[Anaxilus]

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No, just that it's a logical fallacy to assume to know the outcome of a future event.  In fact, you don't know that it won't be brown until you test it and only then would your conclusion be valid for that test and not a future one.  Do you KNOW the Sun will rise tomorrow?  Nobody does, but people will claim to based on prior knowledge and assume as much.  We operate more on Induction rather than Empiricism than most would believe.  Just putting the notion of 'conclusivity' into perspective.  Science needs to be tempered by reason and critical analysis and not succumb to orthodoxy and dogma.  Lets assume we conduct your test using red and blue paint and hypothesize the outcome to be purple paint.  Yet after mixing it does turn Brown!  What then?  We do an analysis and discover some impurity during the manufacturing process interacted w/ the chemical composition of the other paint yielding the unexpected result.  I just caution the notion that anything is the be all end all conclusive test.  The Theory of Gravity is still up in the air being challenged by some of the brightest physicists in the world yet people want to claim 'conclusive knowledge' of the quantum universe within which an electron exists?  Call me skeptical. 

 
Ok Mr. Skeptical. 

 
The other can of worms (sic?), in my opinion, is the still pervasive thought patterns of Aristotleian logic (see Robert Anton Wilson).
 

Can you tell me what's inside that can w/o opening it?  

  Agnostic Mystic.  That's hilarious, lol.

 

[Permagrin]

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Can you tell me what's inside that can w/o opening it?  

  Agnostic Mystic.  That's hilarious, lol.

 
Possibly immortal worms sans observer. Sometimes the shoulders of giants are actually the ladder that is no longer necessary perhaps? 

 

 

[kiteki]

Just buy 2x earphones, same model, same store, same year, bla bla.
 
Burn in one for a week non stop, (plug it in to the radio on static, shove it in a drawer under a pillow).
 
Leave the other in the box.
 
 
Open box, compare.
 
 
Happy listening.

 

[nick_charles]

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Just buy 2x earphones, same model, same store, same year, bla bla.
 
Burn in one for a week non stop, (plug it in to the radio on static, shove it in a drawer under a pillow).
 
Leave the other in the box.
 
 
Open box, compare.
 
 
Happy listening.

Sadly even two pairs of the same headphones from the same batch may have sample variations, you would need to measure them both first to make sure they really were identical before you started, but you could not spend too long on it or they might just burn-in while you were doing it

 

 

[Uncle Erik]

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Just buy 2x earphones, same model, same store, same year, bla bla.
 
Burn in one for a week non stop, (plug it in to the radio on static, shove it in a drawer under a pillow).
 
Leave the other in the box.
 
 
Open box, compare.
 
 
Happy listening.

There are production variations between pairs of the same model and even the same run.  Most manufacturers match pairs of drivers for each headphone, but the tolerances vary between pairs.  You'll notice that Sennheiser even gives out graphs for each particular HD-800, because they do not all sound the same.
 
Because of this, two pairs might sound different when both come straight out of the box.  If you were to do it that way, you might ascribe the variation between pairs as "burn in" even when both came from the factory that way.
 
The best way to do this is to measure the headphones' response straight out of the box then compare measurements after X number of hours.  You'd probably need to do this with a number of pairs to make sure the first pair wasn't a fluke.
 
I've never seen any measurements of a particular pair before/after burn-in.  And, again, I wonder why manufacturers don't burn-in before shipping a pair.  Setting up a board for burn-in is a simple matter.  Let new drivers cook for a few hundred hours before putting them into headphones.
 
For believers, that might be a fun question to ask of manufacturers.  Why don't you drop them an email and ask why headphones don't come burned-in.

 

[Anaxilus]

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And, again, I wonder why manufacturers don't burn-in before shipping a pair.  Setting up a board for burn-in is a simple matter.  Let new drivers cook for a few hundred hours before putting them into headphones.
 
For believers, that might be a fun question to ask of manufacturers.  Why don't you drop them an email and ask why headphones don't come burned-in.

Come on Erik.  You know there are at least 5 reasons off the top of your head you can think of as to why.  Reasons falling under liability, economics and marketing for just a few areas.  It's been posted in many threads including the one next to this.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/505113/my-theory-as-to-why-headphones-appear-to-burn-in/210#post_7002590
 
Now if you choose to believe the reasons aren't good enough then that's your choice.  You're too smart to keep bringing that point up.  Interesting that you obviously feel only 'believers' has a reason or responsibility to ask a manufacturer.
 
Since you bring it up, how about you provide the math showing the cost of setting up a burn bench for thousands of headphones and iems, over 200 hours per batch, including utilities, overhead, inventory, supply and demand constraints, labor costs, opportunity costs, etc.  Give us a number and let's see how insignificant it is.  Then let's ask Sennheiser's accountants what they think.  Do we not know who would win a board room argument between an accountant and an engineer?

