The crazy part is over at the MDR-Z1R thread the MDR-Z1R are known to have this phenomenon where after you get them about 10 hours of listening takes place and they sound different.
They sound better and natural. We basically attribute it to brain bum-in. But in truth we just guess that that is it. Truly it doesn’t matter except 10 hours of listening seems to do the trick.
The question with burn in on equipment is, who's to say burn in won't continue and the sound will shift a little bit at a time forever? And if short term burn in happens, how do the manufacturers do quality control checks without burning them in at the factory before they ship? It seems to me that if all it takes is to play music through them for 10 hours, they would just do that at the factory to prevent returns based on pre-burned in sound quality.
In any case, I would be very suspicious of the stability of anything that changes how it sounds over time. What if I liked the way it sounded before burn in?
The crazy part is over at the MDR-Z1R thread the MDR-Z1R are known to have this phenomenon where after you get them about 10 hours of listening takes place and they sound different.
They sound better and natural. We basically attribute it to brain bum-in. But in truth we just guess that that is it. Truly it doesn’t matter except 10 hours of listening seems to do the trick.
Interesting that it has to be 10 hours....as if that's part of the bias. I really don't see how one can believe their sense of hearing never changes with any given moment. Just with ear physiology: at given times our acuity can be different due to ear pressure, tensing of middle ear muscles, or chemistry adjusting viscosity of inner ear. Then you have your brain that can have more or less focus directed to your hearing. Then when you're comparing something from "10 hours" (which assumes it's another day of listening), you're having to rely on memory (which is fallible and influenced by feelings).
I have seen burn-in measurements of headphones....run over multiple hours and overall output lowers a bit (however from what I saw of the graphs, sound signature stayed the same). There could also be more deviation from being another measurement session, and I'd believe our fallibility of memory is a much bigger deviation.
Then also, as bigshot brings up....headphone manufacturers do their own burn in. I now many will burn in individual drivers and then match the closest left and right drivers for the best balance.
I participated in a group working with a high end headphone designer and someone asked him if the headphones we were evaluating needing burn in. The designer said, "No. Burn in isn't real."
I participated in a group working with a high end headphone designer and someone asked him if the headphones we were evaluating needing burn in. The designer said, "No. Burn in isn't real."
But then you only listen to opinions that align with your own. When I an others present evience of something which you do not agree with, you ingore it and try to agrivate us with pointless arguements.
I participated in a group working with a high end headphone designer and someone asked him if the headphones we were evaluating needing burn in. The designer said, "No. Burn in isn't real."
I think it depends on what your scale of "real" is. Certainly with electronics, the only appreciable "burn in" that might happen is after years of use and the capacitors start swelling. But with transducers, there apparently are some measurable "settling in"....thing is I think it looks very minuscule compared to how our perceptions are different at any given time. To further my previous post about manufacturers doing burn in: I know at least Dan Clark and Audeze will burn in drivers for 40 hours. They'll then measure drivers and match the closest for left and right. It's to keep the tolerances for balance minimal: and minimal it is (maybe only slightly measurable and nothing human ears can hear).
No it’s usually about 10 hours of listening. Look I’m over 40 years of headphone listening am not going to argue or really care about the subject. I’m simply referring to the MDR-Z1R thread and my very own experience with the MDR-Z1R. I lean more towards it being mental burn-in, but we don’t know exactly why the phenomenon occurs.
Also you will find people who are curious about the Headphone (MDR-Z1R) and we let them know that there is an adjustment period for everyone 100% across the board. Is this suggestion, maybe? It could be suggestion expectation bias? But the people who say they don’t know about it come to the MDR-Z1R thread perplexed their first day listening. So? Then after a day or two understand the headphone. Still of course there are the people who the signature is not for them.
But typically this happens because the MDR-Z1R has room response placed into the frequency response. So it’s the sound of headphones with the sound of speakers in a room taking and getting a slight bass bump from sound waves bouncing inside the speaker cabinet then existing the back (and sides) of the speaker and bouncing off the rear and side walls, then coming back and mixing slightly with what sound is projected forward from the speaker.
It’s the sound you hear in a club, that’s the room response. So the MDR-Z1R will at first sound not natural. For each person it’s different; some 5 hours some 15 hours......but there comes a time when all of a sudden a light goes on and the sound seems correct.
Scan through the MDR-Z1R Impressions thread and you will find this true for everyone.
Strange that I specifically said about 10 hours, and you turn it around to be exactly 10 hours? Why is that? It is a rough estimate that explains a lot in this hobby. Mainly due to individuals attempting to discover if the MDR is right for them. They go to a demo location and get confused as they actually didn’t get enough time in. It seems this conditioning to the signature is permanent and life long lasting. I’m simply relaying what the whole MDR-Z1R thread has discovered! Cheers!
