The issue of whether break-in is real aside for now, when you make a change in your system, such as a new component or cable, do you have the discipline to wait before making any other changes? I usually mark my calendar for a month and perhaps 2 months and try to change nothing else for that period of time so I can better assess exactly what the new thing is doing. But sometimes it’s difficult to wait. IMO, break in is a real thing, both in the component and the listener, but even if you don’t believe components and cables change after a few days, can you wait at least a month to listen to enough music to adjust your ears to what the new thing brings to the system on its own?
@deep_333I am not arguing at all with the measurements. Most audiophiles when they talk of breaking in what they really mean is "sounds better" The measurements changed so that means the driver now sounds better. If the enclosure was designed around the original TS parameters the driver now functions worse. Subwoofer drivers, if driven correctly, lead a horrific existence. They fail more frequently than any other type of driver. Another problem is "sounds better" is a human interpretation heavily influenced by factors other than reality. IMHO, after burn in, dynamic drivers do nothing but wear out, some more quickly than others.
It's both. Some pieces hardly need break in time. Meaning I can't tell it sounds better after 100 or more hours. But, I have some interconnects that sounded horrible for about 200 hours and then BOOM! Everything changed in one day.
Of course if there is a real change when hearing break-in we could possibly then hear a change in the materials working...Common place fact...
You initial point mocking deluded audiophiles speaking of break-in was that it is ALWAYS a brain illusion ...This is not common place fact it is a ludicrous claim which is a prejudice ...
The article i quoted above you dont read insisted on a detection of multiple changes by the human ears as not a mere illusion in ALL case which was your initial claim ...
Dont stretch the goal post to suit your lack of argument about the possible material reality of break-in in some instances and for some piece of gear for some measurable reason ...
@deep_333I am not arguing at all with the measurements. Most audiophiles when they talk of breaking in what they really mean is "sounds better" The measurements changed so that means the driver now sounds better.
Now directly from the mouth of an engineer designer who i trust more than mijostyn bashing audiophiles as all deluded by their brain 😁:
«First and foremost, I’m an Engineer and don’t do mojo BS. The fact this Industry has become a marketing nightmare of BS and lies not only misleads people, but attempts to fill knowledge blanks with marketing instead of fact. Add to that a billion unqualified people on the internet all with an opinion. If I can’t measure it or analyze it, it ain’t happening. Emotive response based on gut feeling is completely unreliable when attempting to address something like this subject. Often what sounds ’better’ is simply a result of you playing in a way you perceive as ’better’ so something external to you must have changed, right ?
So for this discussion, while its impossible to completely remove ones own tonal preference, the end result should be thought of as reliable unit operating within its design parameters.
However........ Yes, I can certainly vouch for the fact that amps do break in. They start off a long way from their intended operating points. Its a rather exponential process. No newly built amps sound incredible on first fire up, I’ve built a few thousand so can say this with a lot of confidence. Almost every component ’breaks in’ to some degree or other. For some components, its not so much a break in, more a settling at a particular operating point or range. Tubes certainly do initially burn off contaminants on the cathode coating and on other structures, even contaminants in the gas itself (every fired a brand new power tube and heard some crackling that goes away after several minutes or an hour or two) . It also takes a little while before their bias will remain stable. Preamp tubes as well as power tubes. Electrolytic capacitors form an oxide layer on the plates over time. There’s a period of about 30 mins to 2 hours where you can see the ripple levels change on a scope as they start to operate more efficiently. Their ESR also decreases in the same time period. The electrical and magnetic properties of transformers change too, but that’s more long term. This process continues, eventually flat lines and then starts to reverse as some component starts to reach the end of its working life, usually power tubes are the first to degrade.
The break in testing is as much to insure against premature failure as it is to ’make the amp sound and feel right’. However, there is a marked change between hours 0 and 1 and hours 1 and 5, the noticeability of the change gets less and less after longer periods of time. Noise levels do also generally decrease, but not always, they can in fact increase in some cases.
I wont even start to tweak or change anything once I’ve got an amp up and running properly, until its been hot run for a couple of hours. Its pointless as any change you make is countered by all the other parts settling in to their operating environment.
Speakers are an electro-mechanical device, so they certainly break in. Some people use variacs to attempt to speed this process up. Personally I think you are better just giving them the complete signal range by simply playing through them in the way you intend to use them and putting up with about 20 hours of stiffness.
