Burning/breaking in new equipment?

It may be a few hundred hours of burn-in time, it may be less, you will hear it. Probably 100-200 for cables. While everything is burning in do not pay much attention to the sound - the process is often non-linear, it might sound okay one day and terrible next day. Low volume will do, you just want the signal to pass thru. I would not play speakers at high volume until they are burnt in, just low to moderate.
As for how it will eventually sound, it is another question.

Thanks, so I can just leave them on 24x7 at a barely audible level?

“As for how it will eventually sound, it is another question.”

Sound like you are not that optimistic about how that equipment will come together?

No no no, I have no idea, it is just that you never really know until you do.
Yeah, just leave it playing something covering the entire audible frequency range. Be gentle with the speakers. It's like breaking in new high performance car engine, very very gentle and nice, but then when the breaking in is over you can step on it.

You have some excellent components on their way

Treat it like the Grateful Dead said to do with a Love Light - turn it on and Leave it on

a low volume will simply increase the time for the active devices and mechanical parts (speaker cones) to burn in - don't worry about it, just let it run all week or so

it will sound very good to you out of the box

and... it is known to cognitive scientists that you will "burn in" - your perception will accommodate to the sound over time

-------------------------------------------

two other things you will eventually be concerned with:

room treatments

source material (e.g. some CDs sound a lot better than others, so you'll want to track down the best masterings of an album) -- tho you don't say how you will feed your DAC

Excellent choice. Solid state will not need much if any break-in at all. Warm up thoroughly and good to go. Cables are wires and they dont wear. They may oxidize or corrode after about 50 years depending on humidity and salt in the air. Speaker woofers would definitely benefit from a good loud session (workout) for a few hours. Apart from that you are good to go.

I believe Benchmark sell Canare starquad XLR - so you have the best interconnect cables on the market (from a scientific or engineering perspective - as you can spend as much as a good car on cables if you choose to believe any of the hype)

Transistor gear sounds best when left on 24/7. Tube gear sounds best after being on for an hour +. New speakers benefit from being used for several hours. Wire does not require a break-in period (contrary to popular misbelief). Any CD player with digital outputs will be fine with any DAC (no need for an expensive transport). All digital outputs are "bit perfect" - they will all sound the same (contrary to popular misbelief). This is digital's advantage over analog! I speak from 40+ years experience (I listen to both analog (LP's and RTR) and digital (CD's, SACD's and DVD A's).

All very good advise. I'll add that during the hours you aren't or can't play music, leave your components powered up to continue burn-in.

You don't say what your source will be, but play dynamic music that will cover the entire frequency spectrum. There are also CD's or downloads containing test tones and frequency sweeps for burn-in and setting up a system.

Well done. I also agree with the attitude that gear should be neutral, accurate etc. These electronics are just about as good as it gets, irrespective of price, and irrespective of what snake oil sellers and the voodoo priests on Audiogon may say. The electronics exceed human hearing acuity by a pretty wide margin, and have no sonic signature of themselves at all. Since they are also exceptionaly well built, they may last you a life time. You have been very well advised, and that includes the cables.
So I am bit surprised by your concern about burning in. The speakers may need a few hours, but that is all. And if electronics need warming up, in my book that counts as defective design. For the same reason, I would simply turn them off once you have finished. There is already too much waste of energy on the planet. In fact, leaving them on will reduce their longevity (electrolytic capacitors in particular do not like heat).
The only component with a sonic signature will be the speakers. Even the best speakers are very imperfect compared to electronics. I take it you have auditioned those and like them. However, if you will ever consider upgrading anything, look at the speakers, because there may well be room for improvement in that area (at a price). Think of something like the Harbeth M40.2 (provided the room is big enough). But stay away from changing the electronics.
Finally, as others have said as well, look into the in-room response of the speakers. The room is the elephant in the room. Above the so-called Schroeder frequency rooms are plagued by reflections that may give an overbright and fatiguing sound, but that you can damp with carpets, book cases or more techno stuff. Below the Schroeder frequency, this will not work and you have so called room modes (low frequency resonance peaks at the room’s dimensions making for a boomy woolly bass). You may need bass traps to cure that, or room equalization. A first step would be to measure the in-room response with the REW software.
But first, just enjoy.

Congrats on the new gear!!

Is it all brand new, not just new to you?

I don’t care much for hyperbole and conjecture aimed at run in routines or breakin periods and consequent trials.

The first thing I’m doing when new stuff arrives is to hook it all up and turn it all on, and listen to what it sounds like right out of the box. I’ll listen, if possible for a few hours playing whatever. UNLESS … it sounds off too much to deal with.

I mean geeezz, the speakers at least need setting up. That takes a few minutes. Lol it can take days and one should not spike them until they are well run in and positioned properly.

You’ll know the speakers run in when it quits changing audibly, becomes more consistent, and begins to become better nearly every time you sit down for a session. Then it will finally stop improving. That is when it is run in.

Setting up speakers is well covered if one but Googles for it.

How long it takes depends on how long you allow it to run and at what levels. There’s all kinds of weird speculation on this and that surrounding breaking in gear.

Essentially, it simply comes down to turning it on and letting it run.

I’ll plus one @Inna indicating varying run times and volume levels in the first few days and or weeks playing various genres. Later on, yeah, then you can floor it.

My lone caveat is simple…. Heat. If heat can be well maintained, keeping stuff on only risks inadvertent power failures, spikes or brown outs. To circumvent those little possible disasters I merely limit the time the system is fully energized never keeping anything on all the time.

I’m a huge proponent of ‘everything matters” in a rig, from the room to isolation footers under the devices. Wires too.

And yes… some music is recorded better than others, so CD quality is questionable now and then. Only your own EXP & ears, matters there.

