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Picked up my replacement Va Bach Grands yesterday. Came home, set 'em up, fired 'em up just to make sure everything was working properly (at low volume, of course), and went away for an hour or so just to let them warm up a little.When I came back to give a critical listen I heard a big difference from the original pair that I had returned about 5 hours earlier. The new ones sounded a bit thin and lifeless, just like the original pair did when I fired them up almost a month ago.
The originals were in my system for almost a month and were played at least 2-3 hours a day so they had about 75 hours on them I guess. They were just starting to have that full, rich sound that prompted me to buy them in the first place. I was really enjoying them yesterday morning for about 4 hours.
Now I guess I'll just have to listen for another month again to hear the new ones blossom - well worth the wait IMO! Also, can't wait to hear them with a new set of Eichmann cables I have on order. I think I will wait until the bloom happens to hook the cables up (if I can!) so I can evaluate the differences fairly.
Oh, and as far as speaker break-in is concerned, I'll put my lot in with the believers. Until I learn differently for myself, of course.
Follow Ups:
I got Triangle Antal Esw speakers about one year ago to replace Maggie 1.6s. I was pretty happy with them, but they seemed a little strident and "in your face" compared to the Maggies. Over the last week, however, I've noticed the stridency is gone. They just seem very comfortable and natural now, as if they've eased into their proper groove. When it actually happened, I don't know, but it was certainly after the first few months. I know I couldn't publish this in a scientific journal, but the difference seems obvious to me.
- Hunt
IMHO "break-in" is a myth. To think a mfg. would allow a speaker/ amp/ cable (laughable) or cd player to leave the factory sounding "edgy and strident" simply because running current through it for a few dozen hours posed too many production challenges is, to my thinking, ridiculous. If 30 hours of run time assured a better-sounding product upon start-up, rest assured they would do it.Alas, manufacturers feed the break-in myth to because it is a way of avoiding rampant returns by customers who are furious that their new cable, amp, pre-amp, speaker, etc.. didn't "totally transform" their system as the hype suggested. "..Well, Mr. Smith, just give it a few hundred hours - the imaging will sharpen, resolution will improve and it's PRAT will certainly peak by then!"
They know full well that long before a few hundred hours have passed, the customer will have resigned themselves to the new purchase, and will probably have re-read (a dozen times) the glowing review(s) that led them to buy the product in the first place.
As for speakers, consider this: I bought a pair of PSB Alphas for my office. I hooked up both speakers, but played music only through the left (use the volume knob to attenuate the right) overnight. The next morning I set the speakers next to each other, hit the "mono" switch and switched b/w the two. Not me, nor my wife could hear one speck of difference b/w the two speakers.
No, do not rest assured.More importantly, do not listen to this post.
Anybody with half an ear knows that speakers break in, usually over a period of 50 to 300 hours.
Hukk
...wouldn't it be so novel if you would actually try "listening" once in a while?I can assure you that my new Montana EPS2s have improved quite a bit since uncrating them three weeks ago. No sir, it's not my imagination.
Oz
I go through 100s of diferant transducers and loudspeaker designs. I will say that some drivers need extended breakin others dont.Many affordable drivers have little change with breakin some like fostex or lowther fullranges can take months, tweeters breakin very fast, many ribbons dont seem to need any breakin but AMT style do go figure? Many woofers I have used break in fast but the costly hiend ones can take near as long as a fullranger driver.I run most all systems in so owners can listen and not worry so much about changes.The changes one experances with breakin are slight and change slowly with use your test wouldnt reveal these so quickly and the slight diferance would be very hard to flesh out, your loudspeakers might have been run in at factory or might not change much at all for like I said breakin is diferant for diferant drivers.
Do you know anything about modern manufacturing? There is no manufacturer who is willing to sit on sellable inventory for six or ten or 50 hours to wait for a component to break-in, if the customer can do just as good or better job of it. If you made 100 pairs of speakers a week and let them all break-in before you sold them, you could have tens of thoudsands of dollars just sitting there, eating electricity and producing no income. In addition, a manufacturer would need all the amplification and associated circuitry to run dozens of pairs of speakers simultaneously, which could amount to another few thousands of dollars that could never be captured in a sale. Now that concept, to my thinking (and anyone who builds speakers), is ridiculous.Your overnight experiment is a joke, and proves nothing, other than your predetermined result that break-in can't possibly exist.
Do you know that a new car should not be driven at a constantly high speed for the first few hundred miles until the engine parts have smoothed themselves by wearing against each other? What is a speaker but a linear (hopefully) electric motor with moving parts and an elastomeric surround?
