Speaker break in?

"Supposedly" - notice the quotes - it is a placebo affect. There have been discussions on other forums about this and the debate is still going. I am not sure, myself.

I do notice, if I switch between my speakers (Royd Doublets to OLD Bose 6.2 (yech!!) and a pair of Polk Audio Monitor 4A's that the speaker each speaker is grating on the nerves, initially. Then over time you don't notice it anymore. Placebo affect.

I would like to mention again that I don't think there is ANY mystery to speaker break in. Do yourself an experiment: Go to Best Buy, Circuit City, or Tweeter (they all have 30 day money back guarantees) and buy a pair of decent speakers. If you don't have the money, just apply for a store credit card. This will only take about 10 minutes and you can get the speakers on credit. Now take them home and hook up one speaker. Let it break in for a good 100 hours. Now hook up both speakers and, with a mono source, swap the balance back and forth between the two speakers. This should tell if there has been any change. Don't forget to take the speakers back before the 30 days is up. You might want to break the other speaker in before you take them back or you could leave them like they are and tell the salesman you're returning them because the two speakers don't sound alike. ???? Anybody up for this experiment?

I believe the rubber surround loosens up,its very stiff when new I had Polks that sounded very thumpy at first. In time the base smoothed out and got warmer sounding. Also the magnet assembly moving on the pole piece wears in , like a door hinge gets smoother with use.

Bufus, you do that 29-day test with a pair of speakers. Let me know the store location so I can then go in and buy them as "open-box"! :^0

I own German Audioplay five-way speakers. When I received them 8 years ago, they sounded just awful for several weeks: Bass was slummy, middles and highs shrill. All that went away with break-in, and they turned out to be execellent speakers with every kind of music. A year ago I put them away when I bought my first Shahinian speakers (Obelisk) - and later settled for the Shahinian Diapason. As the Diapason subwoofer is away with a restaurator to refurbish the wood, I plugged in the Audioplay speakers a month ago. Again, having had a good year's rest, they sounded awful. And sure enough, after two weeks of playing, they start to sound musically again as I write this.