Why do some of the reviews I see have statements like
"(the manufacturer) suggests 300 hours break in before critical listening."
I think in home audtions of equipment may not be as available as we all would like, and everything will sound different in the store, and you read these reviews on line taht sound so hot- then you get one home and it is " jeez this doesnt sound right- maybe it's the equipment, no its my speakers, no the amp, no the room acoustics are bad...." so Maybe the product manufacturers want to make sure the buyers give time for the psychoacoustic adaptation to take place so everyone doesnt go running back to their dealer with a return before the usual 30 day limit is up |
johns33031,
I agree. I simply can't see a good reason to design something with significant drift in response over time ( which is what a break in period suggests ). Drift over time is something designers should really be trying to avoid - just as they try to avoid changes in response due to temperature or volume level - so they can produce products with stable accurate sound. (In the back of my mind I would always worry, "if it changes significantly after 300 hours of play what about 1000 hours....10,000 hours") |
What is breaking in, the gear or the listener. I believe it is both! When a mfg recommends so many hours of operation for a specific piece of gear to reach its full potential you can believe it! But it is my opinion if the sound is not at least acceptable or not compatible with other components right out of the box, it is unlikely that the breakin period will transform this piece of gear to a degree of acceptance. I have a couple of amps, one of which is a Conrad Johnson. Although this amp is fully broke in and I liked it from the get-go, it still sounds smoother and just plain better after an hour warm-up. The only amp and or exception that comes to mind that I did not like its sound out of the box but did after the recommended breakin period was the digital HCA-2. Even after the required hours of break-in, the addition of a quality aftermarket power cord further enhanced its sound quality. Therefore it is apparent to me that the breakin period for digital amplification has more profound results than that of analog. |
Do yourselves a favour and pick up the Ayre Acoustics break in disc entitled "irrational but efficacious". Slip it into your player and hit "repeat" for as long as you can. Set your volume control as high as it can go without doing damage to the speakers. Be forewarned though, the first five seconds of the disc are silent, so keep the volume down and gradually ease up after that. This disc can eat woofers, blow tweeters and / or damage amps if you aren't careful. Then again, it is this "stress", both thermal and bandwidth wise, that causes the system to settle in.
If you can let this play for a few days, even at reduced volume, you'll notice a big difference in your entire system. It will be MUCH smoother, have more spatial info and sound more cohesive.
I did this with my Father's system a couple of years ago. He was in the hospital, so my Brother and i took it upon ourselves to "fix" his stereo system for him. He would never let us do what we wanted to do, so this was our only chance : )
The first thing we did was to modify his speakers. After modifying the speakers in drastic fashion, they sounded like hell. All new wiring inside, fresh solder, etc... VERY shrill and brittle sounding, no bass extension, lacking warmth, etc... It was almost to the point of wondering if we did something wrong. My Brother left the house and then i put the Ayre disc in.
Upon returning to my Dad's house the next day, the sound was much better. When my Brother showed up, i had him sit down and listen. I asked him what he thought. His response was "you changed ALL of the cabling in here, didn't you?". I told him "no, this is exactly the same gear you heard last night". He didn't believe me, so he looked over the entire system. Needless to say, he was amazed at how much "break in" was clearly audible.
After a few more days, the sound really began to gel. Things were falling into place nicely and we could really start to hear the benefits of the speaker mods. FAR more linear presentation with drastically increased liquidity. I'm quite certain that a good portion of this was due to the Ayre disc speeding the process up.
After about a week of playing this disc on repeat non-stop and listening to other music while we were there, the sound was by far the best we've ever heard in that house. When my Father came back, his first words after listening to his stereo for about 20 minutes were to the effect of how good his system sounded. He couldn't recall it ever sounding that good before, but he chalked that up to being away from music while in the hospital for so long.
After explaining what we did to his system in total, mostly his speakers, he was both appalled and amazed. Appalled that he had been listening to such an inferior product for so many years, thinking that it was "excellent" due to the fabulous reviews. Amazed that such a "well reviewed product" could be made SOOOOO much better by his two "knucklehead" sons.
If given enough time and amplitude, the Ayre disc can REALLY help your system out. Like i said though, BE CAREFUL with this disc. It has the potential to "wound" your system AND wallet.
