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Does Equipment Break In, or Does Our Hearing Adjust?

I’ve read many comments about how the sound quality of equipment improves after so many hours of use.  I don’t doubt what people are saying.

About a year ago, my wife and I were tired of not being able to hear dialog while watching TV.  Especially when there was background music or noise, we had a hard time hearing dialog.  Turning up the sound helped, but not very much.  The sound of the TV sounded normal to other people visiting us.

We bought a Zvox sound bar.  Setting it up, we could hear the dialog, but it sounded very tinny, almost irritating.  But that disadvantage was outweighed by being able to watch TV and hear what was being said.

Now, a year later, we can still hear the dialog, BUT, it doesn’t sound tinny anymore.  The voices sound normal, like people we talk to in real life.  It’s not irritating in the slightest.  This happened gradually over a year, so we didn’t notice it until we thought back to what it first sounded like.

My impression is that our hearing adjusted or became used to the new tinny sound.    Or, maybe the sound bar broke in to sound normal. But if it broke in to sound more like normal, I would have thought that it would lose the special effects that enabled us to hear it better.

Or even, maybe it was a bit of both?  Any thoughts?

128x128tcotruvo

Showing 3 responses by asctim

asctim
438 posts
 

One way to know for sure with your sound bar would be to do before and after measurements. The apparent tonality change should readily show up on a frequency response graph if it was actually caused by physical changes in the sound bar’s performance. Or another option is to go buy another one just like it that’s new in the box and see if it sound bright and tinny.

asctim
438 posts
 

Agreeing with what other have said here, it is true that for some of us at least it’s our ears that do the vast majority of the breaking in. I’ve bought identical amps new and listened to them both at the start, and judged them to sound identical - equally bad. Then burned one in for a few hundred hours and noticed it sounding dramatically better. Comparing them again at the end of the burn-in I discovered to my delight that they still both sounded the same but dramatically better than they did at the beginning. I’m not going to insist that some people may not notice real equipment changes over time. But it is fascinating that the burn-in almost always seems to improve the sound rather than degrade it. You’d think there’d be occasional components that go the wrong way. Or perhaps reach their peak sound quality mid-way through the burn in but then slide back a little before stabilizing. Also it seems rare for equipment to brighten its sound signature as it breaks in.

asctim
438 posts
 

Now that I think about it there are other possibilities besides just burn-in. Some components could conceivably change sound quality for better or worse over time whether used or not. Some could conceivably sound better after a burn in period, but then lose the burn in effect if not used regularly enough so that another burn in period is required. Some could even start to degrade from excess use but then recover if left unused for a period of time. These all sound like nightmare scenarios to me. I’m glad that the changes most equipment go through due to burn-in have negligible effect on my enjoyment of music. My ears are not hyper discerning so there’s a lot of serviceable equipment that seems stable over long periods of time to my perceptions.

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