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In Reply to: Re: How do new players break in? What caues the sonic improvement? posted by Raffells on December 24, 2004 at 13:42:21:
There seems to be an awful lot of superstitions and unsubstantiated claims surrounding component and accessory break-in. With thousands of aging components in the equipment, why would the net effect always be an improvement instead of a degradation?Also, it’s been shown that hearing memory is extremely poor. So it’s hard to believe that anyone can really remember and track such slow subtle changes to determine the claimed sonic improvement. You need to make a recent comparison to determine this reliably.
Follow Ups:
Ok My initial reply was to widen a subject for this particular writer to open up his previous mundane thinking..instead of just repling to lesser subjects and comments......I also deliberatly avoided the term improvement,,, This is not a subject I have on;y spent five minutes or even years on...possibly 10 times that....OBVIOUSLY IM NOT GOING TO GIVE A SHORT RESPONSE WITH ALL THE ANSWERS..Even though I became aware of reserach in Germany in the 1930s on this subject and similair sonic evaluation of cable by telephone companys about the same time. The answers are still being unravelled..
But I will break down "Duis" original serious queston into two...and respond to your comments....Yes the memory on anythying has its known failings especially in absorbing and retaining new information...If you follow this with reason, then constant rehearing is the process which allows information not previously retained or observed to suddendly become noticable,ie the memory side isnt working as hard on repetition...shall I say this again...? Hence this partilly explains the perception of running in. However when people try the simple change of interconnects to a run in against a brand new one and hear differences or more detail then this part standing alone falls down..
As regards your second point re ageing . No Its not quite just that,or the old standby dry joints...,Its more likely a combination of effects caused by micro heating,chemical reactions , diodic effects, Microphony and short term micro magnetic fields having an influence on the signal progression..
Think also of this as you would of a loudspeaker xover ie tiny parts of the overall signal suddendly finding themselves slowed down and going out of phase.Sometimes the failure of the power supply to meet demand in speed or current causing a droput etc (USA ? Outages)
This is on top of these same effects hitting a poorly designed economically designed power supply which in turn is subject to variations noise etc etc..So the idea as stated by someone elses reply , Its great in theory but reality its far more complicated.
Just typically example is the fact that stereo amplifiers ezpecially running class AB will not be identically matched,even if they were the bias setting resisters could be changing temperature independant of each other due to different signals being passed through each half of the stereo amplifiers....just to add to the scenario, we have not touched upon the D to A magical electronic conversion process....
.All these changes should only cause a small but significant change to perceived sound and are probabvly less that the average (repeat average)listners ability to notice without concentrating....Dave
*****With thousands of aging components in the equipment, why would the net effect always be an improvement instead of a degradation?*****Approaching the issue with your skepticism in mind shows the absurdity of the whole audiophile break-in nonsense.
I've never seen any proof that "breaking in" electronics can help. On the other hand, I've never seen any proof it doesn't. Of course, it's pretty obvious that electronic gear will degrade eventually. In the world of musical instruments, violinists insist their instruments improve with age (again, no proof). I play the flute and piano, and in my experience, those instruments can only get worse over time, though I also offer no proof. (Some say a piano, no matter how well maintained, must be completely rebuilt every 75 years.)All I can say for sure: wine does improve with age (at least some wine and for a certain number of years). Beer does not. Happy holidays.
Speakers, of course, just like the catcher's glove, need to move freely.
Maybe eectrons can move "faster" once a pathway is worn through a circuit, in a particular piece of gear. But I'd appreciate someone translating that into why it would improve, as opposed to degrade sound, to do that? Maybe because the product is R&D'd with broken-in parts?
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hate to see what you are like the rest of the year.
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