Point the speakers at each other, reverse the polarity on one of them, cover with a heavy blanket.
5 hours on, 5 hours off , repeat until your wife yells at you, then turn them up real loud and yell back at her!

Whenever she will talk to you without that "look", your equipment is broken in.

Works every time.

In the past explanations I recall, the on-off thing seems a lot about caps "seating" ....the five hours on, five hours off protocol about full heat up and full cool down, not just caps, but everything being "flexed" from heating and cooling, while responding to musical signals. I am pretty sure you can benefit from this general guideline for many, many cycles..... And luckily, Jupiter caps are above average in burnin friendliness, sounding pretty good right off, making burnin funner, but still getting more and more refined for a long time.

To me, these amps take hundreds of hours to fully "burn in." 100 hours is a good start, but you will likely hear things moving around in sound quality for 300+, then more subtly up to ±600, finally reaching relative stability somewhere in there. Then "seasoning" continues subtle refinements.

I also try to play a variety of different music I like to hear, especially sure to mix in some with a lot of transients (like the Sheffield drum tracks and Gotan Project), fast and stronger transients good seeming as part of the "flexing" and "conditioning" of all those wires and parts.

It has been a long time, but back in the day, though all burnin CDs were not created equal, there was no question to me (then) that the Esoteric/TDK CD (along with music) sped up the process....And later, using a Frybaby2 to burn in parts for modifications before putting them in the gear really did help me get close to good sound, music usually close to finishing it up within days or a week for the most part. The Frybaby seems to be similar to a burnin CD, the idea being to run various frequencies, waves, intensities, speeds that are supposed to do what music does, but more quickly...but there do seem to be more effective and less effective patterns.

Similar to Groovy suggesting caution with this, I have heard folks who advise against burnin tracks, I believe Mapleshade (?) even saying it will hurt, but have not heard a clear explanation of why, except that music is what we use our system for, so burnin with it....At the same time, having had a number of amps and other things to burn in over years, in the past I felt the Esoteric along with music helped. And in my recent experience, the Frybaby2 is a real lifesaver, no doubt in my mind getting me much closer to hearing the real effect of a part, wire, or cable change without weeks or months of playing.

Hopefully someone who has concerns about using burnin tracks can offer some good explanations as to the why's?

I thought I would throw in one observation I have made with burn-in. I think I am mostly talking about electronic equipment/capacitors. This was also true some with speaker burn-in. It may have been more subtly true with cables.

I would often play the system during the day, sometimes for hours, sometimes off between each play. The next day I would try to see if I could hear some changes from the previous day. Sometimes I could hear changes, other times not so much.

Occasionally during burn-in, I would not be able to play the stereo for at least a couple days for various reasons. It was after being turned off for a couple days where I would hear the greater changes. There was a sense of greater refinement, often in the highs, sometimes further down in the spectrum. I'm not sure if I am recommending you do so but it is an observation that still engages my curiosity.

Artman, that's cool info....its along the lines of some of will's comments on the subject of cap cycling ["seating"].

So maybe 5-8 hrs "on", then 5-8 hrs "off", maybe mix in a 24 hr. "off" period here and there, not necessarily all in a pattern.

Its looking more like 2 weeks on a concerted effort here, but that's ok........its better than 6 months  :o

Donnie, the crack me up comment related to all the yelling, because that's highly probable, LOL

Interesting procedure you mentioned. I'll give that a shot as well. Thank you!

Brad

Burn-in is primarily about seating the dielectric and foil of the signal capacitors.  Once seated, the two quit moving against each other and the smear in the sound goes away.  This is done by both temperature cycles and signal propagation through the capacitor.  Signal propagation has an effect on how it will happen.  Signal propagation is training the the layers on how to seat together.  If you use a square or triangle wave as an example you are training the cap to sound perfect reproducing square or triangle waves.  If you use pink noise, you are training the cap to excel at reproducing pink noise.  If you use low resolution / compressed music you are training the cap to sound good with that.  If you use well recorded musical instruments to train your caps, the only thing with the textures, harmonics and micro-details that audiophiles love, then your caps will excel at all types of music.

I would simply echo much of what has already been covered in this thread.  So from a different perspective, here are some more thoughts on the subject:

Some manufactures make a big enough deal about break-in that we as consumers begin to accept that things will sound like crap until they burn-in at which point they will somehow transmute into a hi-end piece of audio gear and sound heavenly.  I don't particularly agree with is, or the approach.

Since it is possible to make an audio component sound any way you want it too as a designer it is hard for me to see why relying on break-in is a good idea.  Instead I just design it to sound better from the start.  I mean if break-in can make a component sound 10/20% better, then why not design it to sound 20 or 30% better from the get go... stone cold off the bench as we like to say.  Then it will sound better than a competitors fully burned-in piece the first time you hear it and continue to elevate as it breaks in.  Hell it sounded so good pre burn-in that no one cares if it ever burns in.  The fact that is does is just a beautiful bonus.

The same is true if not more so with loudspeakers. This nonsense of having a shrill top end that mellows over time, or no image focus until the caps break-in, etc., are just more of the same thing.  With loudspeakers, the woofer will always be extra stiff for the first 40 hours diminishing bass response, and yes everything smooths out and gels with time, but if you don't like the way it sounds after 40 hours, the best you can hope for is that you will like the sound with time.  More than likely the adjective "love" the sound will not ever be present.  So get speakers that sound great before they burn in and you will have little to worry about.

Steve