Why no “Break in” period?

prof,
" Do you get this nuance...yet? Do you think you’d be able to actually depict my argument without strawmanning?"

Me,
Again, try to be honest with yourself. You believe that measurements trump personal experience & there is nothing that can be said to persuade you of this until science catches up to our hobby. As a consequence of this opinion, what you believe to be "nuance" doesn't exist.

I'm really not "strawmanning" you... it's just that on this footing (measurements trump personal experience & there is nothing that can be said to persuade you of this until science catches up to our hobby), your argument simply can not be argued.   

All items require a specific breakin period.i have been into audio 40+ years 
and owned a audio store for almost a decade dielectrics ,as well as new metals expand and contract untill threal ey temper or settle in ,even upgrading connectors from say a brass to a good copper detail and refinements improves over time,the crap thst your esr just gets used to it is BS li have done many a blind test .believe what you will ,I have the best instruments In the  world 
the ear to determine what is real and what is an illusion!!

Re speakers: not to enflame anybody, but I believe it's the spiders more than the drivers  that need breaking in.

Re electronics: I can understand certain components like capacitors benefiting slightly from break in, but I have never experienced any clear improvement over time with any electronics. But I'll cheerfully concede that it's possible. 

Exactly, TIM was the same situation. We all heard something wrong then they finally figured out what it was and how to measure it. But this is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about differences people hear when there is nothing wrong. We are not talking about what the ear hears. We are talking about how our central nervous systems interpret what the ear is hearing and that is a far more complicated and plastic issue and it seems in this forum modulated by ego. Many of the explanations are being devised by people who have no idea what they are dealing with or talking about with an unfortunately high level of arrogance. What is even more interesting is that the people who are closest to the truth are attacked the hardest. 
If people do not want to understand how their brains can trick them and spend their money on worthless garbage that is their prerogative. Do not think this is the search for the truth. It is more or less the re enforcement of mythology. 
Geoffkait, Einstein was a "Newbie" when he came up with the theory of relativity. 

If you don't believe your ears, maybe it's easier to believe your eyes.  I've owned several PS Audio Power Plants over the years and I always break them in using my TV since I hate the break-in process and watch more TV than listen to music.  The first time I did this the picture initially looked crap- colors were oversaturated and the tonal balance was off.  But after a a number of days days everything started to change and the improvement was obvious- a more three-dimensional picture, better shadow detail and more subtlety in colors etc.  

Since music is constantly changing we tend to play the same track over and over and it's difficult to know if our memory is fooling us sometimes.  But a picture is somewhat steady state, say at a live football game.  You'll get the same camera shot of the same scene for hours and it's very easy to analyze the picture quality.  The first time I used my TV in this manner I made the mistake of changing my settings after a day or two, only to have to do it again a few days later once the Power Plant settled down.  

I was already well aware of the break-in requirement in audio because I've had some components with very long and painful break-in period.  But the TV was the most dramatic proof that something was changing in the electronics.  Since I'm a mechanical engineer by training, I don't believe in unicorns or alchemy, but I do believe that electronics require break-in, and the more revealing they are the more likely you'll hear the difference.

My Hana el cartridge sounds nothing like it does now at least 15 hours to break in.  easy to hear the difference... voices were to big not natural ,a friend said so too. Then after 15 or so hours everything fell into place . He came back a week or so later and said that’s better .  And all I did was play records.

Fedie,
Same experience here with a new benz cartridge I'm breaking in. Dynamics improve, soundstage expands, imaging improves. I'm on about hour 50 now. 

Definitely something more than subjective acclimatization, albeit with no objective confirmation method. When a process unravels over time before your ears, with all other variables (local power demands, ambient atmospheres, etc.) controlled by repetition, the explanation must be a physical adaptation of the signal passageway itself, from raw flat asphalt (new Cardas copper) to hard biased pavement. Because of the traffic, and maybe the nature of the traffic. Very different from unicorns or magic fairies in the sky. Too bad there's no evident way of making bombs or curing cancer out of it, or maybe we'd know by now the mechanism by which this occurs.

@boxer12

So clearly the answer was "no, I will not do nuance, and I will continue to strawman you."

You did of course completely strawman my position as telling you: "we can’t possibly be hearing what we are hearing."

You believe that measurements trump personal experience & there is nothing that can be said to persuade you of this until science catches up to our hobby.

As I’ve pointed out: we can also have "personal experience" pointing toward the existence of a real phenomena. It’s just that, if we want to be more careful about the inferences we are drawing, increasing some control over that type of personal experience can be helpful. So for instance, I had no measurements to back up that some CDPs and DACs seemed to sound different to me. But I did do some listening with some better controls for bias that suggested that there was in fact a sonic difference to be heard.

