Burning/breaking in new equipment?


I am a complete beginner to stereo equipment, never having even owned so much as a record or CD, but I have been reading about it and found what I thought were good deals, so I pulled the trigger this weekend.

The following are on their way:

Benchmark DAC3 (DAC and preamp)
Bryston 4B3 (power amplifier)
KEF R900 (speakers)
XLR cables (from Benchmark)

I have read that new equipment needs to be broken in for about 100 hours. Does that mean I have to play music through them for 100 hours at the same volume I would use when listening or can I play it at a much lower volume?

Note: I am a little worried that the above system might be too bright, sharp or clinical (as I have read about the previous generations of Bryston amps) but I am trying to go for clean, pure, true, honest, accurate, transparent — whatever that means, but I am thinking I want it to sound like what the artists, producers, directors, audio engineers, etc intended when they created, mixed and mastered each track, with nothing artificial added by the equipment. I also went with companies with more solid engineering and less marketing.

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bobk3

Showing 1 response by shadorne

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)