bigshot
Headphoneus Supremus
I missed this one before because I stopped reading after my first reset button was pushed...
First of all, that isn't the Oppo PM-1s. The Oppos were designed to perform to spec before and after burn in and they did. A +/-1dB difference isn't likely to be audible in normal use. The designer at Oppo told me that the typical manufacturing tolerance for good headphones is +/-3dB. So the ones that Tyll compared may very well have been as much as 6dB apart from the start. A frequency response variance of 6dB is most likely clearly audible... and the cans Tyll tested may have been that far apart from the start before they were even broken in. For Tyll's test to mean anything, they should have tested both sets against each other either both not broken in or both broken in to determine if that difference was a part of manufacturing standards. You can't say that burn in was responsible for the differences unless you set a baseline proving that they were either the same at the start, or the same after burn in. Otherwise they could just be two completely different sounding sets of cans.
Tyll, who was able to reliable tell a difference (albeit small) between a brand new pair and a "burned in" pair
First of all, that isn't the Oppo PM-1s. The Oppos were designed to perform to spec before and after burn in and they did. A +/-1dB difference isn't likely to be audible in normal use. The designer at Oppo told me that the typical manufacturing tolerance for good headphones is +/-3dB. So the ones that Tyll compared may very well have been as much as 6dB apart from the start. A frequency response variance of 6dB is most likely clearly audible... and the cans Tyll tested may have been that far apart from the start before they were even broken in. For Tyll's test to mean anything, they should have tested both sets against each other either both not broken in or both broken in to determine if that difference was a part of manufacturing standards. You can't say that burn in was responsible for the differences unless you set a baseline proving that they were either the same at the start, or the same after burn in. Otherwise they could just be two completely different sounding sets of cans.
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