 

[Uncle Erik]

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Come on Erik.  You know there are at least 5 reasons off the top of your head you can think of as to why.  Reasons falling under liability, economics and marketing for just a few areas.  It's been posted in many threads including the one next to this.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/505113/my-theory-as-to-why-headphones-appear-to-burn-in/210#post_7002590
 
Now if you choose to believe the reasons aren't good enough then that's your choice.  You're too smart to keep bringing that point up.  Interesting that you obviously feel only 'believers' has a reason or responsibility to ask a manufacturer.
 
Since you bring it up, how about you provide the math showing the cost of setting up a burn bench for thousands of headphones and iems, over 200 hours per batch, including utilities, overhead, inventory, supply and demand constraints, labor costs, opportunity costs, etc.  Give us a number and let's see how insignificant it is.  Then let's ask Sennheiser's accountants what they think.  Do we not know who would win a board room argument between an accountant and an engineer?

No, I don't buy those reasons at all.  Liability, economics and marketing?  Come on.
 
I've seen a number of cable manufacturers offering burn-in as a special service you pay extra for.  Which is exactly how I'd handle it if I were one of the manufacturers.
 
I'd offer a burn-in service for any product for an appropriate price.  Further, I don't think it would be expensive at all.  Costs would slide depending on how many you were burning in, but even a PreSonus HP4 is around $100 and feeds four headphones.  If you needed to burn in 100 pairs at a time, 25 of those would be $2,500, and they could be fed off an old radio tuner or CD player, for almost no cost.  Power consumption wouldn't be half bad, and it'd be hard to estimate the rates, because they vary depending on where you are.  On the other hand, they're deductible, as would be a burn-in board.
 
If you charged $25 for burn-in service, you'd recover the cost of the HP4s after the first 100 headphones go through it.  It'd be almost all profit after that.  If you sold 100 burned-in headphones a week for an extra $25 a piece, that'd be $130,000, minus probably a few thousand for power and labor.
 
So, yeah, the accountants would be completely in favor of having a premium burn-in service.
 
The problem is the lawyers.
 
They know that charging $25 for something that doesn't make a difference will likely get them slapped with a lawsuit.

 

[kiteki]

It should be an extra service for those that want it, for a specialty earphone maker it should be fairly simple, just set up a rig, plug in a few earphones, throw a blanket over them and forget about it.
For a manufacturer with a huge turnover it could be more difficult, if the time it takes to get each headphone out of the factory is held up by 72 hours burn-in they might need a rather large room for that.
 
Personally, if I buy a basic earphone or one I'm not happy with in sq, I burn it in on max volume waiting for it to change, such as the A-Jays Three, I stuffed them in a drawer on medium-high volume burn-in to see if the bass would tame and clarity improve, actually the bass did tame quite a bit, but the bass lost quality as well, so it was a negative burn-in result. (imho).
 
if I buy an earphone I'm really happy with or feels somehow precious to me, I don't burn it in at all, I'd rather let it burn in naturally over a really long time, that's what I'm doing with my SA5000's, I'd never hook them up to a radio on max volume for 24 hours. ouch. 

 

[Anaxilus]

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No, I don't buy those reasons at all.  Liability, economics and marketing?  Come on.
 
I've seen a number of cable manufacturers offering burn-in as a special service you pay extra for.  Which is exactly how I'd handle it if I were one of the manufacturers.
 
I'd offer a burn-in service for any product for an appropriate price.  Further, I don't think it would be expensive at all.  Costs would slide depending on how many you were burning in, but even a PreSonus HP4 is around $100 and feeds four headphones.  If you needed to burn in 100 pairs at a time, 25 of those would be $2,500, and they could be fed off an old radio tuner or CD player, for almost no cost.  Power consumption wouldn't be half bad, and it'd be hard to estimate the rates, because they vary depending on where you are.  On the other hand, they're deductible, as would be a burn-in board.
 
If you charged $25 for burn-in service, you'd recover the cost of the HP4s after the first 100 headphones go through it.  It'd be almost all profit after that.  If you sold 100 burned-in headphones a week for an extra $25 a piece, that'd be $130,000, minus probably a few thousand for power and labor.
 
So, yeah, the accountants would be completely in favor of having a premium burn-in service.
 
 
The problem is the lawyers.
 
They know that charging $25 for something that doesn't make a difference will likely get them slapped with a lawsuit.

