[commando]

What's the lowest frequency that a person can hear? I'd say if you could hear 20Hz you'd be doing pretty well. You could probably feel it more than hear it.

 

[shasha]

The theory of burn in makes perfect sense since a speaker is a mechanical object. As you break it in it should be a little easier to drive and may even react quicker. I have a brand new pair of HD-25's and compared to a 4 year old set they don't sound quite as good. Their not as warm if that makes any sense.

What I did was just take a bit of a bass heavy song, cut it and looped it through winamp overnight for several days while I was in bed. I personally don't think that high frequencies are needed to break the driver in, the bass is where the stretching will occur.

Of course I could be completely wrong and still be happy.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally posted by shasha I personally don't think that high frequencies are needed to break the driver in, the bass is where the stretching will occur.

I was in the same position until recently, more exactly: until I experienced the break-in behavior of my HD 650. While the first brutal 30-hour break-in in the wastebasket with loud techno, bass cranked up and treble cranked down (to reduce the electrical charge to the voice coil), had a clearly noticeable effect -- although with an almost disappeared bass!

--, the following 120 hours with normal listening levels (with at most 25% of the membrane travel compared to the heavy treatment before) made an almost bigger difference and finally brought the refinement I was hoping for.

I guess I have to think over my previous assumption that break-in more or less consists of a loosening of the suspension. Although this might still be a plausible explanation and an important part of the process, I now think there are also other factors involved, like changes with the membrane flexibility and an evening-out of material tensions, which may absolutely be affected by higher frequencies.

I still don't think one has to be concerned about possibly missing frequencies above 18 kHz in the case of MP3s -- it seems absurd to assume that all frequencies have to be present during break-in for a perfect processing.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally posted by Mike Scarpitti Please, not again: there is no eveidence to support that burn-in exists. None.

Quote:

Originally posted by commando quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally posted by Stephonovich ... Now that the thread has gone a bit off-topic, I'll ask... why do you have two 280 Pros? Are you The One who has come to reign victorious over Mike Scarpitti's constant ramblings? BTW, 3rd one's a real whopper if you want to be occupied for hours. I was lucky enough to get in on that one early on, and was heatedly debating it for days... Oh, and finally, if you haven't read much of Mike's "Team Burn In Is Fake!" posts, then you're really missing out on a great part of Head-Fi. Anyway, he consistently has asked for someone to purchase two identical headphones (280 Pro's being the most usually recommended one, due to their vast IMPROVEMENT IN SOUND, MIKE... But I digress. He wants someone to get two pairs of cans, burn one in (anywhere from 48-1000 hours, depending who you talk to; for the 280 Pro's. 200 is usually agreed to be where you stop noticing any improvements), and leave the other bone stock. Then, do a blind A\B test. I suggested having a non-audiophile do the test, for even better results. Just have them tell you which sounds better. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I did that - the improvement is unreal. It goes from a muddy headphone with no bass and annoying treble to a precise headphone that reproduces sound well across the whole range - albeit a bit too much in the high treble.

One for Mike...

 

[Joe Bloggs]

If somebody can prove to me that a loudspeaker driver never changes its response characteristics over a lifetime of getting shaked the hell up, I'm ready to take a gun to my head and blow my brains out. Or chop my head off and let you use it as a stool. Or whatever

My mom has made these oaths over lesser things before

Her head should theoretically be propping up many people's butts by now but I don't think that will happen to my oath here

 

[slunk007]

Wasn't the Burn-in FAQ sticky good enough?

Just put your entire MP3 filelist on repeat and random. Turn up the volume to the appropriate level. Go away. Come back. Listen. Repeat.

 

[kelesh]

Woot! HD650's arrived!

Burning in with entire playlist on random, slightly loud volume.

I will go look in to better burn-in files once I get my work done.

 

[Snufkin]

There is no 'best' way to burn in headphones, just put some music you like on repeat for a while at the loudest volume you're likely to listen.


There HAVE been reports in the past of people damaging (or reducing the sound quality of their headphones) by playing sinewave sweeps/pink etc noise through them for extended periods, so it's probably best not to do this.

 

[Takashi]

Quote:

Originally posted by terrymx actaullly if you think about it, you shouldnt play the headphone too loud with bass heavy musics.

I agree.
I posted this sometime ago, that I compared volume level between vocal freq range and bass freq range on a R&B tune and a Heavy Metal tune. The result was significant, vocal:bass level ratio was approximately 1:20 for R&B, 1:5 for HM.
I think its quite normal to set the volume to vocal rather than bass, so if you crank up on R&B (or other bass-heavy music) you are cranking up bass part more than 4 times higher than heavy metal (or other guitar oriented music). So if you are using powerful enough amp, you may damage your headphones (or worse, ears).
Of cource you would know by clipping or distortion, I'm just telling you guys to go easy.

 

[kunwar]

http://www.rock-grotto.co.uk/Headphonebreakin.htm

Check out this page .
there are 20, 30 , 40 and 20-16000Hz tones available.
The page is hosted by someone ( don't know who) who happens to be a head-fier. i found this link throuoghthe solo headhone amplifier homepage which pointed to the rock grotto website where these were available.
hope that helps

Cheers
Kunwar


P.S: I am trying these tonight.