Outside of this, the most major factor to changing tone on a day to day basis are changes in wall voltages, temperature and humidity. All these factors affect the operating points due to resistive, capacitive and inductive changes and the fact that every component has a tolerance band. I developed the autobias system to counter some of the major factors that change the tone of your rig from club to club due to bias shift caused by changing voltages.
Just a word of warning on buying ’burned in’ tubes. If by burn in they mean fired up with the filaments heated for 48 hours, that’s not really doing anything apart from creating a nice orange glow and giving them an excuse to take an extra $5 from you. To settle in a tube (for me) has to be done in its end operating environment. Granted, a few hours under load by the Supplier on a test rig will certainly help find early failures, but they will still need to ’settle in’ in your amp.
So, its all very real and physics can 100% back it up. Now heres the big caveat that separates science from Mojo.....BREAK IN DOESN’T ALWAYS GO IN A POSITIVE OR PLEASING DIRECTION. Think about it, that would be impossible. You certainly can get an amp that sounds great after two hours and by hour five has settled in to a less than ideal place and requires reworking. This is the reason I gig test every amp. Some things I may only notice when its being used in a live setting. However, the general direction of the settling in period usually leads to a more stable place and closer to the actual intended design points. Hope that helps.»
I consider myself a disciplined audiophile as well.
I refrain wasting money on expensive tp, caviar, cars, ostentatious homes so I can make a greater investment in audio. I read multiple publications, listen to lots of live acoustic music and instruments to train my hearing. I do careful long term comparisons of equipment and configurations to achieve the best sound possible.
It is why we can all trust reading your posts your advice about necessary or very useful gear upgrades ...
😊
I consider myself a disciplined audiophile as well.
I refrain wasting money on expensive tp, caviar, cars, ostentatious homes so I can make a greater investment in audio. I read multiple publications, listen to lots of live acoustic music and instruments to train my hearing. I do careful long term comparisons of equipment and configurations to achieve the best sound possible.
I have enough of a scientific background to know that you need to change just one variable at a time to avoid confusing results, so I adhere to that sort of scientific discipline.
From my experience, I would say that generally I have heard improvements immediately from changing some components, but that there can be additional improvement over time. One instance that has surprised me was having my Apogee Duetta II (with ribbon midrange-tweeters) speakers refurbished. The man who did the work said there would be a break-in period of a few hundred hours. But I found they improved after about a year of regular use--there was some brightness that gradually diminished, and I could test this with one particular piano note on one particular recording, as well as massed violins in some orchestral recordings. So, that’s another way in which I’m disciplined--like many audiophiles I rely on certain familiar recordings for testing components.
My buddy and I (who is also a forum member) had a DAC shoot-out with three DACs. Forgetting brands, all three were only about 2 weeks old.
It was crystal clear which the better of the three was. So, I'm still not sure where discipline comes into that.
I will say that in my experience having the entire system "warmed" up is a good thing. This could be easily my perception, as in relaxed focused on music and not on the sht storm that is "normal life".
Disciplined audiophile, that's an interesting idea. I won't wait if the sound is markedly unpleasant. Maybe a few days at most. If it's really nice it's easy to let it go for a few months - if my love affair with the new sound lasts that long. Or, so long as some new idea doesn't intrigue me enough to want to try it. I've messed up a lot of what I thought were great sounding setups only because I got an idea in my head and was curious to try it.
For whatever reason I have a thirst not just to achieve good sound, but to better understand what it is that makes me think it's good. Just last night and this morning I decided to have a new look at my midrange horn, which has been difficult to interpret since it's measured response varies so much with measuring distance and angle. It's a weird beast and I don't know what's right. I tried a method I learned of yesterday called "beamforming" for measuring. You basically add the measurements together that are taken at various distances. This has the effect of suppressing the effect of early reflections, so the direct response of the horn can be more clearly seen, and adjusted as needed with crossover settings and equalization. The end result seemed to give good overall room response, but boy did that do something weird. The bass seems hard to hear, vocals seems very clear and natural but much louder than the bass, even though the bass measures as loud as ever. Before I did this experiment the system was sounding great.
So no, I'm not disciplined. I didn't even bother to save the settings I had earlier when it sounded great because I was too eager to try new things.
So no, I’m not disciplined. I didn’t even bother to save the settings I had earlier when it sounded great because I was too eager to try new things.
But i came to audio to understand how to reach acoustic heaven at low price...I dont want new pieces of gear i want a good system to buy new albums like the 100 Montoliu jazz albums , a great pianist...