So now you want to charge for the service.  I guess it's not so simple as setting up a burn board huh.  Comparing the market for $250-$500 cable + burn-in fees is not quite the same market as someone spending $100-$200 on an ear/headphone.  Anyone interested in $1000+ headphones most likely knows about and has their mind made up about the phenomena enough to handle it themselves.  How many people do you think actually pay for cable burn service?  It would be a pittance compared to the number of phones a company hopes to stock on retail shelves and move through its factory.  Not even worth the time and effort unless the service was expensive.  Most likely exceeding the cost of most phones.  I can't even buy a XB earpad from Sony without it costing more than buying an entirely new and complete phone.  An earpad...that just sits on a shelf, doing nothing!  I still submit the accountants would pooh pooh your idea due to a lack of market knowledge or interest and profitability.  This is now beyond the point you made that 'manufacturers would just do it' if burn-in existed since if would cost nil.  So with due respect, your argument doesn't follow IMO.
 
So what about the lawyers and cable companies charging for burn-in?  No cease and desist notices yet.  I guess the satisfied customers are just too deluded to know any better.  Just like most of the deluded Egomaniacs on both sides of this topic that see no evil, hear no evil that just have to be heard no matter what.  Sound and fury signifying nothing.  Can't wait for next weeks new burn-in thread.  

 
 

 

[kiteki]

A very bold statement, indeed

 

[autonomous]

The burn-in fire rages on, new fuel anyone?

 

[poikkeus]

I maintain that there's no such thing as headphone burn-in. Headphone break-in is another issue. 
 
Why do I harp on the issue of burn vs break-in? After all, for most people, it's the same thing. However, the basic theory for many break-in believers is that headphone diaphragms become more flexible over time - a mechanical explanation - kind of like breaking in a pair of shoes. I, at least, don't burn in a pair of shoes - I break them in. Whether or not I believe in the theory is immaterial; at the very least, it's best to debate the best explanations as accurately as possible. 
 
I'm open to the idea of headphone break-in, because it seems there's ample evidence on both sides. At the same time, I get the feeling that it's going to be a long, long time before it's resolved, if ever. 
 
(Okay. That should keep things going a little bit longer.)

 

[Prog Rock Man]

 
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No, just that it's a logical fallacy to assume to know the outcome of a future event.  In fact, you don't know that it won't be brown until you test it and only then would your conclusion be valid for that test and not a future one.  Do you KNOW the Sun will rise tomorrow?  Nobody does, but people will claim to based on prior knowledge and assume as much.  We operate more on Induction rather than Empiricism than most would believe.  Just putting the notion of 'conclusivity' into perspective.  Science needs to be tempered by reason and critical analysis and not succumb to orthodoxy and dogma.  Lets assume we conduct your test using red and blue paint and hypothesize the outcome to be purple paint.  Yet after mixing it does turn Brown!  What then?  We do an analysis and discover some impurity during the manufacturing process interacted w/ the chemical composition of the other paint yielding the unexpected result.  I just caution the notion that anything is the be all end all conclusive test.  The Theory of Gravity is still up in the air being challenged by some of the brightest physicists in the world yet people want to claim 'conclusive knowledge' of the quantum universe within which an electron exists?  Call me skeptical. 

All I can say that that is you have a very uncertain future. Me. I'm already looking forward to tomorrows sun rise!

 

[Prog Rock Man]

 
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There are production variations between pairs of the same model and even the same run.  Most manufacturers match pairs of drivers for each headphone, but the tolerances vary between pairs.  You'll notice that Sennheiser even gives out graphs for each particular HD-800, because they do not all sound the same.
 
Because of this, two pairs might sound different when both come straight out of the box.  If you were to do it that way, you might ascribe the variation between pairs as "burn in" even when both came from the factory that way.
 
The best way to do this is to measure the headphones' response straight out of the box then compare measurements after X number of hours.  You'd probably need to do this with a number of pairs to make sure the first pair wasn't a fluke.
 
I've never seen any measurements of a particular pair before/after burn-in.  And, again, I wonder why manufacturers don't burn-in before shipping a pair.  Setting up a board for burn-in is a simple matter.  Let new drivers cook for a few hundred hours before putting them into headphones.
 
For believers, that might be a fun question to ask of manufacturers.  Why don't you drop them an email and ask why headphones don't come burned-in.

Since we also have Headphonia pointing out that batch differences can be greater then the the difference between a burned in and not burned in headphone, I think we have pretty much reached a conclusion here. We cannot properly judge the effects of headphone burn in.
 
The reason why headphones do not come burned in is because after use the speaker returns to its original shape and the process starts again. So you make and burn in two speakers, if you sell one the next day it is possibly still burned in, but if the other one sits in the shop for a couple of weeks, the effects of burn in have gone.
 
With regards to e-mailing speaker makers, that has already been done by Hifi Matrix and the results linked to elsewhere. Speaker makers are evenly split as to the issue of burn in.
 
As far as I am concerned we have the answers to speaker burn in, thanks to this and other burn in threads.

 

[Nebby]

I agree, we can't properly judge the effects without some very comprehensive testing, none which will happen from this forum I think