I'm really doubting that much break-in time is needed; the product could never get traction!
Break in time that extends to months or maybe even years!!
On another thread, we have a well known and well respected piece of gear ( and great sounding too, IME) that according to the member who is reviewing it, needs in excess of 1000 hours to fully break in!!
While we have all heard of gear that needs immense amounts of 'break in' time to sound its best, usually gear that involves teflon caps, I question whether this very long break in time is the job for the consumer? Is it reasonable for a manufacturer of audio gear to expect the consumer to receive sub-par performance from his purchase for potentially several months ( years?) before the true sound of the gear in question can be enjoyed? Or, is it ( or should it be) perhaps the job of the manufacturer of this gear ( usually not low priced) to actually accomplish the 'break in' before releasing it from the factory? Thoughts...
While we have all heard of gear that needs immense amounts of 'break in' time to sound its best, usually gear that involves teflon caps, I question whether this very long break in time is the job for the consumer? Is it reasonable for a manufacturer of audio gear to expect the consumer to receive sub-par performance from his purchase for potentially several months ( years?) before the true sound of the gear in question can be enjoyed? Or, is it ( or should it be) perhaps the job of the manufacturer of this gear ( usually not low priced) to actually accomplish the 'break in' before releasing it from the factory? Thoughts...
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@atmasphere Well that's a good point, but according to our esteemed member, on his review of the product, 900 hours has been reached and he is still hearing advances. I suppose another question could be...how long is acceptable 'break in' time for a product? Remember that the ARC preamp that utilized Teflon caps was 'supposedly' only broken in after 600 hours! To me, that seems excessive and should have been done at the factory, others obviously didn't feel this was an issue, as the preamp apparently sold well. |
daveyf ... according to our esteemed member, on his review of the product, 900 hours has been reached and he is still hearing advances ...That's just hearsay and the claim is unsubstantiated. Please note that there's a difference between correlation and causation, something that's discounted in claims like this. Remember that the ARC preamp that utilized Teflon caps was 'supposedly' only broken in after 600 hours!Key word: "Supposedly." |
While I hold the esteemed member who has been referred to in the highest esteem, IMO the only way to meaningfully test this claim would be to perform a direct comparison between two identical components, one of which has been broken in for 1000 hours or so, and the other of which has been broken in for a far lesser number of hours. And with everything else kept equal during the comparison, including the warmup state of those components and all of the other components in the system, the AC line voltage, and the temperature and humidity of the room. Regards, -- Al |
@luxmancl38 The size of the teflon cap almost certainly determines the amount of hours it will take to break in. The teflon caps in the ARC preamp were large. @cleeds This isn't a court of law...so your post is a little off, IMHO. The claim that the member made was that he heard that the amp in question was still improving after 900 hours, and i am not going to call him to task for what he heard, not do I have any reason to do so, do you?. That is not the point of my thread, instead, it is as i asked above in my OP. |
daveyf This isn't a court of law...so your post is a little off, IMHO.Why? Because I question the claim? The claim that the member made was that he heard that the amp in question was still improving after 900 hours, and i am not going to call him to task for what he heard, not do I have any reason to do so, do you?Yes. I'm not accusing anyone of dishonesty - after all, I don't even know who you are talking about - but I do question the claim. Sorry. And I'm basing that on my own first-hand experience. Again: correlation is not the same as causation. I simply haven't seen that it takes months to break in an audio component, and it certainly doesn't take years. |
Well first off if the gear cannot be enjoyed right out of the box then sorry but you bought the wrong gear. That said, everything improves with time. But its not like break-in is all that's going on. There is also warm-up. Some things warm up fast, others can take hours. Solid state gear is famous for needing to be left on 24/7 in order to sound its best. Then there is magnetization and static charges. Playing music, the rapidly alternating signal gradually and over time can magnetize regions within wires and components. Static electricity can also build up. As a result transients become smeared and grainy and the noise level increases. This happens gradually and most never do anything about it. Most don't even know about it. I do, and address it every session. The last big one is power. Sound quality improves along with power quality late into the night. So any given night you have the sound improving from this complex mix of warm-up and charges and power. Add break-in to that if the component is new. |