I learned basic acoustics to solve my problem. Once it is done why bother with new gear ?
it will cost me 15 time my actual basic cost to go better not with a marginal improved S.Q.
Then nothing is right or wrong here with you or with me ...
You listen gear change when you are bored by music , i listen music all day happy and proud of my modified system never bored by it because it is balanced acoustically ... I dont need to do acoustics experiments anymore , i loose my first room. 😊
But i must admit that if i can and younger with more money i would recreate another room with other system...To explore acoustics with different speakers type ... ( acoustics is one of my passion )
You are creative as i was...
It is that music matter more for me now than changing gear ...😊
But in our two situations , you with your next new gear , me with my past systems, we need to use acoustics to create great experience , not just buying gear piece ...
my very best to you then , and i say it with a bit of curiosity about your Horns speakers ... After all i am an audiophile ... ☺😁😊😉
I do only because I am lazy! I enjoy letting it play out. If it is better, it will play out in time. Of course, I am not paying thousands for accessories so that makes a difference.
I live in a "twilight zone of zero self control" (from a Walter Becker song). Also, if something sounds un-musical or in some way not right, I'm not about to waste much time on break-in...it's gonna be gone.
I bought a Transparent Powerbank 6 when I got back into hifi five years ago. It was pretty cheap brand new from the dealer. I think it may be just a glorified surge protector?
I've heard a lot of good things about the Puritan 156.
My reaction to the question is a little broader than letting something "settle in" before I evaluate it critically. There are all sorts of people in this pursuit of hi-fidelity, from very dedicated enthusiasts, to people "in the business" to more casual users who want information on what to buy or how to address a problem, but whose interest is mainly in enjoying music with a minimum of fuss.
There is an analytical side to this and a musical enjoyment side-- for so many years, I was more devoted to the analytical side-- how good does the system sound, what records sound better (I’m still largely LP based). There were moments when everything gelled and I could enjoy what I was hearing for its own sake but I found those moments too infrequent.
When I put together my present system, starting in roughly 2006, I started focusing much more on the music, the performers, songwriters and production. I tend to like simple productions--they often sound more real to me-- and eventually moved from classical and hard rock to post-bop. Part of that may be personal taste. But I also began to appreciate that the technical know-how, the why it sounds good or bad is only a part of the process. I’m fascinated by the relationship between the music and the medium, as well as archival/preservation processes (about which I want to learn much more).
There is so much to learn--and I find the process very fulfilling- from music history and the stories behind the recordings and performers, to the manner in which the recording was mic’d, the way it was mixed and ultimately, how the thing was produced into a manufactured product. I’ve had the opportunity to do a fair number of "deep dives" into musicological history, researching archives, the US Copyright Office records, and various correspondence among participants in the production process as part of transactions buying and selling catalogs. It’s all interesting to me.
But, at the end of the day, I still want to put my feet up, listen for enjoyment, the bliss of a great performance on a good recording without my brain working on overdrive.
I guess in this sense I’m disciplined though much of what I learned about audio was not through formal education and much of what I learned about music history was either lawyerly research or study for my own interest.
In terms of letting gear settle in, I do believe that is real. I can have an immediate reaction to the swap out of a piece of gear, but I do prefer to live with the piece in question and "evaluate" it (that sounds very formal, maybe "living with it" in a given system is more apt) for some period of time using a range of material.
I guess the question of discipline as an audiophile can take various forms-- one might be to improve sonics, another might be to broaden your musical horizons.
I embrace all of it. The longer I’m on this planet, the more I want to know. I think that kind of inquisitiveness is invaluable, whether it is technical, musical, historical or other aspects of this convergence between art and science.
Disciplined audiophile is like saying moderate fanatic. Contradiction in terms!
I am a disciplined audiophile ...😊 Why ?
Because i refrained my ignorant instinctual impulse need for novelty out of my audio frustration because i learned among other mechanical and electrical basics, acoustics basic concepts. I experimented with it one i get a low cost synergetical system ready to be improved ...
I became creative instead of staying a passive collectors of always costlier gear pieces and now i had great sound and no urge for any upgrade...
Then contradictions can exist in logic only when we claim that there is only two roads opposing each other ...
But a crossroad is not a contradiction it is a moment of choice : studying and experimenting ...
Or starting nowhere and going nowhere in a race to purchase or staying in place without moving listening our not so good stereo... . .😁
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