Of all stereo components, speakers require the most break-in time and will benefit the most from it.
Peace,
Tom E
So some manufacters do run in before sale;)Might be 1 reason to buy from a smaller manufacter who realy cares about his customers,products and can take the extra time with ea and every loudspeaker they sell.Like puppys I wish we could keep them all but sadly they most go to new homes with carefully selected owners.
Those that speak of opinions are of less use than those that speak of experiences.Cheers
Why have you (and the other poster) discounted my experiment with my PSB Alpha's? Is that not "speaking of experience?" Could there be a better way to observe the affects of break-in than my experiment?
Why? Because I'm not convinced it's true, or even a valid test if it is true, "C'mon honey, let's use our Alphas to prove those dolts wrong on the Asylum" and there's nothing humble about your opinion. Speaker break-in is an accepted practice with TAS, Stereophile and UHF reviewers in addition to speaker manufacturers and owners.Your wording stops just short of calling at least one very successful speaker designer and manufacturer in his company's 30th year in business... a liar.
"Alas, manufacturers feed the break-in myth to because it is a way of avoiding rampant returns" and "They know full well that long before a few hundred hours have passed, the customer will have resigned themselves to the new purchase, and will probably have re-read (a dozen times) the glowing review(s) that led them to buy the product in the first place."
That is IMHO mean-spirited, paranoid bullshit.
"Could there be a better way to observe the affects of break-in than my experiment?" Yes, use a full-range speaker that has enough resolution for a difference to be heard, did you get your Vandersteens new or used?
Cheers
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do know something about manufacturing. Moreover, I know quite a bit about distribution and marketing. ..It happens to be what "I do."Sure, breaking a speaker in might add to the time it takes to turn out finished product. But the cost this represents to the company PALES in comparison to the cost of a product not selling at the Retailer; which is what the company risks if they ship speakers that sound "harsh and strident" only because they weren't run-in properly.
For goodness sake, consider all the speaker companies that tout the tremendous time and effort spent using "old-world tools" to build furniture grade cabinets, followed with hand-rubbed finishes and careful oiling, etc. etc.. ..You can't really believe that they couldn't find a way to "break-in" their speakers if they really felt this made the difference.
Why is it that not ONE speaker (or Amp, or CD player, or Cable) company has ever advertised: "Our product arrives to you completely broken-in!" ? The reason is simple: They know that this would be essentially telling the customer, "if you don't like it right out of the box, then you'll never like it." Of course, they could always claim that the Speaker (or whatever) needs to acclimatize to your PARTICULAR gear, and that, they'll argue, could take a few hundred hours :)
The customer can't be expected to complete building a cabinet or apply fine finishes, but break-in is accomplished automatically by the customer, for free. The cost of break-in at the factory would be significant for reasons I already gave: inventory and the considerable expense of additional equipment. Does your company allow inventory to sit for days or weeks before they want to sell it? If so, I could save them a lot of money.You never considered my analogy (admittedly, not entirely accurate) to an automobile engine. What car maker runs their engines for 50 hours before they put it into a new car?
There are some cable companies that advertise pre-run on a cable cooker, but that's more of a gimmick that probably doesn't add value or accomplish what they claim. No speaker manufacturer is going to play their equipment for a hundred or more hours before shipping it. It might not even be legal to sell such equipment as new.
But that doesn't mean break-in doesn't exist. Every quality speaker manufacturer admits and every speaker assembler knows that drivers must be used a little before they yield their ultimate performance. They can't all be nuts or liars. That's why all good speaker manufacturers inform their customers about break-in. I think you're being a little too suspicious of every company.
Maybe you should ask a high-end retailer if they ever offer a demo of a pair of speakers just received from the factory. I would guess they don't because they understand the importance of breaking them in. This might also explain why so many customers complain that new speakers don't sound as good at home as the ones they heard in the showroom. No doubt there are myriad factors to consider here, but an important fact is that a speaker right out of the box simply cannot sound as good as one that's been played for a while.
Your experiment proved nothing because you were determined to not hear a difference. Using a monaural switch to compare speakers may very well defeat a lot of the nuance that break-in produces. Eight hours might not be nearly enough to effect a change. How loud was the single speaker played over night? There are just too many variables and too little control for you to make such a claim from one brief experiment. For an experiment to be valid, you would need to sample a larger population and apply better control for a longer period of time on pairs of speakers, not just one.