Interesting that it has to be 10 hours....as if that's part of the bias. I really don't see how one can believe their sense of hearing never changes with any given moment. Just with ear physiology: at given times our acuity can be different due to ear pressure, tensing of middle ear muscles, or chemistry adjusting viscosity of inner ear. Then you have your brain that can have more or less focus directed to your hearing. Then when you're comparing something from "10 hours" (which assumes it's another day of listening), you're having to rely on memory (which is fallible and influenced by feelings).
I have seen burn-in measurements of headphones....run over multiple hours and overall output lowers a bit (however from what I saw of the graphs, sound signature stayed the same). There could also be more deviation from being another measurement session, and I'd believe our fallibility of memory is a much bigger deviation.
Then also, as bigshot brings up....headphone manufacturers do their own burn in. I now many will burn in individual drivers and then match the closest left and right drivers for the best balance.
First off you must be joking to think graphs show the whole response character. Plus what style of graph? Waterfall graphs can show a little bit of transient response that is responsible partially for imaging. But if your taking about FR graphs.........they leave much of the picture out. That’s why every reviewer says that they are only a guide. Timbre, texture, imaging, soundstage.....don’t get any clue related from a FR graph. So your response (highlighted) is questionable? So you see those elements of the signature are partially what we are interested in about burn-in. Also somehow the FR seems to change slightly......mentally? Though truthfully we don’t know. Have you ever purchased two headphones and only burned in one? I have........and amazingly they both sounded identical after only one was burned in for 300 hours. So......that could mean it’s all mental?
This is why there are still multiple questions regarding burn-in. It’s still an unanswerable question. Probably a little of brain burn-in and some slight physical change with the headphone. But nothing is proven yet.
I really believe though that brain burn (with headphones and IEMs) is most responsible for the perceived change. Like looking out over a valley, you can find new things to see over hours of view. If you have ever walked into a new house, the feeling changes after four hours. That’s acclimation.
The designer I spoke to told me that headphones don’t shift after they leave the manufacturer. They test every transducer to make sure it meets the manufacturing tolerances at the factory. If it doesn’t, they don’t ship it.
The designer I spoke to told me that headphones don’t shift after they leave the manufacturer. They test every transducer to make sure it meets the manufacturing tolerances at the factory. If it doesn’t, they don’t ship it.
You choose to forget, as you and I have discussed, probably in this thread, it does not affect frequency response, but complience. Speaker drive units it is documented, measured, proven. Headphones less so.
When people say they "burn in" their headphones, it could mean that they leave them on and don't listen to them, or they wear them and play stuff through them for extended periods. There's been claims that this 'improves' the sound. Is this measurable, or what? I don't know how people come up with this stuff, but if it's actually true then I'd be interested in an explanation of "burn in".
I have two theories. I don't think that hundreds of hours are needed but I have to say that I notice a difference in the first 10 to 20 hours of listening. Now I'm not blaming this is burn in. I'm saying it might be. My other theory is that it has to do with neural plasticity. I base my theory of the fact that neural plasticity is the process on which luring processes are based. Most people buy they're IEM's because they have a surge timbre or sound and usually mach it to they're library. I think that people listen to EIM's that are slightly different from one another but once they know the sound signature they like they tend to buy product with similar properties. The brain so only has to get used to that slight difference of tonality. In part I think people habituate to the difference, and in part I thin the brain overnights the old memory of the privies sound signature. I think that this gives the Impression of bur in and that the period of burn in depends on the time needed for habituation or the neural plasticity to change whereby the tonal difference between the privies IEM and new IEM signature may be correlated to the perceived bur in period. The bigger the difference the longer the time and vice versa.
I don't believe that this takes the dozens or even hundred of ours of bun in as retailers claim. I may be cynical but I believe this is to avoid a return within the warranty period by people who have little experience or want to convince themselves that the problem with their IEM is burn in rather than the signature.
I'm no scientist or expert so take this with the bag of salt and don't interpret this as anything more than my opinion
And having spent time debating this subject, before my hearing took a crap... I have come to believe both theories are true:
1) headphones change sound quality over time (whether that's called 'burn in' is irrelevant), and
2) peoples perceptions of sound quality change, for numerous reasons.
Re: 1) It's kind of obvious that any mechanical device (headphones included) will change characteristics over any given period of time. Cars, boats, planes, headphones, garden hoses, lol, whatever... (except maybe my ex wife)....
Re: 2) Hearing loss over time as we age. Or, hearing afflictions, like Meniere's disease, or simple hearing loss because of old age. Attend too many Rock concerts and, well, you know...
As proof, I offer the great number of arguments/discussions that we have had, for years.
I suggest that we may never resolve this subject, because it has no resolution...
BTW, having worked for an audio manufacturer at one time, I know for a fact that they tested every device for 24 hours, before it was shipped. This was done more to ensure the product worked, than to ensure any sort of sound quality. I also participated in factory repair of units that had been poorly assembled, literally spending months repairing the same stupid defect that came from the original factory in Japan.
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