Originally Posted by
Macca
A cartridge is always going to be changing as the diamond wears, if nothing else. Whether this can really be heard until the point where the tip is so worn the degradation becomes audible is debatable, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I've heard them wear out but never heard them break in. The same applies to speakers, I've had plenty of new speakers and never heard them get any better than they started out. But again this is debatable.
Methodology is not consistent. If someone gets a brand new component and sits there playing the same bit of music over and over again for however many hours as the burn in happens, and says that they heard it improve over that time, then that at least would be something. The reality is that no-one does that. What happens is we put in the new component, listen to a record, listen to another, listen to another, then we have to do other stuff. Maybe the next day or a few days later we sit and listen again, probably to completely different music. Then another gap. Then more different music.
So how anyone doing that can confidentially claim that the sound has improved (and it always improves) over 2 or 3 hundred hours of listening to all sorts of different music, different production styles, different production values, over weeks or maybe months, I have no idea. Do they have any idea how poor their memory is for this sort of application? How their constantly changing physical and psychological mood will affect how they think and feel about what they are hearing?