Indeed I use some key valve gear… and yes I find thermionic valves can evolve over time and can have quite a marked initial burn in effect. Valve equipment in my opinion should be burnt in / soak tested.
If you roll your own valves you will need to this yourself… and may need to adjust biases etc if unlucky.
Simon I think you’re stating facts about Naim’s practice in product build and test but you’re also completely dismissing another aspect to support your own opinion. Naim user burn in process at home is stated in the manual.
Naim soak/stress test isn’t a burn in service. Its only purpose is to be just that - a stress on the electronics to encourage them to fail.
Parts selection and small tolerances for these parts is common practice in many established manufacturers. Naim take this a step further which is probably why they are able to achieve such consistency in their products. When the component is sold and used by the end user, there isn’t a measured deviation from the standard component that left the factory. It will likely measure the same and fundamentally this is why this topic is heavily debated.
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Valve burn in is well known but I was referring to transformers
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Many words Simon… But you still haven’t bitten the sour apple and admit that you may be wrong or are you implying that Steve Sells is lying in his responses to the members of this forum? 
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I believe I have already answered you… and shared with you what I have been informed along with many on this forum including by Naim staff in factory visits over the years. The burn in / soak test area always exhibits good discussion along with the aging simulator and component testing and selection process. If you haven’t visited, I would recommend it… and you discuss this matter with them directly… and what goes on in their products.
There is a settling in / warm up period as I have said… I have found this occurs for used equipment as well with warm up and external connections and if you read these and previous forum pages, you will found countless people share this, which is why some keep their equipment like NACs powered up. Also the benefits of stripping down and remaking connections.
I think several on here have pointed out about warming up, settling and distressing of connections vs actual electronic component burn in and possible failure.
But yes again, contact connections over time and even possibly with relays usage, can improve their connection properties over time. Naim use many contact connections with leads and internal relays in the signal path.
Anyway I will leave it there… if you still want to believe that critical electronic components (and I mean electronic components) change their performance in some uncontrolled way after purchase and yet somehow as a consequence makes a product perform even better after it and it has been critically tested, and it’s associated product soak/burned in tested at the factory (and I believe Statements are critically assessed by audition at the end of this process before they leave the factory … but a bit fuzzy on that) then feel free to do so, I beg to differ… and we will have to agree to disagree.
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On a slightly different tack I’ve got a Densen DeMagic cd which came with some magazine I think years ago.
It claims to demagnetise your cables etc .
They say a small amount of magnetism builds up in your cables, components and can affect the sound.
I look forward to hearing from the armchair scientists out there, is this a load of tosh or fact
I think your comments are unnecessarily antagonistic for this forum Bjorn, but I’m fine with you disagreeing with that…if you can do so politely.
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Even if it weren’t tosh, I don’t see how playing a CD could/would do anything about it.
On a different site, a poster whose opinion I respect, owned 2 high end streamer/servers. One was new, one with many hundreds of hours on it. He intermittently swapped from one to the other to experiment with this burning-in. The manufacturer suggested 200 hours, but this gentleman believed they were starting to get quite similar at about 500 hours. Whatever the number was, I found that quite compelling.
Of course their was that fact that one box was silver and the other black…and we all know which colour sounds better (Silver. No, black. Which forum am I on again?).
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Totally and utterly agree…even with the high electric prices I keep mine powered on…
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I don’t know what you mean by “armchair” scientists - it seems to be a dismissive or even derogatory term, though I don’t know if you meant it that way. I believe there are a variety of professional scientists on this forum, across a range of specialisms.
As for the CD claim you mention, I have only one word for it: poppycock!
that’s not really the subject but in your world that doesn’t matter
still yes though, we can adjust to much worse things than “any old box” and
be pleased if not perfectly happy
the fact remains there’s no burn-in for a streamer
This is the notes from the Sleeve and back of the DeMagic Cd.
Also some great photos of old Densen Audio kit inside
So the issue originates from all “magnets” being oriented in the same direction. Which is then fixed by orienting them in the same direction…
And let’s not forget that music is AC, not DC. So what’s so different about this signal?
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I remember using something similar years ago when i used to use cassette decks. The difference, after cleaning the heads, capstans & pinch rollers with IPA, then a good de-magnetise, would sometimes turn out to be quite startling.
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I think the name sums it up pretty well.
But this tape actually touches the heads it’s demagnitising. It isn’t sending some mystery signal to demagnetise things further up to signal chain.
Also, there were plenty of these around. With the CD, don’t you think others would have copied it if it really worked? How magnetic something is can easily be measured, so can the signal encoded on the CD. Should have been easy and cheap for anyone else to do something similar.
In your world you don’t get tongue in cheek?
Never mind, perhaps you’d like to prove your fact?
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What you call unnecessarily antagonistic, others might call refreshingly outspoken, but what do I know… What I do know, however, is that we have an admin who makes those judgments, so maybe we should leave it at that…
Yes, I’ve seen the the sales blurb before. There are two significant questions: what does that CD play that will have a greater demagnetising effect than playing music, and in what way does any any magnetic orientation of the materials comprising the electronic circuits affect the sound?