The times where I think "measurement trump personal experience" are when measurements have been correlated to human thresholds of experience. We can measure a signal at 30 khz, but if you claim to hear it, and all you have is an anecdotal claim, then, yeah, given what we know about the usual human threshold of hearing, appealing to the measured frequency of that signal to cast doubt on your claim makes all the sense in the world. I’d hope you are rational enough to agree.

In the case of fuses, AC cables etc, I’m NOT saying there is no phenomenon there, that there is nothing measurable, that people aren’t hearing anything real. I’m simply pointing out that the evidence that HAS been offered tends to be dubious (as in technical/psycho-acoustic claims from high end cable manufacturers that other people with relevant expertise dispute, along with anecdotal uncontrolled listening ’evidence.’).  Though there has been some intriguing measurements offered for burn in (drivers), capacitor change, etc.


The way you phrased your strawman seems to contain the implicit claim that there is a phenomenon that science "hasn’t caught up to" yet.

How dogmatic of me to ask what kind of evidence there is for the claim!


So, again: Not claiming break in doesn’t exist. Not claiming "you can’t be hearing X" or that it isn’t audible if it does exist. Not claiming to know the answer. Willing to accept it happens.



Just looking for evidence beyond audiophile anecdote for the phenomenon. Someone doesn’t have to be a scientist to measure something - someone with some engineering knowledge can do it.Don’t have to be a scientist to bring in some bias controls. Just have to be willing to do it.



And as I’ve said many times, no one has to do ANY of this to enjoy high end audio. We can all put whatever we want in our system and go on what we experience. But if we are going to make *claims* about what is going on in audio gear, then it’s perfectly fair to look at what type of claims are being made, and on what type of evidence they stand.


I use tube amplification. To me it produces much more enjoyable sound than any SS amps I’ve had. That’s good enough for me to own the tube amps - no science offered, none demanded of anyone else.

BUT...if I want to CLAIM that my tube amps produce objectively "better" or "different" sound than an SS amp, I’d have to admit that, while my claims are on some plausible ground given how tube amps can measure/interact with speakers within our hearing thresholds, that it remains *possible* what I "hear" is influenced by listening bias, and no I haven’t done blind tests to establish otherwise. That’s just being intellectually honest about the nature of the evidence I rest my decision upon. Hey...I could be wrong. But I ain’t selling my tube amps any time soon! We don’t have time to put everything to scientific testing.

The problem for me arises mostly with people who vehemently pronounce their subjective impressions are, for all intents and purposes, infallible, insofar as they will not countenance any skepticism of their experience or talk of the problem of human bias; that if someone else doesn’t hear it, that could ONLY be due to insufficiency on their part, not possibly on the part of the audiophile making the confident claim himself. That is actually a form of dogmatism that many "subjectivists" seem self-blind to.

As a consequence of this opinion, what you believe to be "nuance" doesn’t exist.

No, it appears your willingness to engage with nuance doesn’t exist.


I don’t suppose you would be willing to admit that your characterization:"we can’t possibly be hearing what we are hearing"was inaccurate? Given that I’ve explained numerous times that certainly is not my position?


It would take allowing yourself to observe nuance in the position of someone you don’t agree with. I’m rooting for you to do so....but, that’s up to you...

Prof,
It is good to see you're softening up a bit in regard to sound quality & break in. From 12/8 you posted this:

12-08-2019 10:51am

Nelson Pass, John Curl, and Ralph Karsten all believe in equipment break-in, burn-in, or what ever you want to call it. The late Charles Hansen did as well.

"The point wouldn't be that some electronics designers think AUDIBLE break in occurs (note the capitalized word), but what evidence they have for the claim.

Do they have objective measurements showing the change

and

Do they have tests correlating the objective changes with their audible consequences, that control for well known listener biases?


If not, it's just more of the same audiophile anecdotes, unfortunately."


And in your post above you state:

"Not claiming break in doesn’t exist. Not claiming "you can’t be hearing X" or that it isn’t audible if it does exist. Not claiming to know the answer. Willing to accept it happens."



That is progress.  

Believe it or not, it costs a lot of money to "measure".  Some run-of-the-mill PC soundcard is not going to do it.  You need at least 100K worth of equipment (and of course knowing what to measure). 

I have some ribbon  power cords that had a dramatic break in process. Won't bore anyone with the details but initially my system had the flu. There isn't a person on this forum that could listen to it for more than 15 minutes. Checked my stylus for a gob of fuzz.
60-80 hours later clear as a bell.