What Burns In - Hi Fi Gear Or Our Ears

Hi Amp_nut,
Somehow I can relate to your feeling...
My hifi journey has rather just started...I bought my first hifi 8 months back and in this span I have owned only two different pair of speakers, the A52 and BM6. Incidentally both are from the same stable, the same size and shape and even the same weight. One major difference is, A52 I got properly burnt-in while the BM6 was brand new. This was my first ever experience with burn-in and frankly, I didnt expect burn-in to do much....but I was surprised and still continue to remain surprised as to how much improvement lies in store (atleast in case of speakers). I have already posted my experience in the other thread which I would like to paste in here:

I understand your question and I think , I know the answer. If it was just an illusion then the illusion should also have occurred when I had the Audience52 for the first time at my place... . The A52 had attracted me from the word 'go' and remained the same all throughout for the next 6-8 months(till the BM6 arrived). Actually I bought the A52 pre-owned and it was properly broken in so I suppose there was no further audible improvement. Infact out-of-the-box the BM6 sounded so inferior to the A52 that my wife (who is no audiophile) was almost shocked that I have bought them (BM6) . Within a month, they transformed into a beast beating the A52 lef-right....this transformation was quite audible in patches of 7-10 hours of burn-in. I suppose thats not an illusion.....

BTW I do tend to believe that ears also get adjusted to the sound but the difference shouldnt be much....if you dont like a particular sound signature in the first few hours/days, you would more often than not, not like it later as well...thats my feeling though.
Moreover ear-burn-in could also act in the reverse direction, i.e you may tend to like a speaker initially but may start disliking as you listen to it more and more.
But speakers burn-in is mostly uni-directional, they almost always sound better after burn-in IMO. You may not like a speaker brand-new but there is a reasonable probability that you would like them if you listen to them after burn-in IMO.

Hi !

I believe that both the mechanisms may be at work:

-Equipment break-in especially those with moving parts is a well known and accepted fact. Even the electronics and the cables break in as claimed variably.

-Human hearing mechanism is amazing too. It is very probable that some sort of "adjustment" occurs. I know for shure that some variations in the hearing mechanism occur normally - haven't you experienced that sometimes the same equipment sounds quite bad and at other times simply great?

Hi Amp_nut,

I have noticed appreciable changes in speakers after about some 100hrs of use. The change I heard was that of getting firmer bass ter runin and loosing the peakiness of lower mid/ upper bass. The tweeters to my ears gets run in within a few hrs of use, if they are bad when new they continue to be bad even after years

Electronincs getting better after running in is only a faction of a percentage for me. It was mainly my mind justifying my purchase ;). Say at the max 5% improvement was heard in tube pre amps.

Phono cartridges do improve after a few discs and they continue to change for ever, in fact till they are worn out.

My conclusion is that whereever there is a mechanical-electrical-mechanical conversion running in do have a major role to play.

Regards
Anil

IMHO the burn-in phenomenon is a real thing. I've personally heard improvement in various items in my own 2-ch setup - vacuum tubes, step-up xformer, speaker, cables to name a few.

