as a reviewer , i often receive equipment which is new and has no playing time.
i have to decide whether to break in the component and if so, how many hours is necessary.
i have often asked manufacturers for guidance.
one cable manufacturer said the cables--digital, analog and power, required no break in. another said 24 hours.
when i reviewed a mcintosh tube preamp, i was told by a technician that no break in was necessary. all i needed to do was leave the preamp on for one hour in order that the tubes were "warmed up"
can someone provide an objective explanation as to the basis for break-in and how to determine how long to break in different components ?
for example, cables comprised of different metals, if they require break in, is there a difference in the requisite time for a given metal, e.g., gold, silver or copper ?
can someone provide an explanation as to what is happening during the break-in process ?
can one devise a mathematical equation to quantify break-in hours, as a function of the parts in a component ?
Break in is real. Trust your ears. As for manufacturer claims, I've heard from enough that it can take a couple hundred hours for a component, wire, or even just a chip to break in.
The actual changes I've heard were not so subtle, but across the board incremental (not the mathematically small type) so as to make me stop and take notice and appreciate.
It was never a big deal for me as I've witnessed this all through my being involved in this hobby.
As for my ears growing accustomed to the device at hand. Phooeey. Something that was bad to begin with, and broke in through time, still sounded bad and just had to go to the wayside.
Additionally, I've grown to accept something more dynamic, or detailed, or organic sounding that I didn't have before but that is not the same as getting used to something vs. it breaking in. One is a different presentation that would be audibly noticed by practically anyone and the other is something maturing, blooming or opening up as time passes. One is quite distinct from the other.
Almarg - It isn't just your Stax headphones. A few years ago, I was forced for housing reasons to not listen to music for a year. My wife & I get to our new house and I set up my mid-fi Paradigm speakers - which haven't been played for a year -- and within an hour concluded that they sounded terrible and were done and needed to be replaced. After a few days of sporadic use, they regained their rich and pleasing - if undetailled - sound.
My conclusion is that break-in doesn't just apply to new equipment, but potentially to any gear that was left lying around for a while.
Doug, I thought that your article was excellent. Which is not say that I deny that all or even most claimed breakin phenomena are real. But I strongly second your basic theme that the only way to know for sure is to compare two identical cables or components in the same system at the same time, with one of them having been broken in, and one not.
I would further emphasize and/or add a couple of thoughts:
1)In addition to the possibility of user acclimatization, and the vagaries of aural recollection, it seems highly expectable to me that over the course of 300 hours of use sonically significant changes will occur that are unrelated to the cable or component being assessed. Aging or ongoing breakin of other system components, changes in AC line voltage and AC noise conditions, changes in RFI/EMI conditions, record wear due to repeated use, even seasonally-related changes in room temperature (temperature being a parameter that is fundamental to the physics of transistors and other semiconductors, for one thing). Again, as you indicated, the only way to rule out those kinds of possibilities is by direct comparison between identical items that are at different states of breakin.
2)I would expand your disclaimer about speakers being a special case, to which your article doesn't necessarily apply, to include all transducers (i.e., speakers, headphones, and phono cartridges), and also tubes.
As a point of interest, the most notable, extreme, and repeatable example of breakin that I have experienced is with my Stax electrostatic headphones. If they are not used for a period of a few weeks, which happens occasionally, there will be a day-and-night deterioration of their sound quality, that is instantly recognizable on most music. It can be corrected by having them play highly compressed rock music for a couple of hours, at volume levels that are higher than I would dare use if the headphones were on my head. That has been a consistent and repeatable phenomenon throughout the 25 years or so since I purchased them new.
I'm afraid thing are even worse than we might assume since active burn in devices and burn in tracks on some Test CDs will further improve cables that have been in the system for many years. Infuriating' ain't it?
donjr is correct. YOU adjust to the sound of components over time; there are not radical changes to the sound of a system.
Read my "Audiophile Law #6: Thou Shalt Not Overemphasize Burn In" at Dagogo.com. I would post the link but it seems when I do it is quickly banished to some nether region. Do a search and you'll find it quickly.
The upshot of the testing was clear; components do not "burn in," no matter how much such a process is popularized. 300 hours for burn in is a complete waste of time. If the sound is not correct, change something. Active changes to the rig are FAR more productive than pining away for a change.