As a side note, i lent Albert an inexpensive SACD player a while back. He was breaking in his Dali's and mentioned needing a digital source that he could play multiple formats on repeat for an extended period of time. I had an inexpensive SACD player sitting here, so i shipped it to him. When i sent this to him, i also sent two other discs for his use. One was the Ayre. Albert later told me that the Ayre disc not only "shook the house", but also helped to break his speakers in MUCH quicker than anything he had ever experienced. At the same time, i'm sure that the other components were getting a work-out too. As most of you know, Albert is not a newcomer to this hobby and has other "break in" discs. Needless to say, i think that his comments qualified as a "ringing endorsement" of the attributes of this disc.
I know that i've used this disc for "break in" purposes many, many times. Every digital source that i, my Brother and my Father have owned in the last several years has been "burned in" using this disc. Listening to the players as they "settle" during the "burn in" period, one can easily hear how the sonics change. After these "test listening sessions" were done, the Ayre disc goes back in on repeat.
In most cases, somewhere between 3 days and 2 weeks of continous play of this disc will get the digital source and / or system up to what it can do in that form. Most people don't do anything like this, hence the very gradual break in over a very extended period of time. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Other than that, this component in your system may never give you what you want, especially if you leave it as it is in terms of cabling, etc... As previously mentioned in other threads, components have different mating impedances and the sound / performance can vary when cables are changed. If in doubt, try some moderate cable changes between mating components ( source to pre, pre to amp, etc... ) and see what you get. You don't have to spend a lot of money to potentially improve what you're hearing and experiencing now. Sean
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PS... many THANKS to Bob Bundus for turning me onto the Ayre disc. |
Shawn, stay out of my house..... :) |
Sean,
Thanks for the reminder. I ran the Ayre disc again this morning on repeat for an hour or so, and it's true, the sound afterwards is considerably deeper and more textured. Not a hint of grain. For me, it produces that same emotional connection with the music that I get when I'm trying out a new component or cable that hits me just right. My eyes close as I get pulled into the newfound ease of the music. What follows a few seconds later is always the same thought: "Uh-huh...that's it." The PAD burn-in disc also produces a similar result. |
Muralman: I hear ya and was waiting for someone to say something like that : )
Honestly though, my Dad has never regretted the work that we did to his system, especially the speakers. He must not be that impressed with them as much as he was before, because now he tells me that he wants a pair of Ohm's like i have. I told him "how's it feel to want?" !!! : )
Boa: Someone i know told me that they thought that the Ayre worked better than the PAD disc. I don't have both discs to compare, but that person does. I'll take their word for it, especially since i've already got the ( supposedly ) "better" of the two discs and i don't need to spend any more money : ) Sean
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Granite Audio also has an interesting disk that will burn-in your whole system or just burn-in the bass, midrange, or treble sections separately, using a choice of pink or white noise, or focused sweep tones. I have used it to get results similar to those that Sean describes, but have no experience to compare it with the Ayre disk. http://www.graniteaudio.com/phono/page7.html |
The discs are speaker related. They aren't doing anything to the electronics. |
Don Hogland, Granite Audio, certainly would disagree with you, as he bills this as a "system" workout. This disk certainly improved my system, although I admit I can't determine specifically where. My speakers have 1000 hours on them, so I wouldn't have expected it to only work on them.
Also, I have used his Phono Burn in disk, which is specially recorded to allow your CD player to drive the phono stage during burn in. It also made a noticable improvement, and certainly a phono stage is not a speaker.
Apparently your experience is different, and I respect that. |
Scottht: I would beg to differ pertaining to your claims that these discs do nothing to the electronics. I've used the Ayre disc to "break in" CD / DVD players with no sound being reproduced through the rest of the system. The improvements in the CD / DVD players were quite audible. Having said that, these discs will affect speaker performance, hence my previous comments pertaining to the rebuild of my Father's speakers.
As a side note, the only thing changed in the speakers were the wiring, solder and design configuration of the crossover parts, so these are all "electronic components". Otherwise, the drivers themselves had multiple thousands of hours of use on them. Sean
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Sean and all you other smart people: Do break-in discs have to be played loud to work, or will moderate or even low volumes work? What if your system already sounds really good and not bright, but still very detailed--is this break-in disc maneuver still a useful thing to do? |
My experience is that this type of disc can benefit components at line level along with those operating at amplifier output / speaker level. As mentioned, i've used this on digital sources without signal making it to the speakers and i've always been able to tell / hear the difference as a component "settles in". Obviously, the more of a "work out" that you can provide for the entire system, including the amplifier / speaker ( without damaging them ), the greater the potential for differences in performance.