I just replaced the tubes in the phono stage of my preamp. The 1st time I played the system it sounded harsh, hi-fi & nearly sliced my ear off. Now I have several more hrs on these tubes & I can hear how they have settled in better in that harshness is far less offensive. the tubes are not quite there as they older tubes were. I have a pretty good idea of what to expect once these tube should burn-in/settle-in as I have yrs of experience w/ this particular preamp. Even tho' I've been listening as the tubes break-in, I'm not (so far ) beguilded into accepting the tubes' performance.
I had a similar experience when I changed my cabling. here I was experience burn-in with more sureity than w/ the above example of tubes - I have some pure s.s. gear & I was able to hook the cables to the s.s. gear & let the system play 24/7 for 14 days straight at low volume. The volume was low enough that no one in the house knew that my 2-ch was on yet there was a signal thru the cables at all times. I listened to the system that day I received the brand new cables. I liked what I heard but no where near what was to be expected for the price I paid. I did not listen for 14 days straight (played music thru my 2nd-ary system during that time) & then went back & listened on the 15th day. My, my, my! what an utter transformation (just as the manuf said it would be). The new cables simpled killed the prev cables by light-years once they were broken-in.
I've had a 3rd experience with my step-up xformer. I plugged it in the day it arrived & my heart sank to under the floor when I heard my 2-ch system - bad was an understatement. I can confidently say that my boom-box sounded better! I called up the manuf & he reminded me that I had to give the sep-up 25 or so hrs. So, as I played LP after Lp over several days I heard the step-up change its colours like a chameleon. My 2-ch got back its life around the 20 hr mark & after that it just got better.
A 4th experience with my speakers also confirmed to me the importance of burn-in. Here the woofer surround was to be loosened thru burn-in. That made it a much better low volume transducer. However, what I have learnt w/ speakers is that if one does not play the speaker for several months that burn-in gets un-done because these days manuf use synthetic rubber for the surround that re-hardens. In this case, the break-in has to be re-done. Not for as long tho'.
There are other personal experiences that further confirm burn-in to me.

One manuf, who I have respect for & happen to use his products (actually I bought his products because I gained respect for him & I still have that respect for him), explained burn-in to me a bit in some layman terms. This is definitely applicable to current flow but *might* be extendable to electro-mechanical aspects as well. what he told me was that electric current flow was much like the flow of water. He said imagine pouring water slowly onto a smooth floor i.e. away from gap between tiles where there is white cement. What will happen is that the water will 1st start pooling. Then, as the puddle gets larger there will be a break somewhere along the boundary & the water will start flowing down that new formed channel out of the pool.
He explained that in *new* electronics & cables, even tho there is a conductive path from source to destination, there has never been a flow of current thru those paths. When the unit is switched on & when cables are installed in a system & program material is played, the actual path of the current flow begins to carve itself in the conductors (cables, PCB traces, passive elements, xformers, etc) pretty much like the water example above. It takes a while for the current flow path to establish itself to the correct dimensions to support the magnitude of current flow between source & destination. This period is called "burn-in" or "break-in". I thought that this was a good description of burn-in & the best I heard so far. I am open to hearing other explanations from other members.


BTW, we even have break-in for our tennis shoes! the more we wear a new shoe, the better is fits our feet. However, there are still some shoes that pinch after several days/weeks of break-in! I find this quite similar to audio gear.

abhi.pani schrieb:

BTW I do tend to believe that ears also get adjusted to the sound but the difference shouldnt be much....if you dont like a particular sound signature in the first few hours/days, you would more often than not, not like it later as well...thats my feeling though. Moreover ear-burn-in could also act in the reverse direction, i.e you may tend to like a speaker initially but may start disliking as you listen to it more and more. But speakers burn-in is mostly uni-directional, they almost always sound better after burn-in IMO. You may not like a speaker brand-new but there is a reasonable probability that you would like them if you listen to them after burn-in IMO.

abhi,

What I infer from your experience is...

1> Speakers almost always sound better after burn-in.
2> Its upto our ears which may like them initially, then tend to dislike them or may not like them initially but reasonable chance of liking them later.

When a person decides to audition various speakers and eventually buy one of them, does he need to be aware of all these possibilities?

SDhawan schrieb:

haven't you experienced that sometimes the same equipment sounds quite bad and at other times simply great?

ani schrieb:

It was mainly my mind justifying my purchase ;).

Sometimes my mind plays games on me

guys,

I too agree that speakers break-in...even my speakers sound better than they were out of the box...but I also believe that it includes the psychological effect/ears getting into groove with the sound.

Have a few questions though..

How will a person arrive at the figure of number of hours required for a particular set of speakers to break-in and sound good? Is there a time frame that can be applied in general for any set of speakers? Or is it dependent on the materials used by the speaker manufacturer...like some(expensive?) materials require more time than the rest? Or go by the manufacturer's recommendation if he has given one?

