[goodolcheez]

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What you mean is they have hands on opinions.

 
Better word would be "experience".  "What you mean is they have hands-on experience".  
 
 
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http://www.pstracks.com/pauls-posts/break-in/2142/
 
"As engineers we have a small understanding of some of the parameters that are changing in the electronics and may cause us to hear these small changes over break in periods.  But we cannot prove there’s a difference and blind A/B tests always fail us because they are trying to reduce the emotional bonds we have with the interface.  You cannot expect an analytical style test to work with an emotional style issue because they are very different parts of our brains."

 
What engineers are they?  I would like to pull up their profile.  Engineers can be a broad term.
 
 
 
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Here's another from Hagerman Technologies.
 
http://www.hagtech.com/burn.html
 
"What are the scientific principles behind cable break-in?
So far the theories are inconclusive. We can make a lot of educated guesses, but I don't believe anyone has performed the rigorous scientific testing required to prove out a hypothesis."

 
It doesn't sound like coming from the engineers who spent years in designing electrical equipments in audio field. Sounds like one of you guys.
 
 
 
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Bose has some wonderful engineers too apparently.  Golf magazine has said their speakers are superb!!!  Now who are we to try and discredit the audio gurus over at Golf magazine??? 

 
I was speaking specifically the engineers that are specialized in cables and electrical devices such as AMP/ DAC, rather than making speakers...
 
 
 
 
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All I'm saying is you can't believe everything people say.  I'm sure this is doing no good changing your mind, but maybe someone reading this can take some of what I'm saying and look into it for themselves. 

 
Same here. All I'm saying is that we can't believe what skeptics say... they are not always right.  Mostly, all guess.

 

[brandonnash]

So you're going against your own statement of believing engineers? Did you read what I posted or click on the links? Ps Audio has been around for a good while. Not knowing exactly, but I'd venture a guess that they've been around longer than the guys you didn't actually quote. I took my quotes directly from their own statements on the company's website.


And ps audio does specialize in the same type as what you listed, non moving electrical devices.

 

[goodolcheez]

Quote:

So you're going against your own statement of believing engineers? Did you read what I posted or click on the links? Ps Audio has been around for a good while. Not knowing exactly, but I'd venture a guess that they've been around longer than the guys you didn't actually quote. I took my quotes directly from their own statements on the company's website.
And ps audio does specialize in the same type as what you listed, non moving electrical devices.

 
No, I'm not going against my own statement. I am focused.  You have to be careful with the wording "engineers".  Some job positions in the I.T. related field some people call it or claim themselves as engineers but they don't actually know everything about how things work in depth.  The engineers you hand-picked maybe not true engineers. More like marketing team. 
 
I still don't buy this internal sound card not being affected by burn-in.....

 

[brandonnash]

Ok man. Keep up with your easter bunny defense. I can give reasons why I believe that it won't make any difference. You on the other hand have still yet to give a reason why you believe it does make a difference other than because someone said so. Why don't you pop your question in a form of an email to the good people at audioengine and see if they have proof. They'll say no. I'm not saying they have bad products, but playing into the whole marketing team thing that I originally posted then you repeated for your own use, it seems like they fit the bill nicely. Btw, which engineer recommends the 50 hours of burn in? And also its not exactly 50 hours. Do you even know where its posted to do the burn in? I do. I take time to check into things.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

 
No, I'm not going against my own statement. I am focused.  You have to be careful with the wording "engineers".  Some job positions in the I.T. related field some people call it or claim themselves as engineers but they don't actually know everything about how things work in depth.  The engineers you hand-picked maybe not true engineers. More like marketing team. 
 
I still don't buy this internal sound card not being affected by burn-in.....

Sound card should be working their best the second you install it, no buddy ever really talks about a "burn in time" for a sound card, I think you might be the first.
I do not think your problem is a "burn in" problem anyway.
The Xonar DX does not come with a headphone amplifier, the green line-out jack is more like a line-out jack that people can plug their headphones into.
Have you disabled the motherboards on-board audio, in the bios?
Is the card well seated in it's slot?
Try installing the "Unified Xonar Driver" from the Brainbit website.
Try using the program Foobar to play audio.
 
Maybe a better shielded 3.5mm to RCA cable will help.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021815&p_id=5598&seq=1&format=2

 

[obobskivich]

Audioengine manufacturer said to burn-in for at least 50 hours before taking critical listening out of an Audioengine D1 DAC.    Who should I trust.... years and years of experienced engineers or you?  You see, you are just making guesses.

All this talk about electronic components making zero difference in sound after burn-in is a speculation.  You don't have the proof to back up.

Here's the thing - I'm not making a claim to either side, I'm simply saying that your claims are not going to be accepted as bonafide. Hence the blowback you're seeing. I'm not really interested in an argument or a pissing contest over credentials or similar, but it seems that's the direction this thread is going. My point simply has been that IF you believe such phenomenon exists (which you seem pretty chained to), then it's up to you to decide when it's had enough or send it back. I would throw a 30 day limit on that, because that's a pretty standard return window for most products (you could of course re-sell it after that period). However, if you don't believe in such a thing, you can just send it back right now because it's not to your satisfaction. That's basically the rub with subjective claims - they're subjective. Which means only you can answer them for yourself; it doesn't matter who says what, because we are not viewing the world from your perspective.

