IE8 burn-in: Mass Hysteria? - Page 4

None of us can trust our hearing, or indeed our senses in general, entirely.

The very words you are reading now, apparantly on a computer screen, do not actually exist as physical objects but are merely glowing unconnected dots. Don't believe me? Then pull out a 20 power magnifier and take a good look!

The stereo effect is an illusion, without which music in the home would be much less enjoyable.

When you watch a TV there is no actual picture on the screen, much less a moving picture, there are merely glowing dots. Indeed if you use a CRT there is at any time only one glowing dot.

When you go to a movie nothing on the screen actually moves. You are merely watching a series of unconnected still photograps projected quickly on the screen.

To believe that our senses always tell use exactly what is physically there is to believe in a delusion. Our senses, and our brains, simply do not work that way. They did not evolve to give us an entirely accurate picture of reality, but merely to provide a good enouch picture to allow us to survive and procreate. They do this, in general, quite excellently.

But we now know enough about how our senses actually do work, via the scientific method applied properly, to know how to reliably fool them when convenient. Knowing that makes TV. Stereo, "motion" pictures, and even the images on our computer screens possible, and is a Very Good Thing.

But to believe that your senses always report the exact truth to you is to believe in a fairy tale.

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Well understandibly. Science is hard.

i wants to believe!!!!

Why can't we just stop the flaming and believe what our ears tell us?
Just because the charts don't change doesn't mean burn-in has to be a lie, that same frequency response might be existent the whole entire time but maybe the detail and quality improve with burn-in making it more clear to our ears with time. Just a theory
I also agree that some of it is mental, your ears and brain adjusting to the sound sig, but A/Bing two units, one burned in and one not, and hearing remarkable improvements isnt something that can simply be ignored.

Before I bow out of this thread , I just had throw out a small wager that this thread ends up at least seven pages of flaming before it dies out or the mods kill it.

Peace Out! Dosley01 has left the building......

And is happily listening to his IE8 with over 200 hours of my ears adjusting to the better sound quality they have now, but dare I say they are burned in.

Nope just my ears because there is no such thing....

It's not what our ears tell us, but what our brain tells us. And since we know how to reliably fool brains and ears, why would you assume you can't be fooled? And I've only seen anything like a "flame" from the believer side here.

No one I know of has called it a lie, certainly not I. It isn't a lie, at most it's an understandible mistake. To imply that we are calling it a lie is to poison the well.

But a theory unsuppored by any evidence. Any change that is audible is also easily measurable, or at least no instance where an audible change involved no measurable change has ever been observed. The plain fact is that today's scientific instruments are much more sensitive than our ears are.

Actually, if the listening isn't blind it can and should be simply ignored. That is the essence of science. Even that wouldn't be enough unless you had also determined by blind listening that the two units didn't sound different at the start. It would be surprising, given our current abilities at driver manufacuring, if the did sound identical to start.

I was sceptical about burn-in myself. I think i've never noticed it with lesser quality earphones. But i burned the IE8 in while going on vacation, and when i came back (250 hours later) they had improved a lot, for myself i'm 100% sure about that.
As they burned in at home i couldn't have listened to them, so it's impossible to say it where my ears adapting to the sound.
They improved a lot, not by a margin so little that it's questionable.
The reason is probably the drivers that have to loosen a bit. Because they are easier to move after a while, SQ improves.