McCormack amps take about 48 hrs to laser beam their magic into my ears, my speakers took about 250-300 hrs to loosen up and get tight, and amazing. There is a difference. Before a serious,listen, I will power up, leave on for 30-40 hrs before a good listen, same with preamp and CD player. 1000 hrs seems a stretch, who claims such a break in? I have been break g in a pair of Odyssey Kismets for many weeks now,and yes big difference from day one til now! i would think 400 or so hours on any capacitor, circuit board, would be sufficient for a good break in. 1000 hours seems odd to me. |
So, can we put all those rumors of fancy Duelund capacitors taking 500 hours to break in to rest? By the way at the shows, at CES it would take every bit of three days and three nights before the system sounded like it was almost broken in. You know, for the rooms that believed in that sort of thing. |
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according to the member who is reviewing it, needs in excess of 1000 hours to fully break in!!That's actually long enough that if a tube unit, it might have had to have tubes replaced already (although that would be a short period for a tube). This still strains credulity- I'm not buying it- I suspect something else is afoot. |
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heaudio123 There once was a speaker vendor who claimed that the poor performance / review of his speaker was because inadequate time was given to break in the wire in the speaker, and it was very special wire that took >200 hours to break in. The vendor of that wire said the speaker vendors claims were poppy-cock. That wire vendor: George Cardas. >>>Sadly, perhaps, he’s not the only well-known manufacturer who is a couple paradigm shifts behind the power curve. We see this all the time. Amplifier manufacturers are probably the worst. c’est la vie, as they say in Brooklyn. |
+1almarg. No reason to doubt the person. What's interesting to me is to understand how the evaluation process was done. To know the amp was changing after that much time, it would also be necessary to know that nothing else in the complex system (cables, etc.) is changing and yet being attributed to the object of analysis. (I assume the other components are all stable, i.e., "burned in"?). And the room and other contributing environmental conditions (including power) are being controlled, too? Then there's the question of memory and linguistic description. Are notes being kept? Are the terms used in the notes precise? Etc. What makes these kinds of issues tricky for me is that there is the sound of a precise, scientific approach, but there's either an irregular process or one that is not carefully documented. I've got nothing against shootin' the sh*t, but when it sounds like it's something else, I lose interest. |
Reviewers are the worst. always changing things, speakers, cables, turntables, CD players. The system never, ever fully breaks in. The whole review process is broken. Broken cutters, broken saws, Broken buckles, broken laws, Broken bodies, broken bones, Broken voices on broken phones Take a deep breath, feel like you're chokin', Everything is broken Every time you leave and go off someplace Things fall to pieces in my faceBroken hands on broken ploughs, Broken treaties, broken vows, Broken pipes, broken tools, People bending broken rules Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking, Everything is broken |
Present configuration consists of SS electronics from one manufacturer, left on 24/7/365. Believe leaving on SS does make a difference. Took the preamp longer to break in (circa 400 hours). All I have to do is slip in a CD and turn up the volume. No discernible need to "break in" anything. Speakers took about three weeks of listening. |
Don't forget what's on the other side of "break-in" -- it is break-down. At some point the performance of any device starts deteriorating. For the neurotic, that means there will be only one day in the life of a device in which it performs at its optimum level. And it is impossible to expect that day for any one component to line up with the optimum day for any of the other components in a system! For myself, I recognize that I am the biggest variable in my system. The differences I hear are often more likely due to my mental and physical state than anything to do with my system. |
I concur with @almarg, @hilde45, and @zavato… Control of independent variables is of the utmost importance in the review process, and should be implemented as much as possible to achieve reasonably meaningful findings.
In a perfect world, twin copies of the target component or cable should be used for periodic comparisons of performance throughout the break-in process… One copy being the full break-in target, and the second one as a control with “low mileage”. Now suddenly, I hit myself, because I just realized that I had a perfect opportunity to do that when I examined the Rowland M535 bridged a spell ago… I should have started in stereo mode, and used one of the two units as a low mileage control, instead of breaking-in the pair as a bridged set. Oh well, next time I evaluate a bridgeable amp, I’ll apply this technique for sure.