 

[brandonnash]

I'll throw another stitch into this mess. It was brought up to me on another forum that if burn in is so important for 40 or 50 hours why don't the manufacturer do it before selling to the consumer? Why would a company sell a product they knew was not at its full potential when it would take such a short length of time and effort to have it at its most perfect state?

 

[PurpleAngel]

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I'll throw another stitch into this mess. It was brought up to me on another forum that if burn in is so important for 40 or 50 hours why don't the manufacturer do it before selling to the consumer? Why would a company sell a product they knew was not at its full potential when it would take such a short length of time and effort to have it at its most perfect state?

Maybe they do not do it because it would increase the cost of the headphones.

 

[brandonnash]

First we're not talking about headphones, and additionally it may cost some extra money per unit. A $200 DAC that may cost an extra dollar in electricity. Certainly the higher end products wouldn't mind charging a few dollars more for their products. Shouldn't they be running electricity through them for a length of time as a method of quality control anyway?

 

[obobskivich]

First we're not talking about headphones, and additionally it may cost some extra money per unit. A $200 DAC that may cost an extra dollar in electricity. Certainly the higher end products wouldn't mind charging a few dollars more for their products. Shouldn't they be running electricity through them for a length of time as a method of quality control anyway?

QC/QA may see the device for a few minutes, or a sample out of a production batch for a complete work-up, but until you get into the hand-built level (which is usually majorly expensive) each device does not see hours on a test-bench. I think Woo is a rare example of a manufacturer that stress-tests every device before it gets sent out.

Regarding why Creative or Asus don't burn in cards (say it does exist absolutely, for the sake of conservation) - they produce hundreds of thousands if not millions of boards a year, and the cost to have a facility set-up to store and age those cards before release would be pretty high. It involves a lot of labor and time on their part. But I understand your skepticism, and I'm not trying to dismiss it (I think we'd probably agree on the matter, actually) - just offering that even if it were something that all manufacturers agreed upon, very few of them seem to have the facilities/volume/etc to do that kind of run-in before the products go out. Another example is automotive engines (which do need run-in), and only smaller makers tend to do that before the car is shipped (it's just cost prohibitive otherwise).

 

[dvw]

I am an engineer and I am very familiar with burn-in in semiconductor. I am not going to present any conclusion on burn-in's effect on electronic but just the facts.
 
Burn in  are used in two ways; one as a reliability study and second as an improvement in reliability. Semiconductor do change through burn in and unfortunately not for better. We do up to 5000 hours of burn in for new products to see if there is any changes. This is known as life test. If there is changes in a very small number of parts, then it is okay. If there is a large number of parts changed, we then need to identify what cause the change, because this is a potential reliability issue.
 
For higher reliability, a 168 hours burn in is done. Any parts that has changes are scraped. This is because in electronics part with low reliability usually fail in the early stage. This is known as infant mortality.
 
These are standard practice for many years and used by military grade equipment. You can google this and find massive information. Most semiconductor companies can provide you with burn-in data. Imagine a part that go into an airplane and they changed and you don't know what the changes are. Engineers want predictability. Or how do you design a product that you don't know what it becomes. It surprised me that no one here has experienced any negative result from burn in and actually thinks burn in can solve everything.

 

[Chris J]

Bryston performs several hours of burn-in on their equipment before they ship for the sole reason to reduce warranty claims and weed out defective product before they ship it.
 
The 50 hour burn-in recommended by the company is actually probably recommended by the marketing department to allow for the customer to acclimatize themselves with the sound of the equipment.  

 

[milkyspray]

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Connected directly from sound card to the A2 speaker. It's not going through any other DAC or AMP devices. Perhaps the built-in headphone amp on the sound card could be the cause, not sure.

Not that I'm saying it's getting excessive distortion... It's definitely louder than Macbook's headphone port in comparison.

I still think the card needs burn-in. The external DAC's require burn-in. Why not internal PC sound cards? eh?

Anyways, I lowered the entire band to below 0 in the equalizer setting. A notch or two below 0.

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This still brings back to the good'ol question. Since the external DAC's need burn-in, why not sound card?

Something tells me sound card needs a burnin too.

As for the cable, oh yes they absolutely need burn-in... I here a massive difference in smoothness of sound in transition. This was based on MBP to A2 speaker setup previously.

Speaker needs burnin? Of course.

But still, thank you for posting your thoughts.

I think sound cards may need burn in because i just replaced my vaio vpc z1 sound card and it sounds a little different. but then again i had to recheck to make sure all the cords were placed back exactly how the manufacture placed them to avoid internal noise coming into the card's signal. once i did this i noticed a immediate improvment in fidelity.

 

[Speedskater]

Now some five years later, I think that the sound card is more than burnt-in.

 

[SweetEars]

yes they need it .. i can confirm with 2 of my laptop sounds