Consider a scenario wherein someone says that a particular set of speakers require so many hrs of break in...say 50 hrs, someone else says atleast 100 hrs, another guy says not less than 200 hrs before they really open up and you are left wondering .

OK...you probably take an avg of all the responses or more on a higher side to be safe .
Now your mind may actually start working towards that and you might feel after every set of certain hrs there is an improvement...fine. Since you are driven by someone else's suggestion to a certain extent, you may not realize at some point you got what you were searching for or you may never get it...

Sunk in all this critical listening, you might just forget to enjoy the music

Cheers!

Voodoo_CHild schrieb:

guys, I too agree that speakers break-in...even my speakers sound better than they were out of the box...but I also believe that it includes the psychological effect/ears getting into groove with the sound. Have a few questions though.. How will a person arrive at the figure of number of hours required for a particular set of speakers to break-in and sound good? Is there a time frame that can be applied in general for any set of speakers? Or is it dependent on the materials used by the speaker manufacturer...like some(expensive?) materials require more time than the rest? Or go by the manufacturer's recommendation if he has given one? Consider a scenario wherein someone says that a particular set of speakers require so many hrs of break in...say 50 hrs, someone else says atleast 100 hrs, another guy says not less than 200 hrs before they really open up and you are left wondering . OK...you probably take an avg of all the responses or more on a higher side to be safe . Now your mind may actually start working towards that and you might feel after every set of certain hrs there is an improvement...fine. Since you are driven by someone else's suggestion to a certain extent, you may not realize at some point you got what you were searching for or you may never get it... Sunk in all this critical listening, you might just forget to enjoy the music Cheers!

yes, one needs to be aware of this when one is planning an audition. Often, when people share their audition results one of the frequent questions asked is "was the unit broken-in or not?". You will see this time & again. Break-in does make a diff, IMHO.

I experienced this myself - I was at a dealer listening to nothing in particular but he had in 1 room an Accuphase DP-67 & a Mark Levinson 390S. The DP-67 sounded really bad & the 390S really killed it by a long shot. I was surprised with the result considering that Accuphase has such a good name. When I shared my experience w/ others I was informed that Accuphase units need 400-500 hrs of break-in before sounding their best. Many owners of Accuphase chimed in & confirmed this. How about that? Thus, the *very likely* cause of the bad sound was the lack of break-in. Of course, the possibility could have been that the DP-67 is a POS unit. However, I have not read that anywhere hence, unlikely.

If the audition is not done right, you end up listening to sound rather than music!
Thus, some of the better dealers provide the prospective customer with an in-house 14-day or 21-day audition where the customer him/herself break-in the unit before listening critically.

My experience on breakins have been ..mixed.

But these are with clear Mid-Fi and low Fi equipment. from what I heaar differences are much more apparent in Hi Fi and less apparent in Low Fi/Entry level (Except for the Speakers)

-with speakers, the change in sound..perhaps more prominently the bass/treble , is pretty apparent in the first 20-30 hours. but after that very inceremental and I honestly cannot comment on if it is the ears or the speaker after that..but there are differences all through

- with CDPs, a smoothness does come in after the first few hours of playing..but not sure of the next 100 hours
-amps, less notceably so than the CDP..but follows the same theme.

-with cables..with self professed tin ears cannot talk of it. although have sometimes felt differences in cables, not able to spot the breakin.

But since almost every mechanical machine/Component has a breakin (My car had a 1000km breakin) would find it hard to belive that speakers and CDPs dont need a breakin although the duration fo the same can be debated till the cows come home !

I've often wondered what is better... continuous burn-in or only when you listen to music.
Another interesting point...my Proac manual recommends that you place the speakers in the room where you plan to use them for a few hours without connecting to the system...like getting them acclamatized or something. I read that after I started listening to them. Hope they aren't upset and hence not playing to their full potential!