How Hornet m matures through burn in!

[kaushama]

It is said that Hornet M needs 400 hours to fully get matured in sound. Those avid Hornet fans: can you post the changes you had discerned through this painfully long burning in period?

 

[Orcin]

It's been done...

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showth...hornet+burn-in


http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showth...hornet+burn-in


http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showth...hornet+burn-in

 

[ingwe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kaushama /img/forum/go_quote.gif It is said that Hornet M needs 400 hours to fully get matured in sound. Those avid Hornet fans: can you post the changes you had discerned through this painfully long burning in period?

Perhaps a haiku might help:

My impatient ears,
pine for the greener pastures,
after the burn-in.

-m

 

[theory_87]

400h long? Toma annd Xin Ref will make you cry than.

 

[Sovkiller]

Do you really believe that someone can tell with accuracy, or is going to remember how a given device sounded the first day, and a week after, without having two one new, and another a week old, side by side to compare both???...Sorry why not experiencing that yourself and be happy, I would not trust too much those comparisons that relies on audio memory, as you know, the memory span for audio is really short, or at least not 400 hours...

Also as a curiosity, what is inside that amp that matures after 400 hours of use???

I think that you need to read this again....Just read lie number 6...

 

[kaushama]

Sovkiller, Thanks for the nice article! Its a very interesting article. But at least for headphone cable I thought I felt a difference between stock and equinox cable! Burn in changes may be due to listner bias I don't know. Anyway I am burning Hornet M while, I am listening to it in between. I can feel the bass becoming less pronounced now as it is in its 50 hour. May be I am biased with others experiances.

 

[kaushama]

Trose49 wrote in,

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showth...hornet+burn-in

Quote:

The truth is I did hear changes in the amp as it broke in. Hear is a breakdown of some of the most noticable. 0-75hrs Great Full Sound with a little over emphasis on the bass notes (the best portable sound I ever heard) 75-190hrs Bass started to subside a little and actually caused me some concern as I grew to like the full strong bass. The Mids remained very accurate but not the clarity I would find later on in the burn. High's start becoming more prenounced and the range extended. 190-250hr Pretty Much the same as 75-190 but the mids started to become much more pronounce not overstated but sounds like Horns, synths, guitars have more bite and are more agressive. Still Lacking in the Bass Dept (now I am really worried, where did all the bass go?) 250-300hr The only thing I noticed was an overall grainyness to the music that I did not like but that was short lived and dissappeared at around the 300hr mark. Wierd? 300-365hr WOW!!!!!! The Hornet sucker punches you in the head with the best overall sound IMO I have ever head in a package this small or maybe ever.(combined w/hd600's). The Bass comes out of no where and is now very tight, very low and very impressive, the mids have now shaped very nicely and high freqs have a crystal clear resolution that can only be described as liquid. I never thought I could use a term like liquid to decribe the sound of anything but thats what is sounds and feels like. Cool Liquid running through your headphone cables. 365-400+ Sound Has stabilized nicely. I do find that the amp sounds better to me after being on for about 10 mins but it's not that noticable. All of the frequencies have blended, meshed and weaved into an Head-fiers portable dream. I truely could not be more pleased with my Hornet. The battery life easily outperforms my ipod and generally it would last 3 ipod charges to 1 Hornet Charge. I guess this will depend on your listening habits and volume levels. I do listen loud usually around 11-12:00 on low gain with UE-10's and as high as 2:00 on High Gain with my Senn HD600's. I will add that the Hornet/UE-10 or HD600 Combo is a match made in heaven. Of course these were the two headphones that Ray tuned the amp with. I continue to talk to Ray periodicly and he is a great guy I hope to meet him in person one day.

 

[Sieg9198]

A short impression from me

First time when I plugged it in, I got a really warm sound from it, which I didnt like very much.And, much the same with most, after 50 hours, bass started getting less and less compared to the first day.

