@shadorne I can’t quite fully agree with your statement "FWIW - if it doesn’t sound excellent out of the box then it never will". Some loudspeakers i’ve heard have sounded bright, closed in and rather flat out of the box, only to smooth out, open up and sound musical after break in. Just sayin’. Though I think your statement is true of some head-fi, particularly IEM's.
SQ lacking
I bought my first hi end audio system. Played, so far, some Redbook cds. On my speakers, I think I am hearing improvement as some time goes on. My room is horrible for room acoustics...as bad as it gets...so I am going to address that with my Dspeaker antimode 2.0 soon.
But then I switched to my headphone unit, of which I have a Questyle CMA 600i headphone amp/dac. So room acoustics have no import here. I plugged in my Sennheiser hd6xx headphones, popped in some Redbook cds, and man it just sounds rather muffled to me. I don't hear crisp details and nice separation of instruments. I am not wowed. I have a good system here, every component getting good reviews. So, does it need break in? Is it terrible cd recordings? Or, would I realize better sound if I went cd transport - dac - headphone amp? Right now it's cd transport - dac - preamp - headphone amp.
But then I switched to my headphone unit, of which I have a Questyle CMA 600i headphone amp/dac. So room acoustics have no import here. I plugged in my Sennheiser hd6xx headphones, popped in some Redbook cds, and man it just sounds rather muffled to me. I don't hear crisp details and nice separation of instruments. I am not wowed. I have a good system here, every component getting good reviews. So, does it need break in? Is it terrible cd recordings? Or, would I realize better sound if I went cd transport - dac - headphone amp? Right now it's cd transport - dac - preamp - headphone amp.