What does this mean? Or are you dumping on the competition?
Nope, not at all. I either say good things about other audio brands, or I don't say anything at all. But the reality is that audio products need time to reach peak of their performance.
The first thing I have to ask is this: what "audio stuff" are we talking about? Does this include the Hip-DAC?
Audio products of various sort, function and price, hip-dac including.
"rarely sounds good", in what way or ways is this meant? Is it meant as a function of the equipment or the ear-brain connection or something else? Are they applying this to the Hip-DAC as well?
To make it short, many products will sound audibly better after hours of working time, including hip-dac. In this context 'rarely sounds good' referred to the same product's performance after say 50 or 100 hours of use.
Or maybe I thought the Hip-DAC sounded great out of the box so the comment didn't make sense.
If that's your experience, that's great!
If so, why aren't manufacturers putting that time in before shipping to customers knowing that the product isn't ready?
Many manufacturers in fact do, but this practice is seen mostly in very costly products. Also, products out of the box are ready; they work, make sound etc. But they usually need some working time to arrive at their peak performance, which isn't really nothing new in this hobby.
I'm sorry that come off as a troll, that wasn't my intent. Obviously I'm missing something here. Feel free to reply with what I missed (or PM if that floats your boat). I hope that the experiences which contribute to the desire to ignore people are few and far between.
It's all good. As long as we're able to communicate in civilized manner, it's all OK. If what I wrote addresses your questions, cool. If there's still something you'd like to have clarified, please feel free to let me know and I'll help.
Could you explain the rationale behind this?
Certain components used in audio products, for example capacitors or transducers, sound better once they have working hours on them.
Very possibly. I most certainly enjoyed the Hip-DAC right away, and I had no intent to question iFi's integrity. I had thought that was a bit more of a playful comment, but I can see that I did not get that idea across at all! My apologies for the error.
As I wrote above, if in your case hip-dac sonded good right away, that's good and a perfectly fine reaction. Some folks look forward to sound getting better in time, others don't think about it and enjoy their purchases as they are.
To entirely know what burn-in does, two the same products would need to be compared; one brand new and the other after i.e. 100 hours of usage. I did several such tests with our devices and each time the one used for some time sounded better.
I look forward to learn whether your hip-dac gets any better after some time. If you feel like it, please share your experience after several days or weeks!
iFi audio's integrity is as it's used to be. I took your comments as legit questions asked to simply know more, that's all. Again, if there's something unclear, I'm here