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Burn in vs perception

Posting here in speakers, but could probably go in any of the forums. Question of the night: how much of burn in of components is actually burn in of our perception? That is, is burn in partly us becoming accustomed to a change in sound.
 

I’m listening to my SF Amati Traditions that at first I found a bit strident, but I now find lush, dynamic, and generally brilliant. I bought them as 1-year old demos so theoretically they should have been played enough to be broken in. I haven’t changed anything in my system—I have been working on my room with more stuff, but that’s it.

Sometimes reviewers or arm chair audiophiles (me) will state that said component needs to be plugged in and left alone for weeks until it gels with the system. Could this simply be our own perception burn in OR is something real happening here?

For speakers I can buy it (woofers need to loosen up and all), but I almost always buy used, and I almost alway a) find a difference of a new component (good or bad), and b) in time, I couldn’t tell you what the change was. Maybe just me, but our brains are pretty good level setters.

I willing to bet this can be a large part of “burn in”.

 

 

w123ale

Showing 2 responses by mitch2

mitch2
3,696 posts
 

In the 30+ years I have been trying equipment, speakers, and cables, and outside of allowing 24 hours for warm up of circuits and several days for mechanical run-in of brand new speaker drivers, I have never heard sonic changes related to "burn-in" that I deemed significant enough to make me reassess my original opinion about how something sounded in my system.  In every case I can remember, I either immediately liked or didn't like the way something sounded, and time did not substantially change my original assessment.

I have had a couple of occasions where I wanted to like something because of reviews, popularity, or appearance, and tried to convince myself I liked it, but ultimately I have pretty much found my initial assessment to remain unchanged, as long as I was being honest with myself.

All of this stuff I read about equipment or cables needing days, weeks, or months of burn-in to sound good just seems like audiophile hoodoo to me.

mitch2
3,696 posts
 

@rshank64 

Thanks for sharing your listening test.  I am actually not surprised at the results.  The only times I have suspected hearing a difference in power cables is when switching to a much larger gauge cable.  Even then, I did not try a structured test like yours so I cannot confirm whether I would be able to select the larger vs. smaller cable with reliability.

If you are still curious about your cables, you might look at this thread.  If you check with Amir at ASR, and offer to send him one of the power cables, along with a summary of your listening test methods and results, I suspect he would test the cable for you.

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