[lejaz]

Should be fairly simple to design a simple double-blind study. Someone at a university would have access to many willing participants I would imagine. Then with simple statistical analysis you could determine if the results were within the margin of error...or not. Might be fun for someone who is teaching a statistics class to do.

 

[MattmaN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by maarek99 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Burn in is all in the head. That's why measurements won't change.

I agree. The data available does not support burn in.

Audio voodoo IMO.

Unreleated to headphones, but there are long time audio engineers who believe Protools sounds different from Cubase, but null testing confirms all DAW's sound alike when settings are the same.
So someone being a long term audio person means little.

 

[MattmaN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Polaris111688 /img/forum/go_quote.gif As long as you're happy with the new sound, whether burn in truly exists or not, it doesn't really matter, does it?

Yeah, probably the best answer.
The high road is usually the best route.

 

[froasier]

I had a pair of Ultrasone HFI-550s which when new had a lack of fullness in the bass. After a while they seemed to improve. Now this could easily have been me getting used to them, if it were not for two additional pieces of information:
1. I A/B compared them at both times to my roommate's already-burned-in HDJ-1000s and noticed the difference in comparison. And even more importantly,
2. When they were new, if I pressed them firmly against my ears the bass would get significantly stronger. Once they were broken in, doing this would make little to no difference.

As a strong non-believer in burn-in when it comes to electronics/cables (and I've never noticed improvement over time with cheap headphones) I have to say I'm pretty convinced in this case. It does make sense that the driver would loosen up and work better with use--I'd be more inclined to call this "break-in" than burn-in. And this is a difference that seems like it would show up in frequency response curves, not to mention other tests.

It does beg the question though, why don't manufacturers just burn them in at the factory so they are ready to go? They must rely at least a little on customers expecting them to get better so they don't want to remove that factor by reducing the amount they actually do get better. If they marketed them as already burned-in, everyone would judge them quickly and conclusively out of the box instead of giving them more time, and it would be pointless for them to bother burning them in if they didn't market them as such (This would hold true whether it's all placebo or not). Or maybe it wouldn't be pointless because they might sound better out of the box, snagging customers who aren't familiar with burn-in and still letting the placebo effect work on the rest of us. I'd prefer my headphones to work when I get them, but I guess a couple days of burn-in isn't too big an inconvenience.

In conclusion, I think break-in is perfectly valid in some cases (some but not all headphones), but I'd still like to see some test results, and it would be nice if manufacturers of particularly burn-in dependent phones would do some of the burning for us.

 

[Brighten]

I've compared two different RS-1- a pair that had around 60 hours on them and another pair that had 15 minutes. The difference was not subtle.

At first, I thought the whole burn-in thing was lame. If anything, I thought the change would be ever-so-slightly different. Boy, was I wrong about that.

 

[Beagle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brighten /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've compared two different RS-1- a pair that had around 60 hours on them and another pair that had 15 minutes. The difference was not subtle.

Did you use the same pair of pads for both sets when you listened?

 

[donunus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by warpdriver /img/forum/go_quote.gif I remember Headroom posting that graphs don't change after break-in.

I recall this too but look at a k701 graph they have now and compare them to the one they had before. it looks totally different. either its the effect of burn in or they have changed their measuring methods. For some reason, the graphs now don't look as accurate. Its as if all headphones measure very similarly now. The evil k701 7khz peak that I hear is no longer reflected on the new graphs.

 

[big-ban]

I can contribute some measurements of my Ultrasone PRO 900 over the first 150-400 hours (see graphs 2-7):
http://flauschigerbaer.jalbum.net/Fr...0/gallery.html

I'm the second owner of this headphone. The previous owner already had used it for some odd 150 hours. Suffice to say, nothing really changed noticably after another 250 hours. The differences between the graphs provided here can be explained by slightly varying positions on my head.