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Does Equipment Break In, or Does Our Hearing Adjust?

I’ve read many comments about how the sound quality of equipment improves after so many hours of use.  I don’t doubt what people are saying.

About a year ago, my wife and I were tired of not being able to hear dialog while watching TV.  Especially when there was background music or noise, we had a hard time hearing dialog.  Turning up the sound helped, but not very much.  The sound of the TV sounded normal to other people visiting us.

We bought a Zvox sound bar.  Setting it up, we could hear the dialog, but it sounded very tinny, almost irritating.  But that disadvantage was outweighed by being able to watch TV and hear what was being said.

Now, a year later, we can still hear the dialog, BUT, it doesn’t sound tinny anymore.  The voices sound normal, like people we talk to in real life.  It’s not irritating in the slightest.  This happened gradually over a year, so we didn’t notice it until we thought back to what it first sounded like.

My impression is that our hearing adjusted or became used to the new tinny sound.    Or, maybe the sound bar broke in to sound normal. But if it broke in to sound more like normal, I would have thought that it would lose the special effects that enabled us to hear it better.

Or even, maybe it was a bit of both?  Any thoughts?

128x128tcotruvo
russ69's avatar
russ69
3,507 posts
 

 

Does Equipment Break In, or Does Our Hearing Adjust?

Yes.

ghdprentice
6,969 posts
 

While it does not sound like your experience necessarily has anything to do with breakin. With high end equipment breakin is very real and completely reproducible.

johnah5
235 posts
 

I wonder how one would know?  I went and heard my old Klipsh Heresy's that I sold to a friend and it was an odd sound but after an hour I started to sound better. The speakers have been played long enough to pass any break in but for sure my ears needed to adjust so that is a real thing!

JH

carlsbad's avatar
carlsbad
1,551 posts
 

Some equipment clearly "burns in".  Tubes are the best example.  They are metal glowing red hot so it makes sense they need time to reach equilibrium.  Electronics are very small circuit paths in semiconductors and so I can see them rearranging some atoms along the way.  But the time needed to burn it is greatly exaggerated.

It is very convenient for a manufacturer when a customer calls up and says "I don't like the sound, I want to return" and the manufacturere can respond "How long have you listened.  This ___________needs 300-400 hours to burn in."  So the customer hangs up, keeps listening, gets used to it, and figures out 400 hours will take 6 months and after 6 months it is much less likely he will return...oops, lost the box if nothing else.

And I'm skeptical about many things burning in--copper wires for one.  speaker wires, interconnects, and power cords.  The atomic structure of copper doesn't change with low level signals running through it.  Some of these same manufacturers try to tell us they have found directional copper. 

 OTOH, sometimes "burn in" can include the consumption of some alcoholic beverages and on that 10th night of listening with just the right blood alcohol level, this _____________ is now starting to really burn in and sound great.

Jerry

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