I have used this disc many times over on systems that have hundreds / thousands of hours of use on them. A short period on "repeat" is what i would recommend. In my opinion and those that have heard / experienced the differences before and after, the results were always worth the limited amount of time, effort and money involved. Sean
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I must echo Sean's warnings about audiophile break-in and (especially!) test CDs. At high volumn they can do damage and I blew out a set of new super tweeters when running such a CD at high volumn. Only then did I read the instructions "do not use high volumn..." |
Mdhoover: I agree with Sean and Unclejeff. A disk like this will benefit without the amp on, or with the amp on at any reasonable volume. I would recommend amp on at a normal listening level. |
Sean, Unclejeff et al,
OK, so where do I get this CD? |
So far, you have a choice of Ayre or Granite Audio. I suggest you look at their web sites where I'm sure you can order one. |
Zargon,
The Ayre site tells of the product but provides no mechanism for direct order. I've yet to check the Granite Audio site, because I'm tentatively more interested in the Ayre disc.
-Bill |
Never purchsed from MD...but
http://www.musicdirect.com/products/detail.asp?sku=ACARCD
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Looks like MD sells both Ayre, Granite Audio, plus a Purist Audio Enhancer! 3 choices... |
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Music Direct does stock these discs. If you are open to doing business with them, call and ask for Bes : )
As previously mentioned, the Ayre disc has several seconds of silence at the beginings of tracks 1 & 7. Do NOT crank up your volume thinking that something is wrong, otherwise you're going to pop something when the disc starts playing the 5 Hz tone at volume. Start off slow and work your volume up from there. This WILL give your woofers a massive work-out, especially below the point of port tuning on vented speakers. As the signal frequency rises, it also becomes easy to pop tweeters, so proceed with caution.
As a side note, sit in the sweet spot and listen to your system as it performs the "Cardas" sweep. Pretty interesting to see how the center image shifts as frequency is altered. This has to do with both the radiation pattern of the speakers and how it interacts with room loading characteristics. The more that the center image walks around, the more work you have to do on speaker placement and / or room treatments. Sean
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Picked up one of the ayre discs today...this should be interesting. I'll report back what I find.
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Well....I received the disc the day after I ordered it from music direct. I popped it in and ran it for a week through the electronics & about a third to half the time through the speakers also. The level is set via the first & fourth tracks (sweep tone & brown noise). The one track that is out of phase is a bit of a mind bender as you walk around the room. The 'warble' (constructive & destructive interference) I hear in the long sweep tone makes the work I need to do on the room acoustics 'audible' in an organized sort of way. I had the room treatments planned out already, but it'll be interesting to use this disc both before & after the treatments to hear the difference.
My setup was in various stages of 'break-in' with the ICs being just a week old, the CDP a year old, though it surely didn't have over 75 hours on it, tubes are NOS Raytheon 5751 grays. The speakers are 25 years old...I'm guessing they must have gotten broken in by now, though they have been refoamed in the last year. The basic system is a Jolida 100A CDP, TAD150 sig pre, McCormack DNA-1 deluxe, VH Audio silver IC's (DIY), braided Cat 5 biwire cables (VH Audio DIY design) into Snell Type Ai's.
While I'm pretty skeptical about many of the tweaks that get glowing reviews(though I thought the same about cables & IC's and I'm over that...they do matter) I have to admit the system does sound more relaxed/open, even though I thought it sounded very good before the disk. Probably the biggest difference is the sharp attack of BIll Evans or George Winston on the keys sounds more natural. Cymbals sound cleaner & seem to hang in the air longer too. Undoubtedly this impact carries over into other music/instruments. The sound change is hard to describe, but I think it's a definite improvement. The changes are enough that I'd buy the disc & do it all over again if I had to...I guess that's the ultimate test with something like this. |
Fishboat: Your comments and observations are very consistent with those that i've noticed, along with others that i've talked to / shared this disc with. If you can, i would give it another week or so using the same routine. After about two weeks, especially with the speakers on, you'll really hear the difference. Everything simply sounds more relaxed, more natural and less "forced". That is, the system, and the presentation, sound more at ease making music.
As to your cabling, there's nothing that you can do with your system that will fully break it in. It does not matter how loud you play something or how long you play it for, the cables will never fully do their thing until properly "conditioned". You have to get the voltage up on the cables WAY beyond what they would ever see in normal use, which is impossible when using them normally within the confines of said system. Using a wide bandwidth signal works quite well.
