there aren't electrical and mechanical things going on, but this is more in our heads than many of you will acknowledge, I think.