And I dont like it without the bass, so I left it burning in unattend. At 125 hours or so, the bass still hasnt come back, but I get an aggresive sound in the mids and upper mids, which I liked very much.Continue burning in unattend.

200 hours, which what I think is the most obvious changes in the whole process. Not only the bass started coming back, I get SOUNDSTAGE!!(Which I really LOVE)

But sadly, the aggresive mids and upper mids dissappeared, settling down to a much refined sound.

400 hours, much more refined mids and highs, better controlled bass. Overall a slighty warm signature. And the mid feels a bit distance.

And I feel the same with trose49, I let it warm up for about 10 to 15 mins before I listen to it, cause the highs sounded like non existent with the e4(which already has a rolled off treble)in the first few minutes. But after warm up the highs come back again.

 

[nburge]

Quote:

Originally Posted by theory_87 /img/forum/go_quote.gif 400h long? Toma annd Xin Ref will make you cry than.

wow really? how long does it take to burn the xin reference in?

 

[tnmike1]

nburge: some here and on the Xin forum are saying 500-750 hrs. Altho they are also saying it sounds spectacular right out of the box. Only improves with all that burn-in.

 

[Romanee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sovkiller /img/forum/go_quote.gif Do you really believe that someone can tell with accuracy, or is going to remember how a given device sounded the first day, and a week after, without having two one new, and another a week old, side by side to compare both???...Sorry why not experiencing that yourself and be happy, I would not trust too much those comparisons that relies on audio memory, as you know, the memory span for audio is really short, or at least not 400 hours... Also as a curiosity, what is inside that amp that matures after 400 hours of use??? I think that you need to read this again....Just read lie number 6...

Oh Noooooo! My good friend -- have you crossed over to the dark side of technocracy? I guess you've never owned an amp that audibly changed throughout an extended period of play from virgin to optimized!

Keep an open mind. You know I have reasonably good ears and a pretty fair, objective, open minded perspective -- and am not easily influenced by other opinions or peer pressure. And yet, I have experienced a goodly number of amps (including a lot of portables) that changed significantly, not always for the better. Of course there are some amps that do not exhibit any appreciable changes, no matter how many hours they're played.

My Hornet (unit #20 M-modded), Portaphile (several versions that I've tested -- though not all -- and the Maxed that I own), my Tomahawk, CIA VHP-1, and some other amps (I don't recall them all at the moment) went through a variety of very audible changes from out-of-the-box to (depending on the amp) from 120 to 500+ hours.

Aside from large caps, especially the Portaphile's 2x1500uf Black Gate NX caps -- which have a well-documented reputation for requiring lengthy "burn in" -- the Hornet's 16,000uf Panasonic cap, the Tomahawks similar cap, and the Xin Supermacro IV-LE 15,000uf Nichicon cap all need lengthy play time to optimized and stabilize. Actually, I just been borrowing a Supermacro IV-LE, but playing it roughly 24/7 for more than week, it did get a bit cleaner and clearer, though I didn't have it when new so I can't really comment accurately on its overall progress. An AE-2 I've had on loan hasn't changed at all.

Filburt has stated that nothing actually burns in, and I'm not going to dispute that (which is why I've adopted the habit of adding quote around "burn in", though it's meaning is almost universally understood). In my personal experience the audible changes in some amps are undeniable, and sometimes very dramatic.

These boring confrontative "discourses" about "there's no such thing as burn in", "it's not possible to hear any audible changes", and more sarcatsically "do you really believe…" etc., have been played out too often on these boards -- and you know that very well.

Chill, bro. Please don't slip into a troll costume. Let the owners listen (hopefully objectively) for themselves, without trying to techno-pressure them into self-denial. I know that somee are impressionable and easily influenced, as occurs everywhere in life, but please don't be so condescending to imply that everyone of us is self-deluded.

I'm not going to list the long and tedious impressions from my own personal experiences with many amps, which I've done enough times.

This is just my counterpoint, to maintain some balance to your critique.

Cheers!

(Still friends, I hope.)