IMHO, some warm up time is necessary for electronic components to be at their best, and I'm willing to believe (although I havn't seen any tests) that capacitors may improve in performance slightly with some use. However, after that they are likely to slowly degrade (especially electrolytics). I guess the need to recalibrate sensitive electronic instruments could be given as evidence to the fact that performance of electronic components can change with time.
However my take is that the biggest contributor to "break in" of audio electronics is actually the human brain. As you become more attuned to the sound of a component, you brain will be better at regonising its sonic 'signature', which will improve your ability to distinguish it from other components, and also learn to better compensate for any distortion. This could be compared to listening to someone with an unfamiliar accent, when you first hear them, you may struggle to understand even simple phrases, but after some time you will adapt, and be able to understand not just the words, but also the emotion conveyed by the tone of voice. Speakers and other mechanical objects are a competely different matter however. Whilst the 'brain compensation' also has a strong effect here, the physical properties will change over time. The most evident of this is the gradual softening of the rubber surrond on a speaker, which (to me) seems to improve bass resonse and clarity over time. -- bludragon ------------------------------------------------------------------------ bludragon's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=1530 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=29025 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