That's not marketing; it's scientific method.
Peace,
Tom E
Amplifiying on what was said below, the Owner's Manual puts it this way:SPEAKER 'BREAK IN' -- Your new Nucleus Reference 3 speakers will need a little time to develop their full sound potential. They will sound pretty good right out of the box {true}, but after a few hours of use the sound will lose some high frequency detail -- don't worry -- the speakers will gradually regain their extended frequency response..... You'll hear a marked increase in bass and treble detail after l00 hours of vigorous use."
The dealer reinforced this, and so did a fellow owner. They're definitely worth the wait, but getting there isn't exactly fun.
I would like to see someone make some in-room recordings of some selected music when they first get their speakers and then again a few hundred hours later using the same music.It would be interesting to see what the playback of the recordings would reveal, if anything at all.
All the best,
Guth
...I did a comparison with a new set of Paradigm Titans, vs. mine. I used the A/B selector on my Denon to ALMOST instantly compare - yup - the broken-in pair sounded fuller, less constipated. Last time I mentioned this someone said it might be due to production variances... possible, but quite coincidental that both speakers in the new pair sounds as described by audiophools that break-in actually exists.I will also say not all speakers I have owned even have any run-in time - then again, I didn't notice any difference when I had my Titans. You get used to it alright - slowly breaking in!
My Revels were night and day, new vs. not so - don't care what others say.
Also, I never listen loudly... maybe that's why it would take longer for me.
And claims his NEW speakers are essentially broken, until they break in.Von Schweikert designs crossovers around fully broken in drivers, and many NEW Von Schweikert speaker owners are disappointed, until break in is complete.
Personally, I agree with JonBee, and the GR Research data.
It is not a hard concept to grasp mechanically.
it kind of tells the tale, imo.
What about measurements after 10 minutes?what about measurements after 1 hour?
what about measurements after 2 hours?
what about measurements after 5 hours?
Given the ridiculous gap between 10 seconds to 20 hours, there's no reason to trust the methodology used for this test
Of course all the measurements are close, so there's no way you could simply look at the numbers and declare exactly what parameter changes would be audible, and what changes would not be audible.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
Measurements were taken at 10 seconds because there is a myth that a woofer will have fully burned in within the first few seconds of use. Measured data obviously does not support that myth.I also posted the differences due to temperature changes that occur when the driver is played hard verses after a cool down period. Some were unaware of this.
Having measured drivers at various stages of the burn in process I would compare the changes in the T/S parameters to this illustration.
Take a woofer that has been playing for many years and take the T/S parameters. This represents an end result.
Now take a new driver and measure it.
Play it hard for about a hour. Parameters are now somewhere in the middle, halfway between where they were and where they will end up
Now for each time that you double the amount of time on the driver you can move the parameters to a range that makes them half way towards the fully burned in unit.
Double time again and move half way again...
You eventually get to a point that the next doubling of time is a lot of time and there is a very little change in the parameters.
At some point you have to say that it has reached a settle range and is burned in.
This measured data was only posted to show the change and the time needed for it to occur. It was not meant to prove audible differences.
To most people the audible effects are very apparent. But depending on your system (quality of), your room, your listening habits, and even you (your own hearing), you still may not notice a difference.
Danny Richie
Lets not confuse measured changes in driver parameters with audibility of those changes.The audibility of driver break-in, if not already handled at the factory, is VERY unlikely to last beyond the first hour or two of use unless the driving signal is quite weak and does not stroke the drivers to at least 1/3 XMAX.
I have been building speakers since the 1960's using non-broken in drivers. The worst drivers for break-in have been subwoofer drivers with heavy duty and/or dual spiders. But every time the audible portion of break-in has passed after one LOUD (as LOUD as I could tolerate) bass heavy techno bass or rap song lasting perhaps three minutes. Break-in could have been complete in ten seconds, but I did not come back into the room until the "song" was over.
The epoxy/chemicals on the driver's spider will 'micro-crack' in ten seconds with a long enough driver stroke -- and that could be accomplished in ten seconds during quality control testing at the factory, perhaps using a sine wave tone at the driver's resonant frequency of sufficient strength to push the cone to XMAX, or better yet, to the rated XMECH.
That peoiple claim to hear break-in for 100 continuous hours of use, which could take months, is a silly belief for ordinary cone drivers.
