Regarding burn-in, I am one who believes there are changes that occur unrelated to our brain adapting to the sound characteristics. I worked in High End audio for my career, and many of my vendors (Krell, Levinson, dCS, Wilson, and other similar quality brands) recommended prolonged burn-in periods for their products, especially digital gear. I would experience these changes whenever new demo gear was put on display. Additionally, my obsession with this hobby led me to own scores of top end products, and since I had a dedicated music room for my system, a very controlled and familiar environment, I observed sonic changes in this gear with extended play time. Now, with that said, I‘m not invalidating the notion that our brains adjust, rather, it’s likely that both stated phenomena occur.
Hi Jwbrent, thank you for sharing your experience with us. We completely agree that physical burn-in does occur.
It is interesting that since you have mentioned speakers' burn-in, please allow me to share my personal thought regarding the difference between the physical burn-in of speaker and IEM. Just a very simple comparison between speaker's driver and IEM's dynamic driver.
1. Speaker's driver is way bigger than an IEM dynamic driver. Therefore more materials involved.
2. Most speakers have multiple drivers which are fed with different frequencies and they are also designed in different shape/size/material to be excel in the frequencies they are assigned to. Therefore the time for physical burn-in of all of them is different. So basically the users are listening to the combined outcomes of the changes through time, therefore it would be more noticeable for the changes of sound quality through time.
3. The sound-producing part of a speaker driver and an IEM driver is completely different. For speakers, the surround is the major sound-producing part while for IEM dynamic driver, the center cone (equivalent to speaker driver's dust cap) is the major sound-producing part
Of course, there are more factors, and I completely believe that these differences are bringing us a totally different experience with the physical burn-in.
My first experience of a beryllium driver. UK Tour is now well underway. These are my first few days with the loaner model.
Thank you Takeanidea for doing an honest review for our Final A8000.
Since you have mentioned about the 4 ports at the sound tube, I would like to provide some information regarding them.
For multiple BA drivers earphones, it is quite a common practice that sound produced by lows, mids, highs BAs are separated with the different sound tubes. Therefore you would find multiple ports on the earphones.
For A8000, we have no intention of separating the sound into different ports because it is a single driver IEM. If you look into the accessories of the A8000, there are replacement dust filters provided and there are also the same dust filters being applied at the exit of the sound tubes. The dust filter is important to prevent dust or dirt from entering the IEM which would alter the sound quality.
If it is a filter, of course, the tiny little holes of the filter will eventually be clogged by tiny little particles including dust or earwax after a long period of use. For user's hygiene, we have decided to provide 8 pairs of spare dust filters for the users. However, if the exit of the sound tube is a big hole, it is going to be very difficult for the user to apply the filters on, therefore our engineer has decided to add a platform at the exit, and added 4 holes onto it. Of course, the sizes of the 4 holes are well calculated for the best sonic performance.
Extra notes: Final is based in Japan