Is there a burn-in effect after several hours of playing? I think about to sell the LTD, because of its slightly soft sound. Is there a chance that the sound changes with some playtime? When i compare it to the E1DA 9038s, the LTD has a slightly unrealistic and soft timbre. I don't know how to discripe it. It sounds like a thin layer of fabric on every note. I don't like this.
Sure ‘burn in’ (break in) is ‘a thing’.
It is different from device to device, and ‘to be fair’ the changes are subtle, generally, to the point where if we don’t like the sound we are hearing, the changes brought about by chips settling and ‘finding their stride’ won’t always change the sound to the point that it is a ’night and day difference’.
Heck a metric tonne of users around the world will state that ‘burn in‘ is a myth. (most people are not attuned to the slight differences that break in or a cable change will make)
That being said, I have rotated many DACs, at some points in my system builds, to find that many DACs have such subtle differences (perhaps at a similar pricepoint with ‘very similar’ cheap builds), that the difference between a ‘fresh from box’ amplifier vs one that is a week old IS a NIGHT/DAY difference by comparison.
It is nice that the quality you have identified
IS one that some break in CAN affect.
I find many circuits ‘very grainy’ straight from the box.
The M11+ grew the width of its’ soundstage ‘very significantly’ in the first 50 hours, but until I have 150 hours on it, I would generally not ‘seriously listen’.
That being said; the M11+ sounds ‘good enough’ unbroken it that I am willing to spin it anyway.... (normally it would be in a ‘b’ setup for 1-2 weeks before seriously auditioned..)
but yes, ‘veil’ reduction would be a feature that some breakin makes...
The hardest thing that the M11(+) has to compete with in its price range is that making music loud/obvious/exciting in ‘ones face’ is easy,.. but making instruments recede into the soundstage based on recording quality is ‘tricky’.
The M11+ can recreate honest sound space.. that actually stacks the odds against it as being a ‘chosen player’.
Eg users will just about always seek out ‘louder’ as equalling better.
Doing a good job recreating a stage actually makes some instruments ‘slightly’ less obvious.
Unless the reviewer/user knows ‘which is better’ (not necessarily ‘nicer’) it can be a hard call to state one playback is subjectively better.
One is better for ‘fun’, one would be ’more accurate’.
I replaced a Chord Hugo with an iFi Diablo: the Hugo was more musically engaging, but less honest to the recording - it did make throwing anything through it ‘really easy’. (easy to do /easy to listen to). Through the Diablo I benefit from feeding ‘better recordings’, mostly just because it will HONESTLY pull apart poor recordings.
So ‘better’ becomes ‘better to whom’, ‘better, why?’.
Hopefully the veil does go away with some breakin (my unit has made inroads already..)
- I would question which recording playback is more honest to the soundfiles’ original space... Around this price point it is easy to get consumer fi stuff that spec sheets really well, and then there is stuff to be musical (might on net the best spec sheets, but will actually playback in a musically pleasing way, or more honestly (depending on design intent).
As an aside, and not relating to the OPs question, but spec wars don’t tell us much regarding musicality. We seldom listen to ‘test tones’. Signal to Noise ratio isn’t a range of instruments playing at VARIED output levels.. (I cannot think of a spec sheet metric that looks at how a band is reproduced in relation to ‘each other’ on a stage etc)..
That more distant feeling might make loungeroom playback that is divine, whereas the ‘in ones face’ (louder) playback might have very little depth in a 3D space (2 channel ‘loungeroom’ system).
TL DR
break in IS a thing. Most people wouldn’t notice it! How much it can save a piece of kit is ‘highly questionable’. (I have returned ‘new from box’ “worlds best” amplifiers because they are ‘unlistenable’ to me (grainy), so may depend on ones sensitivity to ‘the small changes’ that some headfiers talk about as if they are ‘the big changes’.
We probably need to qualify how much change an amp or a cable makes to the total sound. (breakin is often subtle differences!).
