Is burn in real?

I had to chuckle to myself. Sitting in our weekly meeting, where production engineers meet with design engineers, the topic of discussion was how to build a new burn-in rack and system for the upcoming M1200 monoblock amplifiers. What made me laugh is all the time and money we're spending setting up a rack whose only purpose is to make sure when owners first turn on their new amplifier it sounds right. That's a bunch of needless expense if burn-in weren't real. In fact, the new M1200s require more burn-in time than any product we've yet manufactured. We're still debating not the number of hours, but rather the number of days. The discussions even include what track of music to use for best results. Sound silly? Not really. The average energy level of reproduced music has a direct impact on the improvements we desire to make. A quiet musical piece wouldn't be nearly as effective as a loud one. Since we're not in the habit of needlessly incurring expenses, those who doubt the efficacy of burn might be well served to take notice. Burn-in matters.