It's been a most splendid weekend for me. I reckon that I've easily doubled the actual running time on my 1000 Pro, and I am very happy to report that this weekend I have been enjoying it enormously. Have I concluded that this running in stuff is real? Errrrm, that probably has to be a yes, but it's not quite that simple. It's a Tale of two Zed Zeppelins.
A week ago Friday I was listening to the amps, but not for that long. As posted earlier, I played Led Zeppelin's 'Since I've Been Loving You'. This is a track that I recall playing on the D800 not long ago and thinking just how good it sounded. That Friday on the Pro I did not enjoy it, it did sound a bit harsh, thin, with too much treble. I did have some time to listen to many things on Monday, but for reasons I do not need to go into here, I was not really in the best of moods. I did try the Led Zeppelin track though, and I found that I much preferred the version I have on an early CD copy of Led Zeppelin III, rather than a later version on 'Led Zeppelin Remasters' (Although I think even the remasterd copy is quite old, this is not the recent remaster). Anyway, I had a few hour running on the Devialet on the Friday just gone, and on Saturday tried both versions of 'Since I've Been Loving You'. The earlier one sounded excellent, the second one was ok, but it did seam to have too much treble to me, not as balanced and nice to listen to versus the earlier copy. I then simply played whatever I felt like for the rest of the weekend, not worrying about this running in nonsense, the good news here is that I was enjoying the Pro enormously, it was every bit as good as I recalled from the OAC demo, in fact I was building on this a bit, thinking I was noticing improvements that I had not noticed in the demo. Another point to note is that I have been away from my system quite a lot recently, so the Mutec and mR have been turned off periodically, this weekend they have both been left on 24/7 since Friday night.
I have just listened to the aforementioned Led Zeppelin tracks. Yes, the treble is more prominent in the remastered version, I still have a preference for the old one, but the thing is, the remastered version did sound rather good, certainly better version in some aspects. So maybe the amps are improving slightly, in particular in the highs? Maybe it's just that this weekend I'm in a far better mood. Maybe keeping the mR and Mutec on 24/7 is yielding some improvement. In a way it doesn't matter, 'because I'm a very happy boy now.
However, I think I do need to come off the fence, do I believe in this running in time stuff or not? I think I have to conclude that my mood & mR & Mutec running time have all been a factor, so it's impossible to be sure, but I am going to get off the fence and state that I am now thinking that yes, the amps have indeed improved a little, primarily in the highs. It's not that there are less highs now or a change in balance, the highs are just cleaner, more accurate and more pleasant.
As a final note, I am going to have to stop overthinking all this stuff now, or I'll go (even more) utterly bonkers!
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