OK, we're now stepping into the voodoo territory, so those of you who are squeamish, look away.
My first experience that convinced me that the much-maligned burn-in phenomenon is possibly real was two years ago, with the Beresford Caiman DAC. This time around, I seem to be experiencing similar phenomenon with the Beresford Bushmaster DAC.
As I've described on another thread, out of the box experience with the Bushmaster was nothing short of a revelation. Stunning product, incredibly life-like presentation, and all the other good stuff. Save for the highs. For some reason, in my audio chain, this DAC seemed a bit shy on the highs.
As always, knowledgeable members on this forum jumped in with ingenious suggestions. I've penciled them down, and decided to try them out, but not before giving the DAC a bit more of a good old burn-in time.
Yesterday, at around 40+ hours of burn-in time, I sat down for a critical listen. Decided to play Santana's "Abraxas". The first thing that caught my attention on the opening track ("Singing Winds, Crying Beasts") was how much more three dimensional the sound became with the additional burn-in time. It almost sounded like I was listening to the surround sound system. All the instruments had real physical and palpable presence and weight, something I really delight in.
Alas, the highs, end especially the chimes and bells that are chock full in this song, were quite subdued and rolled off. Oh well, I thought to myself, this little sacrifice is definitely worth the admission ticket to all the other scrumptious goodies.
Continued to listen to "Abraxas", and then something amazing happened: in the middle of "Oye Como Va" (the fourth song on the album), it felt as if someone had suddenly removed a thick blanket that was hanging in front of my speakers. Or as if someone pulled the hearing protection plugs out of my ears. All of a sudden, the cymbals soared and the little scratchy metal percussive instruments came to full life! Not only did I suddenly gain back all the metallic clarity of these instruments, I instantly started hearing way more details and nuances than I ever heard before.
How do I know I wasn't going mental at that point? Easy. My wife, who was sitting next to me working on her iPad, perked her pretty head and asked me: "What happened here?" She confirmed that suddenly we're hearing way more cymbals and accents than ever before (I mean, everyone is totally familiar with that song, after hearing it for thousands of time in their life).
So OK, from that moment on, the Bushmaster had broken into the new territory, and is now sounding way superior to the Caiman, even in the high frequency range. Much more convincing, much more realistic, not to mention the incredible three dimensional presentation. I could not be happier!
To me, this DAC definitely does need solid burn-in time, there's absolutely no question. The difference the way it sounded back on Tuesday and the way it sounds today is enormous. There is only one thing that is still confusing to me: whilst earlier on the Bushmaster made everything sound very non-digital (albeit with castrated and muffled highs), now it's back to sounding very digital. It kind of sounds like Caiman on steroids, but it does retain the same digital signature. What I mean by that is that there is no mistaking the sound coming out of the Bushmaster for the sound coming out of a decent turntable. It's not that there is anything wrong with that, just that I'm surprised that all those previous qualities (i.e. more brown, coppery cymbals) have now been supplanted with typical digital sounding cymbals (more silvery, metallic and brash sounding cymbals).
Overall, I must say I'm loving it, it definitely is worth every penny I paid for it, and then some.
P.S. Just to clarify, nothing, absolutely nothing changed in my audio system, save for piling up the burn-in hours on the Bushmaster.
