Speaker Break In...? Or listener “Break In”?

Here’s one I’m going to throw out, because Audiogon is just not contentious enough tonight.

Anyone who doesn’t believe capacitors break in, substitute tweeter caps for Mundorf MKPs.


This isn’t a point I’m really willing to argue. Believe what you will. If you want to experiment, try that swap and listen for yourself.


The MKP’s are really cheap ($7-12 each) and really have the most difference between fresh and broken in, especially with imaging.

They’re also not the very best either!! I’m just saying, if you can’t hear them break in, you can rest assured you won’t hear anything else break in either. Not only do they sound different, they sound weird while breaking in.

Peace.

E

As fate would have it all capacitors are directional since all wire is directional. So, simply reversing the direction of a capacitor should be obvious to the astute listener. But reversing the direction of all capacitors at the same time might not be audible since about 50% are in the wrong direction to begin with by chance, so you would wind up in the same 50-50 situation. Same thing goes for fuses.

rodman99999
“Psycho-acoustic studies indicate...” Sorry, not interested.

Crossover parts need time to break in. Caps and resistors can take up to 300-400 hours to settle in. This is particularly true of the large value paper in oil/wax types that change sonically quite severely. Break in can also be like a roller coaster ride with things improving at first, going south for a time and then finally entering that final linear stage of constant improvement. 

There are painfully few audio components, devices, wires etc that improve performance with use. A single wire is not directional in any way.
Electrostatic speaker diaphragms are heated to shrink them tight and they do loosen up a little with use improving the bass. Magnetic planars might do the same but I have not measured them so I could not say. Regular dynamic speakers do not require any "break in" The single most unpredictable and unmeasurable variable in the process is the human brain. A device which is more variable in operation than the weather and whose explanations of natural phenomena are frequently comically ornate. The real process is not break in it is accommodation.
In the mean while you guys are wasting perfectly good electrons discussing fiction. 

There’s one in every crowd. We call that an outlier. 😬