Of course audiophiles have many beliefs.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
The measured data shows the break in period takes considerable longer than a few seconds. The measured data that I posted is also consistent with similar tests made by other industry professionals.The audibility of the changes absolutely do not settle in a few seconds. Most audible changes are consistent with mechanical parameter changes and need a similar amount of time.
Bass nut> " The epoxy/chemicals on the driver's spider will 'micro-crack' in ten seconds with a long enough driver stroke -- and that could be accomplished in ten seconds during quality control testing at the factory,"
The measured data does not support that assumption.
Danny Richie
including the results from other designers. There are other published findings that are totally consistent. Or maybe you just are happier being a troll, regardless of what others who are far more knowledgeable and experienced than you demonstrate?
I can't find anything in the report that equates the mechanical measurements with actual changes in sound. My apologies if I've overlooked this. The numbers presented mean very little to me in the context of this discussion.The report also mentions that the greatest contributor to speaker burn in is from the electrical burn in, the majority of which is from the burn in of capacitors.
So given this report, my question would be how long does it take a capacitor to burn in?
All the best,
Guth
and the xovers are designed around optimal driver parameters. If those params are different because the driver is new, the xovers won't work as designed, which will certainly affect the sound.
I'll try to explain what I think happens, and how it affects the sound. I'll limit my remarks to the measured driver params listed, not the electronic components that Danny mentions, as those changes are harder to measure.
The fs of a driver is related to its lower frequency limit. If a driver is driven below its fs, distortion rises very rapidly with declining frequency. A higher fs in a new also means that there will be a reduction in the LF output of the driver, and at a given frequency below the fs, there will be higher distortion.
The xovers are designed to deliver energy in a defined and fixed band, with usually a fairly shallow rollof at the ends of the band. With a new driver, with a higher fs the lower part of the xover band will be feeding more energy below the fs of the new driver that xover section is feeding. That means higher distortion at the bottom of the driver's range. As the driver fs drops with use, more and more of the xover band will cover the (expanding) driver's sweet spot.If it is a woofer, this will change the balance of the whole system, making it subjectively brighter overall, with constricted bass. The bass will also exhibit higher distortion, as more power is going to it below its (temporary) higher fs.
For mids and tweeters with high pass filters, the effects are the same, but of course they manifest themselves at the low end of the mid or tweeter range, as aberrations in the lower midrange and low to mid treble.Xover design theory hasn't changed substantially in decades. Xovers are designed around driver params so that each driver is operating in its sweet spot. If the driver params shift, that driver sweet spot will shift as well.
There is no magic or fuzzy thinking at work here, just the application of loudspeaker engineering basics.
I can dig all of that, but it still tells me nothing about how truly audible the changes are in a normal listening environment.All the best,
Guth
nt
To that end, for the sake of this discussion, the report is rather meaningless.All the best,
Guth
We recently went up one model in our favorite speaker brand after five years and my initial impression was a more authoritative sound, significantly more focused bass, more open mids and highs that rang more and sounded less like hiss.These impressions were diluted by a hardness to the sound that had me thinking something was wrong.
I re-cleaned the record and stylus but it was still there, not a lack of performance but a definite 'problem' kind of sound or lack of smoothness our old speakers had.
The next night was better, but I was still wondering what it was and was very perplexed at hearing all kinds of improvements... and this problem. That was two weeks ago and I don't hear it anymore, all I hear is an overall improvement from our old speakers, the problem has gone.
The manufacturer claims the speakers improve significantly during the first 100 hours of use and I can understand how someone of a pessimistic nature could interpret that as some kind of 'listener break-in' but more importantly to me the manufacturer says "until this period has elapsed, the speakers exhibit some sonic aberrations" and that is what I was hearing, not any kind of lack of performance, but a problem, that has disappeared.
Cheers
Total BS. End of story. Best regards.
and there are a number of skeptics, although I'm not sure I can follow their logic, as I think the mechanics are pretty straightforward and measurable. There are at least two sources of well documented engineering data that I've seen that prove conclusively that measured driver parameters do change substantially over a fairly long period of use. The interaction of the Fs changes and xovers is complex and can explain a lot of the audibility of this phenomenon. I think Danny at GR research has published some data on his site, and others have done the same. Links to this data have been posted in previous discussions here. For me, I absolutely trust my own ears, in spite of the "placebo effect" theorists, and I think the difference is very noticeable over time. Some speakers seem to take up to 2 or 3 hundred hours to stabilize, others less.
Owner's ears "break-in" could take many weeks as most speaker owners have never even heard the speakers in their room before buying them. The colorations will be different than the prior speakers, which the owner had been used to. This part of new speaker "break-in" is slow.Driver break-in requires LOUD bass-heavy music to stroke the cones.