Would be nice to track voltages, air temperature, and humidity… Next time I am born I’ll make sure I stay fully sighted, so I can read measuring equipment… Oh well *Grins!*
On the other hand, I do control the test environment as much as possible, as follows:
As you might imagine, I can’t examine dozens or even a handful of components a year this way: It is a very time-consuming process. Never the less, it is for me a happy labor of love which I enjoy sharing with fellow lovers of music and sound… Others may feel otherwise.
Regards, G. |
G. Thank you for explaining in detail your reviewing protocol. I think what you stated makes a lot of sense, and I suspect that there are a lot of professional reviewers who do NOT go to such lengths... As to your thought about breaking in a mono block in a separate timeline, to that I would say...no. I think the result of what you suggest would be ’flawed’ at best. |
Hello @DaveyF, you are correct, I would not want ever to evaluate a strict monoblock amp by breaking-in each chassis on split timelines... Evaluating mono operation chassis by chassis is a pointless exercise.
The Rowland M535 I was talking about is instead a bridgeable pair... In that a single M535 chassis can be deployed as a stereo amp, or two of them can be advantageously used in bridged mode as a mono pair.
When I received the M535 pair I deployed them as a bridged/m mono pair from the get go, and crossed sonic/musical stabilization around the 800 hours mark
What I should have done instead is:
Break-in the bridged pair for the first 24 or 48 hours. * Split the pair; put chassis 1 aside; reconfigure chassis 1 and 2 for stereo operation and continue break-in of chassis 2.
At some fixed checkpoints, e.g. 100 hours mark, 200 hours, 350 hours, 500 hours, 650 hours, and 800 hours mark, compare the stereo performance of chassis 2 with chassis 1 which would have been still a juvenile. Any differences? Document each checkpoint with copious notes.
At the end, set aside chassis 2, and complete break-in of chassis 1 in stereo mode to 800 hours.
Reconfigure the two units for bridged operation. Reconnect the whole and play for a few days. Take notes and document tonal/resolution/etc... differences of bridged pair from single chassis in stereo mode.
You still with me after all this time? No worries, the fun is not over...
Power down and disconnect from the wall outlet. Disconnect speaker wires from the bridged output terminal of each chassis. Slip the optional external networks onto the mono terminals of each unit. Reconnect speaker wires. Plug the units into the AC, and play music.... You might notice a further positive delta, which to my experience continued to open up further, plateauing after about 100 hours.
BTW, the slip-on networks are free for the asking from the factory... Yes, I know, it would be nice if they were inside the machines... No, not possible, because the designer thought of enhancement about one year after release... No he could not retrofit the design, would have required a semimajor chassis machining / board / wiring change.
PS, Do not slip the networks on a M535 unit in stereo mode, nor try them on any device that is not an M535... You would slag the device with a nice Pop! Possible sparkles, pretty curls of blue smoke, and cute scent of singed electronics... And you'd void any warranty to boot. Yes, Rowland includes a card warning against improper networks use with these add-ons.
Saluti, G. |
Hello Davey… Sure, the next phase of the Rowland Daemon evaluation protocol will come soon.
It will consist of Daemon’s DAC + preamplifier subsystems feeding into the Rowland M925 monoblocks using Cardas Clear Reflection XLR balanced ICs.
I conjecture that having rested unplugged for about one month and a half, M925 and Cardas ICs might come back to full potential in a couple of days of grinding a signal.
Conversely, this will be the first time I exercise the balanced XLR outputs of Daemon’s linestage subsection. Thus, I have no idea whether or not these outputs will show any signs of needing any additional dedicated burn-in time…
I’ll scribble soon again about my project's goings on at:
Regards, Guido |
High quality gear does require an extensive break-in period, but for years, give me a break. Some manufacturers will break-in gear to some degree before it is sold so that the buyer initially will enjoy a certain level of sound quality from the get-go. How many times have you read that some buyers sold their new purchase too soon only to find out later they did not allow the component the properly break in, thus they never really got to hear its capabilities. Conversely there is some gear that require to be left on over-night just to sound their very best for critical listening. But I think you can take this break-in period too far, then you need to ask yourself what is really breaking in, you or the gear. |