Ignore this advice and you will be wasting your time, pining for different sound which you could be actively pursuing but instead "waiting for it" to happen. Ridiculous! :(
I'm not interested in wasting weeks for a supposed change. I make the changes happen! I can take a new system and in one evening get it several steps closer to my ideal. I don't sit around and hope for it to change; that's absurd! It would be like hoping for a car to improve its handling. The truth is that if you wait for a system to change you are effectively dumbing down your expectations, settling for less - the initially disappointing sound.
Wine improves with time, but not components. I can get more change in five minutes with a cable swap than the supposed 300 hour wait. I can tune a rig in 1.5 hours with a test of four sets of discrete opamps. So, why should I sit and be discontented for 300 hours? Ridiculous! :(
To date I have had no one, professional or amateur, contest my findings. I also have found no one who has replicated the test. I suggest those who doubt my little test, who ardently belive in Burn In, get double components and do the informal testing. I can tell you what will happen; you'll not be able to hear the difference. :)
what is so confusing is the difference of opinion among manufacturers.
i have found some cables do require break-in. i experienced this when i connected a pair of interconnects between a cd source and a receiver for 300 hours. then i reviewed the cable. i still had the cable in the system and three days later the stereo system sounded different. it could have been that the cable was not fully broken in.
there is only one way to be sure.
keep listening to the stereo system which has the componemt under consideration until the stereo system does not change its sound.
it's disconcerting when cable designers say that a cable doesn't break in but rather yours ears acclimate to the cable.
so the conclusion is that there is a variation in advice from manufacturers and there is no rule of thumb. i guess just wing it.
Donjr, don't get me wrong, your comments are entirely welcome. My system (and I've not yet been in a position just yet to finally post it on Agon and let everybody know what I'm working from) is a somewhat minimal CD-only, ss rig that cost less than $5k, with a little over a grand of power conditioning thrown in (which does do a pretty good job of helping with the resolution, I must admit). But, honestly I would never expect a fellow Agoner to apologize for their rig, no matter how humble! That's one of two faux pas at this point in my hobby I try to avoid: 1) expecting someone else to apologize for what little they have and, on the flip side, 2) complaining that I don't have enough money to afford what I want ;) Either one of those thing is bad form to me. But, so many of us, including myself, have had very humble beginnings in this hobby and I see no reason to forget that. I also expect myself to extend that sense of courtesy to others who've had different experiences than my own - even if it is with the same gear as I use. If someone is talking about their direct experience then they're talking about their direct experience. That's all the authority anyone needs. What I was trying to do in my post above was talk about my own experience, in no way did I mean that to be taking pot shots at you, or your system, I apologize if I made it seem as though I were.
Ivan. What you said may be true in a highly resolving system but not in mine. What makes the difference in my system is speaker placement. Stands, mass loading etc. But to be fair this is what I wanted and is why I have what I have. I do agree with the silver/copper but have never noticed any break in. However I'm not really an aidiophile but more a practitioner of music.
After assuming for many, many years that there must be somebody somewhere who indeed had all the answers when it came to just what exactly was happening with break-in (which I believe to be a very real phenomenom - just as I believe accomodation of hearing is quite real too), in the end I gave up as it became evident by default that no such person seems to exist, or ever has...maybe some physicist locked away in a lab somewhere knows the answers, but a recognizable source within the audiophile community doesn't seem to exist and I suspect it's because these things may, in complete totality at least, simply be unknown. IME there seem to be a few patterns that recur: that copper speaker wires usually take a good week or 2 to (fully) break in, that silver IC's often take somewhere around 400hrs (or even more) and that many manufacturers don't seem to want to be caught acknowledging that it exists to their customers. Maybe in the belief that it may either confuse them or that it may possibly discourage sales...or perhaps to avoid being in (what they take to be) the embarassing position of effectively having to admit to their prospective buyers that there's an aspect of their product's behavior that they themselves cannot properly explain...
My own experiences with a FryBaby that I've had for years strongly suggests to me that, with wiring anyway, insulation is likely the biggest factor (by far) that determines break in. But, you can look at the review I wrote up for that in the Agon reviews section.
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