Is break in quicker with Planars and Stats?

From my experience with MG 1.6's I would definitely agree that there is speaker break-in with Maggies. It was less noticeable on the little Castle towers I use in the upstairs living room so I can't say if it was quicker.

Cone speakers have the surround in front and the spider in the back that locates the piston. I understand (feel free to correct me) that the spiders in quality cone speakers are very substantial and really need some serious break-in.

For the sake of argument consider how Magnepan planar panels are made. Mylar stretched to a certain tension and glued to a support frame that floats inside the larger baffle (only horizontal staples to keep the frame located). The mylar is sprayed (everywhere) with 3M spray adhesive and copper and aluminum wires/foil held in place then sealed with another bead of glue. Buttons are pushed through the mylar and anchored in the magnet plate to tune the resonant frequency of each panel.

You have the mylar stretching (to a certain extent) changing the initial tension. The 3M base coat is flexing and settling. The wires are flexing and settling, as is the second bead of glue directly over the wire. The mylar around the tensioning buttons is shifting in place until it settles. The mylar support frames/magnet assembly is shifting in the outer baffle as it settles from being shipped prone to standing upright. Add to that a coat of matt black around the perimeter of the mylar frame and supposedly Magnepan is now using a coating of some sort over the whole panel to protect from UV and moisture.

Yeh, kinda' makes sense there may be a mechanical system based break-in, doesn't it?

Jim S.

Sounds plausible!

Plausible works. Don't want to be too scientific, it spoils the discussion.

Jim

You know what they say about opinions. Musicnoise made perfectly good sense to me and we could argue this forever.
I have bought several "new" speakers and they still sound the same weeks later and I think it's all in your head.

I design loudspeakers. I find most every type of driver needs break in, some more than others, capacitors also need break in. True ribbons need little break in. Thus I run in loudspeakers so customers dont hear this break in. I would think the folks saying no break in needed dont feel the same about shoes- cars etc. Drivers + loudspeakers do have moving parts to break in heat friction and current changes other parts to some degree;) drivers dont always have the same performance as new they wear like everything. So drivers + loudspeakers are always in a state of change. The good ones just do it slower.