Love getting new equipment, hate the break-in

@ober..:  "fully functional units are generally considered to be identical"

not in real design/production/service flow, where often “the same looking devices” have the designator components from different suppliers, design change almost every day, test equipment introduces additional tuning variations and so on..

Another consideration: do the designers of these components burn in for hundreds of hours when evaluating their decisions? I assume they are choosing components and/or designing based on reputation, experience, and specs, but for those that end with critical listening (and measurement), do they evaluate option A vs B after weeks of burn in?

It would be interesting to hear how common this is amongst manufacturers and/or their opinion about burn in. Especially across different component types (e.g. cables vs speakers).

I am amazed that some folks think break-in is a fallacy.  I hear it every time but those that do not believe really insist it is bull @#@@.  People are crazy or they have bad systems and never heard it happen.