Breaking In New Speakers...


Greetings everyone,
I have a spankin brand new pair of Totem Arros (along with center, surrounds and sub) on their way.

Suggestions on how to break these in? What is the current wisdom? What do most Audiogon folks do?

Thanks in advance.
headshrinker2
Mofimadness's description is the way to go. I just want to add that you also need to feed the speakers with mono signal. The out-of-phase connection will cause bass to cancel each other but not the higher frequency. You can cover both speakers in a heavy blanket to mute that. Now you can break in your new speakers without driving small animals insane.
Buy the disc from Ayre Acoustics called "Irrational but Efficacious".

Track 7 is awesome; be careful with volume the first time. You'll hear why.

I use it monthly on all my speakers.

No affiliaton with Ayre.
Whatever you do, be careful with the volume, be patient as possible and don't overdrive them.
The ayre (track 7) that audiofeil mentioned is for demag not burnin.track (four) is really great for burnin...it get the speaker surrounds moving with lttle volume.Turnon repeat over night.I suggest dont turn up loud for first 50 hours.Maybe more.Found my forests took at least 150 hrs.
Just a note on the "face to face with one wired out of phase" technique...

It's best to set the volume BEFORE you face them into each other.
Once the drivers are cancelling each other out, they won't sound very loud, but may in fact be working quite hard!

The Arro's in particular are relatively easy to overdrive.