As for your speakers, foam surrounds take time to loosen up. The more that you throttle the woofers, the sooner that they will loosen up. You might not believe this, but the sound will change even though the other parts of the speaker suspension are quite aged. It took almost 6+ months of daily use on a set of my speakers that were refoamed to fully settle in. It sounded very odd, but all of a sudden, the bass just seemed to "bloom".
As far as your room acoustics go and the way that the image walks around / floats in the room, that is a pretty freaky thing, huh? Something that i like to have people do is to sit in the "sweet spot" and close their eyes. I ask them to focus their ears by pointing their head in the location of where the sound seems to be emanting from with their eyes still closed. The more movement that you have to make with your head, the less stable the imaging is and / or image stability is as frequency is varied. Since this is basically a "dual mono" stereo recording, one would ideally want to be able to keep their head "centered" between the speakers. Good luck doing that with most installations : )
With one system that we did this to, it almost looked like the guy was watching a high speed tennis match. His head was up and down, side to side, all over the place. His head was moving about so fast and so often that i started to laugh.
Needless to say, he knew that he had a lot of work to do on his speaker / room interphase after hearing / experiencing this. His system sounds a LOT better now even though the image does NOT stay perfectly centered. This is pretty normal though due to production tolerances in the speakers themselves and / or specific room anomalies that are difficult to deal with. Do the best that you can in this area and then relax. One might be surprised at how good a basic, yet well installed, system can do at "holographic" imaging at this point.
Don't forget, not only are you hearing the acoustics of your room, but also how the speakers themselves load into the room. As such, changing their placement can have "almost" as much effect as treating one's room. Obviously, this would depend on how bad the acoustics of the room are and / or how far off optimal the speaker placement was to begin with.
I would suggest playing the Ayre disc on repeat 2 - 3 times every so often. I don't know how or why it does it, but it almost seems like it cleans out some of the "congestion" that builds up within a system.
Other than that, thanks for sharing your results with us. It would be great if you, and others performing similar tasks, would continue to post further observations over time. Having one thread like this to read / compare notes with would be kind of a nice thing. Sean
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Sean,
Thanks for your thoughts. With regard to your cabling comments, what would you suggest to break them in? I've heard mention of "cable cookers" though haven't looked beyond that to understand what they are.
Regarding the center imaging...my image didn't move around that much. The speakers are moderately towed in and about 12-16 (inside corners) inches off the back wall per the Snell setup instructions. The setup isn't optimized yet as I think I need to tame to room down before an optimium can be heard/identified. The equipment is in the balcony of a vaulted ceiling over the living room. Plenty of slap echo with a moderate amount of rinnngggg. The long sweep tone did get louder or quieter quite a bit as the sweep tone increased in frequency(sort of a warble). I assume this is the room nodes showing themselves as a function of frequency....indicating the work needed on treatment.
I'll spin the disc up for another week and see where things go. Any thoughts on what this disk may do to tubes? I have a couple sets of different tubes for the pre & CDP that I'd like to try. Maybe I better install them after the next period on the disc.
thanks, |
This disc simply consists of several different wide-bandwidth, high average power signals. It shouldn't hurt a line level tube any more than it would a transistor.
As to the cabling, you've got to use some type of "cable cooker", whether it is a commercially available product or "home brew" means very little. Getting the voltage up and using a broad-band signal is what counts. Sean
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I just received my new merlin monitors. I`m wondering if the ayre breakin cd would be too poweerful for a single 6" woofer. |
Disregard my last post. On reflection, I realized all you have to do is keep the volume at an appropriately lower volume. Sheesh!
I`ll now go bang my head against a wall. I`ll relate to all how many head bangs it takes for brain break-in. :) |
Capt: It's not that the disc is "too powerful" for any specific speaker or system, it's that it contains a high quantity of both very high and very low frequency information. So long as you keep the volume down, you shouldn't have any problems. Just don't forget about the first 5 seconds of silence on the disc before it starts with a 5 Hz tone. Cranking up the volume because you're a couple of seconds into the disc and don't hear anything can be fatal to a vented woofer. Sealed designs have built in protection when it comes to this as they have "built in" damping, which reduces the potential for over-excursion to take place.
If the woofer starts flapping like mad, which it will at very low frequencies, simply back the volume down. Having said that, the whole idea is to exercise the suspension of the drivers, so the more movement that you can get them to make in a safe manner, the quicker the break-in will be. Sean
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Sean...we must have posted at the same time. Yup, got it. Thanks for your input.
