|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
108.132.5.187
In Reply to: RE: New Technics GAE has arrived posted by Andy43 on August 22, 2016 at 11:50:19
Hi Andy,I think the G is the smart move. It will have the magnesium arm and be functionally the same as the GAE. It will also probably be available at discount. So you are smart to wait. As far as anything changing with run in, don't hold your breath. It has been my experience that this idea that things break in with hours of use is one of the great myths of Hi-Fi. It is a persistent and strongly held view, however, so you are not alone in holding it. I will report any changes that become apparent, but don't expect any.
Perhaps I should add that in my dissipated youth I worked in high end at retail for almost 10 years. The break in thing came up all the time. Never more so than with cartridges. We would take two identical cartridges and set them up in two identical TTs and then listen to verify that they measured and sounded the same. Then one would get run in, usually all day every day for 2 weeks or so, while the second one was left in a cool dark place. Then the faithful would gather and listen using the old double blind test. No one ever did better than guessing could do. We did this often as it generated a lot of traffic in the store. This is offered so you know the basis for my opinion.
Bill
Edits: 08/23/16Follow Ups:
Thanks Bill! I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the table as you spend additional time with it.
I tend to agree with you for the most part regarding break-in. However, there are exceptions. I have experienced true changes during break-in with at least two transducers in all my years as an audio enthusiast. The first experience was with my original Audio Technica OC9 cartridge. It sounded very weird for about the first five or ten hours of play and then it suddenly blossomed into a wonderful sounding cartridge. At first it sounded like two separate mono sources coming from each of my two stereo speakers. There was a gaping hole in the center of the soundstage and it had no life at all. I had never heard anything quite like it from other brand new cartridges. After about 10 to 15 LP sides it began filling in the center of the soundstage and its sound quality began to bloom. After another 5 or 10 sides it seemed to have a full fledged soundstage with excellent imaging and wonderful sound quality. I enjoyed it immensely for about three years before replacing it with a Denon DL-301/II.
The break-in experience also occurred with my new Thiel CS3.7 speakers. I bought them directly from the Thiel factory a few months before Thiel's demise. The speakers I heard in the Thiel factory listening room sounded absolutely outstanding but the ones I bought were perhaps the worst sounding speakers I had ever purchased. Even though I paid only half-price, I got sick to my stomach thinking I had wasted seven thousand dollars. On the third day after buying them my wife and I were watching TV and listening through the Thiels when I asked my wife which speakers she thought sounded better, the little speakers built into our HDTV or the Thiels. I was switching back-and-forth between the two and it was no contest. The little speakers in the HDTV sounded noticeably better and my wife agreed. It actually took about a month of playing the Thiels every day for them to come around. Then they seemed to gradually improve for nearly a year after that. There's no question that these speakers changed character significantly during break-in because we could A/B them with the HDTV speakers and hear the improvement. The Thiels now trounce the TV speakers and they sound better than any speakers I've ever owned. However, it took nearly a month of constant play for the Thiels just to become listenable. It was the strangest thing I had ever encountered.
Consequently, I now know that break-in can be real, but most of the time I tend to agree with your opinion on break-in.
Best regards,
John Elison
Break-in is a well-documented effect especially with speakers. In my operating manual for my speakers, MartinLogan specifically advise a break-in time of the order of 70 hours or so at 90dB SPL for the crossover components and bass driver. Prior to that level of use, they warn of a very light bass with respect to the rest of the transducer range.
This would raise the question of how a manufacturer could confirm if a product met specifications! The break-in recommendations suggest that the specifications are not something that a "mint/never used" speaker would be able to meet and that the specifications are inferred from the design prototypes and an assumed characteristic when "new" and unused.
Incidentally, was your OC9 supplied with a calibration trace? I don't know if it is a default thing or not. My OC9MLII had one.
If this were the case, then with respect to cartridges which are calibrated and tested to pass a specification (given that the better cartridges are supplied with a response trace), I would expect them to sound "correct" from the get go with a possible restriction on the maximum signal amplitude that could be tracked for a given VTF within the recommended range.
What characteristics would you think could give rise to the sonic effects you noted with your OC9 that perhaps would not show up with a response trace? I would expect that any anomalies on sonic presentation must surely be due to an interaction with the damping elastomers and suspension causing a mechanical impedance that is not matching with the preferred design values. If this were the case I would have thought that these anomalies would leave a signature on the frequency response trace.
Regards Anthony
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.." Keats
> In my operating manual for my speakers, MartinLogan specifically advise a break-in time of the
> order of 70 hours or so at 90dB SPL for the crossover components and bass driver.
You're right about break-in although normally I hear very little difference. Other times the change is significant. The manual for my Thiel CS3.7 speaker suggest a break-in period of 400-hours and I can attest to that length of time. ;-)
Best regards,
John Elison
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: