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In Reply to: A myth that Mfgs perpetuate because... posted by hifi heretic on April 14, 2007 at 11:55:33:
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.
Follow Ups:
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.
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.
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.
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