Speaker Break-In - What Physically Changes During Break-In To Enable Better Sound?

@french_fries 

that's more likely your electronics warming up after this 20/30 minutes period and it's actually quite normal. 

@marqmike 

it sure does sound better after warming up... some systems take even more than that to reach optimal working temperature. 

@audiozen

Replace the words “high end” in your post with “low end” and you are right. Only crap low quality speakers have a high risk of “off center piston” misalignment. High quality speakers made of high quality parts are not only built with far higher precision, they are rigorously tested far more extremely than you could ever expect at home.

Please take a look at my previous post with videos demonstrating the type of testing done by serious speaker manufacturers (of which there are a few).

Once again requirements for an extended “break in” is simply an excuse by marketing and sales staff for crap quality products. Products that vary audibly from one production model to the next right from the get go. Also if a product is still drifting audibly in performance after 60 hours then it just speaks to the terrible sloppy build quality - likely this sloppy wide tolerance type build will never settle properly even after 1000 hours and just continue to sound worse gradually with time (poorly aligned parts don’t magically cure themselves).

No, break in requires more time for the extra large caps made by companies like Jupiter Condenser and Duelund. Values for passive crossovers from 5-10uf are the size of Coke cans. These windings take 500 hours of run in and experience from pros proves this out.

Caps should be reformed before you receive them if the speaker maker chooses such caps that require it. Otherwise this is not high quality production. High quality designs will also avoid passive crossovers for a multitude of obvious reasons.

Capacitors don’t have windings. You are thinking of transformers.

The choice of “fancy” crossover parts in a speaker with cheap OEM drivers is the oldest marketing game in the book. Of course OEM speaker manufacturers dwell on this because the box and the crossover are often the only things designed by the manufacturer, the rest being assembly of OEM parts. Again design choices can be made to build to tight overall reliable tolerances or driven by marketing claims by installing fancy stuff between ho-hum drivers.