Easy Solution to Test if Burn In is real or not

Buy two headphones and don't burn one in. Then compare?

The thought of just running one side will leave me forever wondering if the drivers are matched!

The biggest change I've ever heard was on a Superlux HD681B. I was going to send them back because they sounded dreadful. No bass and shrill.

Before I packed them up, in frustration, I ran some loud music through them for an hour and when I came back, the bass had appeared.

It was so dramatic that I checked for bad connections.

I've never heard changes to that extent ever before.

Ian

I think it would be easier to compare between a burn'd-in pair and a new pair.

Here's how you do it.

Buy 4 or more of the same headphones.

Only burn-in one of them.

Blind test.

So any two pair wouldn't sound awfully close to each other?

Sounds like bad quality control. 
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik 

Buying more than one pair won't work. There are production variations between individual headphones. Most manufacturers match two drivers closely and put them in a pair. That's no guarantee that two pairs would have four identical drivers.

I do like the idea of only burning in one side. That would be awfully fun at a meet.

Also, I'm moving this thread to Sound Science.

I believed slightly in physical headphone burn-in a bit by itself, I was more a believer of psychosomatics. Basically I thought that the mind expected a change, so it was apparent, which somatics would be the driving force and are incredibly influential, but it wasn't until I received an IEM that definitely needed burn-in time that I believed in it.

As for headphones, I've seen some response charts of AKG Q701 throughout burn-in and they drastically change according to the charts, which falls in line with what others claim.

Quote:

Originally Posted by koolkat 

So any two pair wouldn't sound awfully close to each other?

Sounds like bad quality control. 
 

To the human ear they probably will sound similar; this is what makes it possible for us to recommend headphones to other people with a fairly good success rate.

But to test burn-in by relying on human hearing alone would not go a long way to settling the debate. We would have to take measurements with instruments at some point, and what UE is saying is that the drivers are unlikely to measure identical, which would throw off our conclusions from such a test.

^I'd have to ask where you gathered that opinion/conclusion.

Based on my time here at Head-Fi, I've seen that while graphs have their shortcomings, all that can be said conclusively is that graphs don't always measure the changes in what people believe they hear.

I once read that a human ear is accurate around 3db change in sound. The AKG !701, according to some charts, changed as much as 3db in some frequencies after burn-in. It also had measurements at various points of burn-in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by keanex 

I once read that a human ear is accurate around 3db change in sound. The AKG !701, according to some charts, changed as much as 3db in some frequencies after burn-in. It also had measurements at various points of burn-in.

Tyll also happened to test burn in/break in with a Q701:

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/evidence-headphone-break

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/break-part-deux

Plenty of charts there. But bear in mind that Tyll himself "rarely hears break in", and that proving break in for one model of headphones does not prove it across the board.

Yup that's the charts I was referring to, thanks for the links.

I beg to differ with some of the comments above.

Yes the drivers might not be identical but the sound will be very very similar

if not the same. People who believe in extensive burn-in swear a night and day

when compared to new headphones.

Without proper evidence (measurements and what-nots), you can't generate a report

and call it a scientific experiment but if a couple of subjects (10 or more) took the blind test, you

can then estimate from the results whether burn-in makes a noticeable difference,

or if it's just a myth.

Quote:

Originally Posted by koolkat 

I beg to differ with some of the comments above.

 

Yes the drivers might not be identical but the sound will be very very similar

if not the same. People who believe in extensive burn-in swear a night and day

when compared to new headphones.

 

Without proper evidence (measurements and what-nots), you can't generate a report

and call it a scientific experiment but if a couple of subjects (10 or more) took the blind test, you

can then estimate from the results whether burn-in makes a noticeable difference,

or if it's just a myth.

 

Take this with a grain of salt, but as someone who didn't believe in burn-in, at least as much as some claim, I found a pair of IEMs that needed to be burned in to even sound good. It may be rare, but in my eyes it exists in extreme cases.