Personally, for fun, I’m a note taker for various reasons. They support or deny later changes better than my memory. Going forward its all on your preffs and being as objective and honest as you can with your judgements.

Congrats and enjoy…. Yay.

Very nice gear for a first system.
All previous advice is great.
If your electric rates are not too high, you can leave things on 24/7.
Burn in takes some time, so just listen and enjoy your new stereo. When things come together, you will notice a subtle change. Nothing major, but a change none the less.
If you need to turn things off, then it will take an hour of so for things to settle down.
Most of all, enjoy the music.
Bob

One last thing to add to the above burn-in advice - during the burn-in period you may experience times where the system does not sound as good as it did previously.

This will pass after a few more hours burn-in

e.g. I have cables that sound great initially, but after around 25 hours the system sounded worse than before. By around 60 hours the system started sounding much better and things just improved after that. I observed less focus in the image and clarity suffered.

In my system everything took around 400 hours for everything to sound their absolute best.

One other note: unplugging IC’s and speaker cables and then reconnecting them - you should allow time for them to re-settle - a couple of days is normally adequate.

Regards - Steve

Seems like you've gotten about 98%+ of everything answered that you'd need to know.  And BTW, that's some fine gear on the way - I've heard that there might be "someone" who may be just a little jealous... 

One last thing - the only time I ever seriously asked about burning in new gear I was told to look into using something like a "CobraCo Hand-Hammered 100% Copper Fire Pit".  Whatever you do, do NOT go that route.  Trust me on that...

Re: burning in a speaker....
An audio friend came over with a new aquisition that he wanted to try in my system ...a used digital processor.  He plugged it into my system...flipped on the amp and...

WHUMP-POOF!

In an instant, the square wave amplified by my 250w/ch amp pushed the woofers cones several inches further than they were designed for - and started smoking mightily.  

Instant burn-in...no long waiting.

Thank-you everyone for all the great advice.  I read the Audiogon forums carefully before I bought and learned a lot.


@randy-11
“room treatments”

I started another thread called “DIY absorption panels,” so it will be a combination of GIK and homemade panels.  My room won’t be super hardcore.  I want it to be part of my living space, so we can listen to it, albeit imperfectly, from the kitchen and eating area, hopefully using it a lot more. The audio equipment will be combined with video equipment. I don’t know if I will need to cover the glass on the TV with absorption material when I am doing some serious audio. I think the space will be good though: approx 18x12x10 enclosed by three walls, with one wall having a door. The left side will be open to the rest of the living space. The door and walls and maybe the TV will have panels. 

@randy-11: “source material (e.g. some CDs sound a lot better than others, so you'll want to track down the best masterings of an album) -- tho you don't say how you will feed your DAC”

I have never owned a media disk, so I am going to resist for as long as I can. I was thinking Oppo 203 (~$430 used) but I might not need it for audio, or video.  I will probably try to go with only subscription streaming for both audio and video, with no player, no Oppo. I like the simplicity.

For audio, I will get a subscription to Deezer - the first three months are free, so it is $90 for unlimited FLAC access to 45 million songs the first year.  Do I really need CDs? Does the Oppo give me anything if I go diskless?

For streaming when I first set up the equipment, I will use a Mac or Windows machine, or possibly just an iPhone to stream bits to the DAC through USB. I am also investigating nVidia Shield ($170) for streaming both audio and video. I like the Kodi/SPMC add-ons capability and the access to Google speech recognition. It would be great if I could use Echo/Alexa-like speech commands to find and play songs from Deezer - so much better for me than typing or using a remote to browse.

Oppo gives you ability to play video even if you stream

BTW, galvanic isolation is important for streaming - lots of engineers discussing this on computeraudiophile.com

There is a good argument for not getting into audio discs anymore, now that redbook cd streaming of a huge repertoire is available. Similarly, internet radio offers a huge choice, with often pretty decent or even superb sound quality (usually better than FM radio). With video it is a different story, however. Netflicks has its own series, and some B movies, but very little in the way of art films, or opera/ballet etc. And I know of no streamed alternatives. For that, you still need (UHD) Bluray discs.

" Netflicks has its own series, and some B movies, but very little in the way of art films, or opera/ballet etc. And I know of no streamed alternatives. For that, you still need (UHD) Bluray discs."

I didn't know that.  I thought you could stream, rent or download any video. 4k video might be so big that it would overwhelm their download/streaming sites.

I had a budget of $10,000 and I am several hundred dollars below that.  I thought I was going to spend what is left on acoustic panels, but now I might need to go with the Oppo -- or break the budget by a few hundred dollars, although if the Oppo is for video, it probably shouldn't be included as part of the stereo budget.

@ willemj: "The only component with a sonic signature will be the speakers. Even the best speakers are very imperfect compared to electronics. I take it you have auditioned those and like them. However, if you will ever consider upgrading anything, look at the speakers, because there may well be room for improvement in that area (at a price). Think of something like the Harbeth M40.2 (provided the room is big enough). But stay away from changing the electronics."

The KEF speakers are what I was least sure about.  I will look into the Harbeth M40 2, probably after a few months, unless I come across a fantastic deal before that.  Thanks.

itunes. You could rent films for under $5 or buy them for $10 - $15 depending on title and resolution. You would need to donwload free itunes software to be able to do it.
youtube has streaming service for many titles, $2 - $5.

See here for Paul Seydor on the Harbeth M40.2: http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/harbeth-monitor-402-loudspeaker/

Good to know about Itunes for movies. I did a very quick check and found quite a lot of major art films of the kind that I was looking for in vain on Netflicks. I will need to think of how to store the ones that I would want to buy ( I am not using a computer with my audio/video system).
Thanks.