I’ve been doing this long enough to know better than to dismiss what people hear. If someone tells me their new DAC sounded harsh out of the box, and that it softened after a few weeks of play, I’m not going to argue. We trust our ears for everything in this pursuit. But when it comes to the subject of break-in, or burn-in as some call it, I think it’s time we get honest about what’s really going on.
Here’s the claim: new audio gear—especially speakers, cables, electronics—needs time to “settle in” before it sounds its best. Sometimes it's 100 hours. Sometimes 500. It’s often repeated, rarely explained, and almost never measured.
So let’s take it apart.
Speakers? Absolutely. Drivers are mechanical. You’ve got cones, suspensions, voice coils, surrounds—moving parts under tension. When you play music through a fresh set of speakers, those parts flex and stretch and settle into a state where their compliance changes. The spider loosens. The surround becomes more elastic. It’s small, but it’s real. And you can measure it.
We’ve seen it at PS Audio. A brand-new woofer might measure a few Hz higher in resonance than the same woofer after 10 hours of play. You can also hear it: bass tightens, midrange clears up a little, things feel more relaxed. So yes, speaker break-in is real. Not dramatic, but real.
Now, cables and electronics—that’s where the conversation usually gets uncomfortable. A lot of engineers will roll their eyes at the idea that a power cord or a preamp needs break-in time. But that’s because they’re looking for a mechanical or measurable change as obvious as a loudspeaker cone softening up. And this isn’t that.
With cables, it’s not the conductor that’s changing. It’s the insulation—the dielectric. In the first 100 hours or so, as voltage flows through the cable, the dielectric begins to polarize. That change affects how the cable stores and releases energy, which in turn affects timing and phase relationships—especially in the upper octaves where our ears are most sensitive to space and air. Some of the changes might be subtle, but they’re audible. I’ve heard new cables that sounded flat or edgy out of the box, only to bloom with use—opening up, relaxing, and becoming more natural.
The same holds true for electronics. Capacitors form. Voltages stabilize. Some materials behave differently when warmed repeatedly. And just like with cables, the changes might not show up clearly on a scope—but we hear them. I’ve heard solid-state amps that sounded stiff and closed-in for the first couple of days, then gradually opened up and gained body. Same with DACs. Sometimes the tonal balance shifts. Sometimes it’s dynamics or space. But something happens.
We don’t always know exactly why. Some of it we can explain—dielectric conditioning, capacitor forming, thermal stabilization. The rest? That’s a leap of faith. But after thousands of hours with gear in and out of the system, I trust the pattern. I don’t need a scientific paper to confirm what I hear when I let a piece of gear settle in and breathe.
What’s funny is that we never question this kind of process in other parts of life. Musical instruments open up with playing. Cars loosen up after a few hundred miles. Even our own ears adjust over time. Yet in audio, we’ve been taught to distrust the unmeasured.
I’m not saying we throw out science. But this is a hobby built around listening. If it sounds different—if it sounds better—after a few hundred hours, then that’s real enough for me.
Break-in isn’t a myth. It just happens in ways that aren’t always easy to see—but are often impossible to ignore.
