I think it it real, but maybe not the 300-400 hrs crazy amounts of burn in that people claim, my IE8's weren't soo good out of the box, after about 13 hrs they are very good. An initial burn in of about 24 hrs max is all you really need.   Some have dynamic drivers - if you think about it...

I completely agree, I gave it about 3 hours of pink noise and it sounded a lot better. I used simplynoise.com

Pulled by IE8's out of the packaging yesterday, and out of the box (coming from SE530 to these) they didn't sound too good... I left them for about 3 hrs listening to pink noise and they sounded tons better. The bass was about same but it seemed to make the mids and highs come out a lot more.

I've has the SE530 for about a year and a half, bought a pair of Sennhieser ie8's at the airport today because the left earphone on the SE530 sounds like its broken on the inside, it only works when the cable is at certain angles.    I guess with the new 535's you wouldn't have anything to...