Dynaudio had told me up front that the 140 requires lots of break-in. Unlike with many loudspeakers, however, breaking in the 140 for a long time did not result in a small difference between good sound and better. It was more like the difference between god-awful and astonishingly good. Out of the box, I found the 140 veiled, murky, and pretty hard to listen to. After about 100 hours of playing music, they might have actually sounded worse—fortunately, when it comes to pain, humans have short memories. But after the 140s had played 250 hours' worth of full-range, dynamically challenging music, I walked into the house after a day spent elsewhere and listened in amazement. I heard music—and I saw that it was good.