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Bass Drivers - Quickest / Best Way to Break In?

As a proud owner of new EgglestonWorks Andra I speakers, I am completely impressed and satisfied with their sound, from 63 Hz and up. In my room, they are amazingly live, dynamic, detailed but natural, very well balanced (as the frequency response shows (Rives CD, RS analog meter)), and the sense of acoustic space is just unbelievable.

But then there's the bass...I know the Dynaudio bass drivers (two 12" in each cabinet) take some time to break in. I have bearly any audible response below 50Hz; the response drops 15 to 20dB from reference (80dB) very quickly after 63Hz. When I crank up the volume on the 20Hz tone, I get the woofers moving, but the equivalent volume level would be around 95db at 1Khz. That's loud folks!

I tried respositioning the speakers closer together, to simulate a friend's setup, also Andra Is, and he's only down 3dB at 31Hz. No such luck for me, so I don't think it's a room thing, not for the lowest octave and a half range like this, so it must be break in, right? My bass drivers just don't seem to want to move that much at 80dB.

What would be the safest way (for the drivers and the simple low pass bass crossover). I assume that playing the 20Hz tone repeatedly may cause overheating of either? I guess I am impatient! I have about 50 hours on the speakers thus far (yeah, I know, that's nothing!).

Thanks!
1markr

Showing 1 response by undertow

undertow
1,033 posts
 
Sorry to intrude, but fact is I have had very similar things occur and after 300 hours I have had drivers that were very stiff all of a sudden open up and drop quite a bit in impact and octave range... However this is not the whole story, your room has incredible impact on the results, room acoustics will in fact start erasing some of the holes in frequency response, especiall the room loading factor that will give you the smooth / full / wooly even bloom your missing to gain back warmer and much more impactfull presentation.

I really doubt eggleston would ever dare ship a non-fully tested against the reference speaker on site product, this is the practice of all super hi end companies from my understanding.... Unless you have shipping damage or really badly matched equipment.
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