[Greeni]

The literature accompanying my new Grado says this :

"We firmly recommend not allowing the headphones to play continuously for extended periods of time. We strongly suggest letting the headphones break in naturally with normal use. Listen and enjoy the journey".

I guess extended run-in may not damage the phones as such, provided the volume level is not set too high, but is there any reason to believe that it may adversely affect the sound in other imaginable way ?

Thanks

 

[TopPop]

Overheating of the voicecoil, maybe? This seems unlikely, to be honest.

 

[nullstring]

I don't think so.

That said, I agree with Grado.

Unless you just don't have the time to let them burn in naturally..

 

[MrGreen]

Nah should be fine. That said, dont leave them on for 20000 hours expecting miracles. Just enjoy them now IMO.

 

[Bilavideo]

What Grado is probably worried about is abuse to their phones, especially if they're going to get a bunch of headphones back from idiots who killed their drivers with rock and hip-hop blaring nonstop for several weeks straight. People get so obsessive about burn-in that they do strange things, and since Grado sells its products to a lot of people (albeit a minority of headphone users), Grado's lawyers (or customer service department) must be telling him to put the word out. I noticed, when I bought my RS-1 and GS-1000 a year or so ago that they both came with warnings about voiding the warranty by abusing the headphone.

Those two holes on the back of the "magnet" are actually holes in the magnet plate (the magnet is actually a bit smaller and simply sticks to the plate). I used to think their purpose had to do with ventilation in the name of lowering resonance. I was wrong. They're there because larger speakers, particularly woofers and subwoofers, have similar vents - to provide ventilation from a coil so jigawatted in power that there's a danger of meltdown.

Given the milliwattage involved with these phones, a milliwattage so small I couldn't attack LEDs to them (I was going to have the left side flash one color while the right side flashed another), there's absolutely no chance of any meltdown. Grado is probably more worried about his mylar diaphragm, which is quite vulnerable.