Dumb break in question...


  Im breaking in a new CD player,plan on playing disc on repeat for a while. My question; do the outputs of the player need to be hooked up for this to be effective?  TIA,
winoguy17

Showing 4 responses by millercarbon

Also highly recommend the XLO test CD. Worth it for the demagnetizing tracks alone. One sweep track, one bass fade. Seems like it could never work. Hearing is believing.

What’s going on? How does magnetization work? How does demagnetization work? Both work the same way. Magnetic fields can cause ferrous metals to align with the field. As kids back in the day (before schools traded in education for indoctrination) we used to all do this fun experiment where we would use a magnet to magnetize stuff. Hold the magnet real close, rub back and forth a little, your paper clip or whatever would get magnetized.

High end cables are deliberately made from materials that resist this. Nevertheless they are not perfect. Nothing ever is. Tiny magnetizable pockets exist. As these regions become magnetized they interfere with the signal.

Music signals vary constantly with big extremes of power at different frequencies that are exactly what you would do if you wanted to magnetize something- expose it to a powerful magnetic field and then take that field rapidly away. Just like the experiment, only this time the signal in the wire instead of outside. But exact same thing.

One way to demagnetize, expose the part to a powerful alternating magnetic field, then gradually reduce the intensity of the field. Tape head demagnetizers work this way- turn em on, bring em real close, gradually pull away.

This is great if you have the Radio Shack Bulk Tape eraser like I do, and can get at the stuff you want to demagnetize. What about voice coils? Wires inside components? For that you run the XLO tracks, which consist of a powerful bass frequency that gradually fades out, and a sweep tone that slowly goes up in frequency, demagnetizing everything in the signal path as it goes. The improvement is easily heard and quite impressive.

While I know from the messages I get there are people who come here to learn and appreciate such highly informative posts as this, evidently there are others who come here for other reasons and it irks them no end. Tough.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled schoolyard taunts  pissing contests.
Its not that hard. You run it good and long with nothing connected. Then when you're really sure its run long enough you hook it up and listen. Then if you still hear it change and get better, which you will, then guess what? 

Unfortunately we never will get any agreement on the answer. Instead of admitting yeah gosh open circuit, what was I thinking? people will make up any excuse for why the sound continued to improve. 

Assuming of course they even notice. Its one of the bigger more fundamental problems. People with monster listening skills have been hearing this and knowing all about it and it never even comes up. People who don't have to ask- and then make things even worse. Because instead of doing what they should be doing- playing the darn thing and listening to it, learning to hear first hand what's going on- they throw a dart, pick something to "believe" in, and miss out on yet one more opportunity to develop as an audiophile.  
 
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Meanwhile, back in the real world.... not being connected means you have an open circuit. Getting silly technical as per the norm around here, that means no electrons moving. No current. Not even milliamps. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

So the output stage isn’t breaking in at all. That doesn’t mean nothing is happening. Obviously there are plenty of circuits operating within the player that are indeed being burned in this way.

That said, the only way to fully burn it in is to play it, and to play it into a working operating turned on amp. Because turn the amp off, now you are back to the same situation where the circuit is open and nothing is happening.

Personally, I enjoy listening all through this process. If I ever bought anything so crappy it wasn’t fun to hear right out of the box I would first of all pack it up and ship it off, all the while berating myself and searching for answers as to why my search process was so flawed anything so awful was even possible. Then I would make sure and not repeat this mistake ever again. Which is why the last time this happened was so many years ago I don’t even remember....

But that’s me. The guy who actually understands this stuff.  
https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367