It takes 10 minutes, at most, to make the speakers sound normal with the correct signal. After a few hours any changes are very unlikely to be audible and are barely measurable. Roughly half the driver parameter changes are temporary changes from voice coil warm-up, which happens every time "cold" speakers are used.
The driver parameter changes that continue after the first 10 minutes of initial use can be measured but are small, and may not be audible. After a few hours of use driver parameter changes are barely measurable, much less audible.
Break-in is often done at the factory because brand new speakers could give bad first impressions with no break-in = very foolish for any manufacturer to do.
Everything else "heard" beyond the first few hours of initial use ... is most likely audiophile "ear break-in" (getting used to the new speakers).
No one with sense claims speaker break-in is not real.
In fact, there are similar magnitude changes (5-10%) to driver parameters EVERY TIME speakers with room temperature voice coils are used ... yet we rarely hear audiophiles talking about how bad their speakers sound in the first five to ten minutes of use every day!
The 100-hour 'audible during every hour of use' break-in ... and then the speakers sound perfect forever after ... is pure audiophile imagination.
Audiophiles must have good imaginations since we try to imagine we are listening to real musicians every time we listen to recorded music.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007
With the last few pairs of speakers I've either bought or built, I've broken them in (after listening for a while) by facing them face-to-face, reversing the phase of one, and playing them under a blanket. So I never had the "get used to them" period.Every one sounded substantially different after break-in. Especially in the treble.
Before-and-after measurements show no change.
You've been corrected before on this. Keep making these posts and I'll do my best to keep correcting.
My ears didn't break in - they sounded like hell when I bought 'em. Listened for no more than an hour.Wrapped them in as many towels & spare blankets we had in the house & played helicopter takeoff & landings at close to live volume for 2 weeks straight in an isolated room.
Put speakers back in main system & they sound fantastic.
At what point did my ears "break in?"
The break-in-is-a-myth folks oughta be forced to listen to these things when they have about 10 hours on them. I put mine head to head, threw a blanket over them and then threw my wife's fake fur over that! And played the Sheffield/XLO Test & Burn-in CD (Track 8) for days on end. Now, of course, they sound incredible and you start forgetting all about how long it took them to get there.What do you want to bet that a significant percentage of Ref 3s sold on Audiogon have never been fully burned-in and their owners assumed "That's how they sound"?
But I keep forgetting: People like you and I are delusional :-)
The 100-hour 'audible during every hour of use' break-in ... is pure audiophile imagination.Not with my Maggies that were factory re-built, it wasn't! For the first 20-25 hours they were almost unbelievably shrill, harsh and actually irritating to listen to! It took about 2-3x that number of hours to get them back to where they were before I had them re-built. It was NOT my imagination.
Same with a H/T consult I did for a buddy. He didn't want to spend big bucks, just wanted the 'holography' of a 5.1 theater system. After hooking it up and running it in for 10 minutes, I cranked it up. Shrill, harsh and awfull! I told him to leave it on all day while gone at medium levels. I came back about 6 weeks later and listened again ... not half bad, considering the limitiations of a cheapy JBL sat/sub system. It was at least listenable and did what he wanted it to do.
Put me in the camp of believer as far as "speaker break-in" is concerned.
Scott A.
nt
nt
"David! You can KILL a man with a chopstick!" -Keith Charles, Six Feet Under
Errrr, what about when a single driver is replaced and takes a few months to sound right? I had this happen with my Thiels, had to replace one of the Vifa woofers about 4 months after the 1st due to budget, these cost $180 each!anyhoo, exact same drivers that sounded totally difft for a few months. the new ones sounded, well, new...tight & not extended. After a period of about 60 days or so, they both sounded the same.
i'm not sure if speakers themselves break-in, but the drivers sure do.
Its probably similar to buying a new car and having to drive under 60mph the 1st 500 miles so you don't trash the engine...items with moving parts all have a period of break-in.
just thought perhaps this was a somewhat unique situation being able to listen to the same speakers (one set with about 75 hours on them and one brand new out of the box), on the same gear, in the same exact position, about 4-5 hours apart. Big difference to my ears. I really had no opinion on the subject after reading lots of info from both sides. But I have to go with what I hear.I am going to continue to listen critically over the next month or so and have a great time doing it. We'll see what happens with this set. I'm just ecstatic to have a great new and pristine pair of beautiful sounding speakers.
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