In fact, I`ve learned a few things from your posts the past few months. |
My system had sounded great, then my DAC had to be repaired. It was also upgraded and cryoed, and when it was first played last night after being gone for a while, there was just a hint of harshness which I hadn't heard before. You know, that "just out of the box" sound. I got the Purist disc and ran it at a relatively high volume on repeat for several hours while away. Well, you guys are dead spot on. The magic has returned, and it may be even better than ever, but I'll reserve judgement on that last point. As Sean said, "Everything simply sounds more relaxed, more natural and less "forced". That is, the system, and the presentation, sound more at ease making music." In addition to the warmth and musicality, I think there also may be better detail and soundstaging. Midbass punch seems to have returned in spades as well. Thanks again for the information and help. Very effective. |
Md: While i'm not familiar with the Purist, i have to believe that it is quite suitable for what you're doing. As such, i would recommend letting that disc play on repeat for as long as possible, even if you have very little to no volume going through the speakers. Doing this when you go to bed, leave for work, which allows you to listen to music when you are home, are easy alternatives.
In my experience, some units sound quite good after 3 days of continuous use whereas others take 2 weeks or more. If you like what you're hearing now, it should only sound "better" with more extended use. Obviously, playing music also gets the job done, but due to the reduced bandwidth and lack of intensity of signal, it can be a much slower and more gradual process. This assumes that the Purist disc is similar in content to the Ayre, which is what i'm basing my comments on. Sean
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PS... If you're worried about wear and tear on your transport, hook up an old cd or dvd player to your DAC and use that for a while. Leave your transport fired up though, as this will maintain thermal integrity until you begin to use it again. Otherwise, it may take another day or two of normal use for your original transport to settle back in. This not only continues to give your system a work-out without tearing up the electro-mechanical aspects of your favourite transport, but also provides you with a chance to compare the audible differences between the two transports. |
I think within the audiophile community the phenomenon of break in time has been exaggerated too much. Technically there exists a "break in time". This is a phenomenon that has been associated with electro-mechanical transducers, like moving coil loudspeaker drivers, phono cartridges and microphones. In audio electronics and cables there shouldn't be a need for break in. And if there is such a phenomenon with audio electronics and cables, I don't believe it is so dramatic that it will give a "day and night" difference. This would be "magic" and the longer I'm into high-end audio the less magic remains. Electronics and cables should sound good from the very beginning (or sound bad). If you have not a very good sounding unit, don't expect to get very good sound after let's say 100 + more hours of break in time. Of course the majority of you will not agree with this!
Chris |
My Esoteric X03-SE took 1200 hours to break in. No myth. No Joke. Others who have it said the same-my dealer has one also and, again, took him over 1000 hours. I'd say some items sound very god out of the box and get better after 100 hours or so (+); The Esoteric sounded absolutely horrible out of the box and is now one of the best CD players I have heard - no joke, guys. |
Throwing another of my two cents - don't confuse break in and warming up. My gear still takes 40 or so minutes before sounding it's best. The squeezebox/benchmark only takes about 20 minutes or so but the Esoteric likes to play a bit longer before blowing my mind. My Meridian 588 took 2 hours before sounding it's best (which I never thought was very good, by the way--but much better than when it first started playing). |
Every new component I have purchased has had a noticeable increase in SQ. It has ranged from subtle to Wow. A recent pre-amp purchase was a Wow. Its phono stage has gone from meh to glorius. After break in I believe the caps, resistors, ect finally reach their proper/rated operating spec, therefore I think this is designed in from the beginning.
As the previous post mentioned, my system like a side or two before its all warm and fuzzy.
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I've never purchased a new piece of equipment where I did not like at first, then after a few weeks, I started liking. Sounds like talking yourself into the component and settling. Now, I believe break in is very real. However, the MAJOR sonic character should be there out of the box. I'm not saying you cannot improve it with speaker placement, etc.
again. That's just me. |
Theprelude, the previous post to which you refer is 9 years old. Surely something more recent has been said on the topic! |
This subject has been discussed since "HiFi" audio hit the market so 9 years or 39 years makes no difference..... With the exception of a very few speakers and some tube electronics, if I didn't like a piece of (SS) gear right out of the box, I was never happy with that purchase no matter how long I used it. |
And that’s not the point. Obviously you didn’t use the search function either. There are TONS of threads with break in as the subject matter. Picking one that was started in the last couple of months is fine. Going back a decade is something that no one does unless they were searching and failed to read the date on the thread.
It’s just basic forum etiquette. |
