Musical Fidelity A3cr Power Amp ?Break-in Period?

What is the best way to break it in? Do the speakers need to be connected to break it in? I can run my tuner to the thing all day if I need to, but if the speakers have to be connected, I will have to keep the volume down.

Thanks for your replys......I know the A3cr is supposed to be very smooth, that is why the grain is really worrying me. Could it be that the amp is so transparent that it is revealing the faults with my digital?? I dont have the 18B yet, but am hoping when it arrives it will really help things out.

Another note, about a year ago, we had a power surge and my cd player kicked on and played an entire CD at full output. At that time I had my Marantz hard wired directly to the amp and used the variable out as my volume control. With this darn cd player, whenever it is started up, the volume goes to max, and the thing starts to play automatically.....thus, when the system was left on while I was out..we had a surge and presto! (my only savior is that I dont think the max on the player equals the max on a preamp--so it may not have been that bad)

After this, I had done extensive testing on the speakers and never noticed any change..no blown speakers, changes in sound quality etc. So to make a long story short, I dont think the grain is from blown tweeters, as I can even hear the grain at low volumes with my new setup.

I am hoping it is a combo of 1) A3cr resolves so much that it is revealing my 2) crappy digital source (that hopefully will be remedied with the new DAC when it comes in) and 3) the amp needs more break in.

Any thoughts?? Thanks for all the help!