Why no “Break in” period?

Prof: +1000.

I get weary of the thinly veiled insults.  And more wearying is the constant shilling for certain cable company.  

Almost as though he has stock in the company.... 

Now good that he likes them and believes in them.  

And good that he listens.

but not good how he insults others by insinuating that he has such superior ears that he knows better than everyone else.  Others can listen.  For sure.

And.... since sound waves can easily be measured (you cannot HEAR it if it is not a sound wave propagating through the air)... changes in electronics should be measurable.   Are measurable.  No data.. then it is just opinion.  There is NOTHING you can hear that sensitive measurement systems cannot pick up and quantify. 

Note: I have been an audiophile for just as long as he has.  since early 70's.  And have been actively listening since then.  My ears are well trained. I even produced music festivals and concerts for a time.  My last festival was so historic that the Smithsonian came out and recorded the 3 days for posterity.  

sailboat

Not sure about  power  conditioners  but when I purchased speakers from a company that does online sales when I asked about break in the president of the company told me the only break in would be me getting used to the speakers. I should give it a month or two before I made a final decision.

djones51
Not sure about power conditioners but when I purchased speakers from a company that does online sales when I asked about break in the president of the company told me the only break in would be me getting used to the speakers. I should give it a month or two before I made a final decision.

>>>>“I’m not only the President of Hair Club I’m also a customer.” 🤗

@andy2 

you state: "Metals are good heat conductor because mostly of free electrons carrying kinetic energy (heat). Car engine breaking in is possible because of friction and heat. And of course electric current in cables is carried by electron which generating friction and thereby generating heat."

you are a little off in the fact here.  1) electric current does not generate friction.  Friction is a mechanical phenomena.  (elementary physics).  Electric current can produce heat via resistance and inductance.  But this is not friction.  Friction is mechanical resistance to slipping.  like a tire slipping or not slipping on the road. 

now, I agree, regards burn in that the changes observed fall into two categories: one: mechanical or chemical changes.  Speakers have moving parts.. hence mechanical.  And capacitors have capacitance based on chemistry.  And chemistry changes over time.  two, far more subtle changes in electronics which are smaller (yes, chip sets age).  Changes "heard" from aging of wires... would be much much smaller... tiny really.

Finally, if a change due to burn in can be heard... then it can be measured.  PERIOD.  Measurement tools available are far more sensitive and have far greater bandwidth than the human ear.  Even if you are an expert listener like millerC or Michael G.  Sound waves are a physical thing propagating through air (sound does not propagate through a vacuum) and they can absolutely be measured.  

if you cannot measure it (regarding sound changes), then it is probably opinion and swayed by perception bias,

Science.

Now admittedly it is challenging to measure all sound waves and all reflections and all nulls or additive signals in a sound room.  Takes time and is expensive.  So for lack of that investment... our ears are reasonably good.  key word: reasonably.  we are going for pleasure here.  

But if someone claims they can hear something due to burn in.. and if at the same time it cannot be measured.. the it is BS!

Again, we can measure EVERYTHING we can hear, in far greater resolution and precision and accuracy than our ears can deliver.  (note: resolution, precision and accuracy are all different metrics).

In my world, we have to measure and isolate vibrations to a FAR lower threshold than anyone in audio ever experiences or needs.  Orders of magnitude better performance regards vibration isolation than in audio.  Our equipment racks cost 10x up to 100x the cost of the very best audio equipment racks.  We can measure the effects of one foot fall outside the building at 10's of meters away from the building and isolated by the ground, dirt, the building foundations, etc.  (this is a research building with some of the best noise and vibration isolation in the world.)

Measurements.......

John Curl Interview Page 15/18


Also, we couldn’t use mylar capacitors, which are fairly efficient coupling capacitors. While mylars are fairly efficient from a size and cost point of view, we realized they have problems with dielectric absorption. I didn’t believe it at first. I was working with Noel Lee and a company called Symmetry. We designed this crossover and I specified these one microfarad Mylar caps. Noel kept saying he could ’hear the caps’ and I thought he was crazy. Its performance was better than aluminum or tantalum electrolytics, and I couldn’t measure anything wrong with my Sound Technology distortion analyzer. So what was I to complain about? Finally I stopped measuring and started listening, and I realized that the capacitor did have a fundamental flaw. This is were the ear has it all over test equipment. The test equipment is almost always brought on line to actually measure problems the ear hears. So we’re always working in reverse. If we do hear something and we can’t measure it then we try to find ways to measure what we hear. In the end we invariably find a measurement that matches what the ear hears and it becomes very obvious to everybody.

http://www.parasound.com/pdfs/JCinterview.pdf

"So what was I to complain about? Finally I stopped measuring and started listening, and I realized that the capacitor did have a fundamental flaw. This is were the ear has it all over test equipment. The test equipment is almost always brought on line to actually measure problems the ear hears. So we’re always working in reverse. If we do hear something and we can’t measure it then we try to find ways to measure what we hear. In the end we invariably find a measurement that matches what the ear hears and it becomes very obvious to everybody. "


.