[metal_monger]

I have what I consider to be, although totally subjective, evidence of the concept that your brain adapts to headphones vs headphones break in.

I belive that, at least on the 3 cans of high quality headphones I have come accross, there is some change in the actual sound but the bigger change is in your head. Let me say that I am a musician, and a musician who has experience in the studio. I also have been a rabid heavy metal fan for close to 10yrs.

In being a heavy metal fan you come accross alot of ****ty recordings. To give a few exapmles of classic metal albums that have crappy recording quality: Death "Individual Thought Patterns" and At The Gates "Terminal Spirit Diease" come to mind. Particularly with the Death abulm wher the bass playing is nothing short of amazing, but it is hard to hear at times. The ety 4p make distinguishing all the intstruments extremely easy for me, then when listening to the same album on regular speakers I am easily able to seperate the instruements. Therefore after my ears and mind whre trained by higher quality headphones (see my sig) it is easier for me to seperate instruments on regular speakers.

Thoughts?

 

[pedxing]

What you have described above is similar to the experiences I have with comparing audio equipment. Once I play back a song with a pair of good speakers, I hear all sorts of new information that wasn't obvious to me before. When I go back to my crappy stereo system, I can aniticipate and notice those nuances and the nuances will obviously sound different (ie: compressed or smeared). Of course, if the nuances are completely not present with my crappy stereo system, its lack of presence may become a horrible nuisance.

 

[jade]

i agree with your opinion but i think comparing your ability to distinguish instruments on headphones and its affect on your ability to distinguish instruments on speakers cannot be scientificly generalized to have any meaning on the physical or psychological breaking in of a headphone.

based on the information that you gave it would be more plausable to assume that you were able to learn your music better with a better sound system, therefore, on regular speakers, you are already aware of what is there so you pay more attention to it and thus can hear it.

sort of like people in an art class who persistantly draw what they do not see but know or think is there. this is why many people reproduce drawings better when copying a picture upside down.

i think someone should just settle this once and for all and do [or post up previously done] research on this matter with frequency response statistics before and after break in.

i think that everything really does break in ... and things do sound better physically after the breakin but i am also convinced that the listener is also psychologically broken in to a greater extent than most people want to admit.

 

[Jeff E]

[pedanticism on]
The late J.J. Gibson developed a theory of perceptual learning that seems applicable here. As I recall, this kind of learning takes place without needing external feedback simply from experiencing the stimulus, such as in wine tasting. The process involves differentiation, separating the percept into various features that were glommed together, and selective attention to relevant and away from irrelevant features. So, in headphone listening you learn to break down the sound into parts and then what parts to listen to. It seems to me that as you read headphone reviews, as with wine reviews, you discover a new vocabulary that folks use to describe these special, features relevant their perceptual experiences.
[pedanticism off]

 

[10068]

So metal_monger, are you trying to argue that Burn-In on headphones doesn't exist? Heh. I would have to say a great multitude of people disagree with you.

Now i'm not one to say that EVERYTHING burns in, but it's simply common sense that headphones burn in.

Why? Well, everyone knows speakers burn in. Even simpletons know that. It's the drivers in them "loosening up"

You're telling me headphone drivers can't loosen up? Yeah, about that

 

[Stoner]

Well, you can't really back your theory w/o having a pair of the same headphone, thoroughly burn-in the 1st pair while leaving the other untouch. Now compare the two and tell me burn-in is all in your head.