This is an old post of mine from another site:
I like to think of speaker burn-in like you would breaking in a new or rebuilt car engine or any other any other mechanical device really. Out of the box, things are stiff with tight tollerances and slight imperfections from the factory. The last thing you wanna do to a brand new car is floor it out of the dealership while the engine is still cold and metals are still soft from the factory.
Different headphones take different amounts of burn in. As a general rule, for the first 24 hours I suggest playing background music very faintly with only a notch or two on the volume, just enough to make sound. After that start playing the frequency sweeps at a slightly higher volume than the background music. Again take it nice and easy on the volume, frequency sweeps are stressful. Pink noise is introduced last because it is the most stressful on a speaker. Make sure you check the volume level with normal music because its hard to tell how loud pink noise is. A really good thing to do is put 2 minutes of silence in between every 20 minutes of burn in. You can easily find an MP3 of silence on the internet. Put on which ever burn in track your using , use that silence track and put the player on "repeat". This helps the voice coil cool down.
The whole idea of my burn in method is to slowly introduce dynamic peaks and excursions to the drivers. If you stretch a rubber band to the max when its brand new, it will eventually break pretty soon. But If you slowly stretch it over time, the rubber band will retain its elasticity for much longer and will be able to stretch even further than brand new..
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