Burn in ,It's a Doozie

Burn in is real with several types of components as you have just experienced.  Now you know. Eventually you might even realize what those other components are...

For every new product you get, give your ears about 100 hours of burn in time to achieve optimal sound.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TMRaven 

For every new product you get, give your ears about 100 hours of burn in time to achieve optimal sound.

The thing is that usually, people don't listen to their equipment while burning them in. I believe that the OP had an immediate reaction when he put on his headphones.  

Heh...whether any of the wisdom of head-fi is bollocks or not is going to depend a lot on how you hear it.  If you hear a positive change, more power to you!  In my experience, some equipment and components needed little to no burn in time, while others change in characteristics over a very long period of time.  If nothing else, giving your brain time to get accustomed to what you're hearing (especially if the component changes the sound sig a lot) is going to make a difference, since you may be hearing things that you may not have really heard with the older components...for good or bad.

Uncle, if you believe someone called Peter Belt, putting slips of paper in books in your listening room will change the sound for the better, at least with speakers. And that's only the more believable stuff!

That said, I do believe burn-in is real, but greatly varies between components. With some components I've hoped for burn-in and heard nothing. With others it's been an unexpected revelation. Can't explain it.... 

In my opinion and experience it has more to do with expectations and mood than any physical change to the sound that is being produced. Even with headphones I've used forever (K701) I sometimes have a different reaction to the sound than I did the day before. I'm thinking "where did all this bass come from?" or something like that, even though nothing changed in my system and everything has thousands of hours on it already. This could easily explain why some people hear major changes when swapping cables. With some people I know, I don't think they are lying, they honestly perceive a difference in sound. It just isn't caused by what they think is causing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pp312 

Uncle, if you believe someone called Peter Belt, putting slips of paper in books in your listening room will change the sound for the better, at least with speakers. And that's only the more believable stuff!

 

Ugh.  I wonder at people sometimes. 

Anyway, there was someone on here who posted a link a few months ago regarding headphone burn-in:

Burn-in measurements

It's a pretty interesting read - especially the summary.

As for amps, cables etc - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  In fact, any evidence at all would be nice.  Even some theoretical basis for why burn-in should be required, and why it would change the properties of the signal to such an extent would be a step in the right direction.

Burn in is real. Period.

-Daniel

Burn in... it's a fallacy.

Yeah, i've come across this guy in the past.  My personal favourite are the drops that admit 'only forward facing light energy'.  I'm surprised he hasn't touched on the chi of the listening room, and how you can get a Teac sounding like an FM Acoustics by using ancient Feng Shui techniques to channel this forward facing light energy to be exactally perpendicular to your EMI generating power cables.

I just don't get why some people feel the need to convince someone else what they are hearing is real or not. If someone thinks they hear something, who am I to say "No you don't. Prove it" Personally, I have heard some components change somewhat (sometimes rather drasticly) in their sonic character as their first one or two hundred hours accumulate. Can I prove it? No. Are there ways to measure it? No. Yet I don't think everything in our universe is quantifiable either. There are manufacturers of higher end equipment that finalize their design by ear rather than by measurements. Thay swap different resistors and caps of the same value but different manufacturers in and out until they get the sound they are looking for. Can they measure all of those changes? I doubt it. Those same manufacturers will tell you to give a component several hundred hours of play time before it starts to sound its best. Can they measure that? I doubt it. But I am open/fair minded enough to consider it may be real. Do I believe every manufacturer of every bizarre tweak stating their product makes a real difference? No. We are all given a wonderful measuring device on either side of our head, and those are what should be the final judge in determining the worth of any component in your system. If YOU like it, then enjoy it. I won't be one to tell you you're crazy. Everyone likes and values something different. What is important to me may not be important to you. Not only in our hobby here, but in our lives as well. I think it's what makes the world go round. Please don't ask me to prove that.

Why some refute the annealing mechanism beats me..

http://www.jos.ac.cn/bdtxben/ch/reader/create_pdf.aspx?file_no=08091803&flag=&journal_id=bdtxben&year_id=2009