"Burn in" Are you serious?

Waldhorner, if you have ever bought anything new and not heard it change over time then you and I will agree on at least one thing - we live in different worlds.

Waldhorner, your existentialism does not make an argument - it could be applied to argue all stereos sound the same and we are just deluded in believing otherwise. I just figure if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck - then I am happy to figure it must be a duck and move on.

Waldhorner, I hesitate to make this seem even more wacky to you, but if you take a "burnt-in" cable out of a system and coil it up for a period and then put it back in the system it will go through the burn-in process again, albeit more mildly. I presume this has something to do with physical compression/decompression of the dialectric - whatever. You may doubt this effect, but you should take it into account when doing your tests between new and burnt-in cables. Personally I have not found a huge difference between new and burnt-in versions of cables like say DHLabs, but the differences seem to be more noticeable with more expensive cables. Perhaps the difference is quite subtle and only stands out against an otherwise pristine performance. The differences can sometimes be very unsubtle in the bass, but the nauture of the change is not usually a gross frequency response issue, but a change in grain structure or a change from seeming mechanical/electronic, to becoming more natural musically. The process is so repeated and unwelcome with any new product that it is hard to ascribe it to anything other than a "real" source. I know the following experience does not meet your objective test criteria, but in repeated visits to a friend's house I have heard how his system has burnt in. You may scoff at the aural memory required to support this claim - but I can recall how much more I was able to enjoy the music at each visit. How come my burn-in, if that was what it was, had the same gestation period as my friend's when he had an order of magnitude (or two) more exposure to his system? It is not this one experience that convinces me, but the many times I have observed the burn-in process.

I suspect your hearing is not sensitive to it Joe. This is not implying you don't hear well, because the effect is not gross, is not like the difference between having the blinds shut or open, or like the difference between two components. It is a quality that flattens images, takes a feeling of weight out of bass, adds a mechanical/electronic quality. And I don't care if you are convinced or not. I don't visit this forum to win arguments (which is not to say I don't fall into the trap of becoming embroiled in them from time to time) - just to share experiences with others - and your experience (and that of others) of not hearing components burn in is interesting and perplexing. But I feel no need to require you to prove that burn in does not exist. I cannot quite understand your concern about proof.

Boy do I get tired of these endless and pointless debates on whether or not someone's opinion about their own experience is deluded or real. What do you hope to gain - petty points scoring? Certainly noone is winning any of these debates. Some believe they have heard the sound change during burn-in, or when comparing new equipment to burnt-in equipment. Some believe this cannot be so, either because they have never heard it themselves, or because it takes them out of their comfort zone where they thought everything was explainable. This thread looks like the Monty Python skit where the chap pays for an argument and just gets meaningless contradiction. We have posts from people who seem to me to be simply trying to be right, and not listening to the posts of others at all. Is that what you are here for?

Call me a fool, but I can't help myself, I have to re-enter this debate... oh please stop me Lord!!! If burn-in was just getting used to the sound, then my system must be really bad. Because this means the unmusical sound I heard when I first plugged my gear in is still there, only I am not noticing it anymore. Yet when I go to someone else's place, who knows how to put a system together, I often enjoy music on their system straight away. This clearly means their systems are so much superior to mine that even while my brain is getting burned into its sound, I can really get into the music. This leads me to the conclusion that when my best buddy leaves these shores to head up a consultancy in Singapore, I should just buy his stereo and his house so that I can get a hold of his wonderful system - then wait a couple of weeks for my brain to burn-in and the half mill or so it all cost will have been worth it. Tell me where I am wrong, quickly before I write the cheque.

And how come my buddy says he enjoys music on my gear, is he just humouring me? Or does listening to each others' stereo three times in the last three months constitute burning our brains in. Something does not compute.