In the late 70s, before I had ever heard a thing about burn in, I had the following experinece. I got a new solid state amp to try out, a DB Systems DB-6 it was. It sounded okay to me out of the box,but not remarkable in any respect. We had some family over for dinner and were sitting around in the living room afterwards with the stereo playing quietly in the backround. And I remember noticing that I was suddenly hearing an extraordinary amount of detail and resolution from my Quad ESL 57's. What is more, my brother, who was living with us at the time, noticed the same thing. It was a jaw-dropping kind of thing. These kinds of experiences tend to be pretty convincing on a personal level. Although I think we imagine a lot of what we think we hear, I have little doubt that burn in is both real and non-trivial in at least some instances. By the way, it was a few years prior to this that I had a similar personal, "non-suggested" experience with differences between the sound of two stereo receivers. That's what got me on the high-end bus to begin with. I kinda wish it had not happened. :-)
Burn In = Voodoo?
I have been an obsessive and enthusiastic audiophile for 20 years, I am not averse to tweaking and The Audio Critic infuriates me. However, I must admit I get a little uncomfortable reading so many posts about "burn in". While I understand that amps may need to warm up, speaker components may need to loosen up, the idea of burning in a cable or say, an SACD player just seems ludicrous to me. Unless of course, the party suggesting the burn in is a snake oil equipment peddlar and needs to make sure someone owns and uses your product for a couple of months before they decide it's really no good. At that point, of course, no one could actually remember what it sounded like in the first place and even if you wanted to return it, it would be too late. Am I being too cynical here?