[FYDave]

I'm just wondering how this idea came about.

Does anyone have any idea where the idea of burn in came from originally? It certainly seems to cause quite a stir all around town.

 

[catscratch]

Burn-in in speakers with dynamic drivers is well documented, and has been known about for a long time. It's proven since speaker FR can be measured accurately. No, I'm not going to bother looking up references to back those statements up.

I'm guessing it's been simply transplanted into the headphone world.

I've heard the effects of burn-in, but its importance is usually vastly over-exaggerated here on HF. Not every driver benefits from it equally, and balanced armatures in my experience don't burn in at all.

 

[FYDave]

Okay. So that would also mean that, because I believe that the Super.fi 5's and 4's have armatures, they also shouldn't be subject to burn in according to what you're saying, right?

 

[ClieOS]

Balanced armatures in my experience does affect by burn-in, but only limits to early batch SA6 (later batches are all run-in by Sleek Audio for QC purpose, thus the effect is not observed by the users anymore). I do agree that not every driver benefits from it equally.