[3602]

I used to believe that I can hear the channel imbalance with those asymmetrical IEM/earbud cables.
I still do, because that's what I hear.
However, I do not know what an ABX of that would result in.

 

[PanamaRed]

 
Quote:

Burn-in? If drivers actually changed, then that would become a warranty issue. Companies go to great lengths to avoid claims. If testing showed a fundamental change after a few hundred hours, legal would freak out and demand heads roll. And heads would roll. Further, they really do test drivers for thousands of hours before product rollout. If a significant change were detected, the engineers would be whipped and sent to fix it.
 

 
What is your legal basis of this argument? It seems your analysis comes from a layman's grasp of contract law. Using your logic anyone could weasel out of the sale of any tangible object on the basis that the item's value has depreciated.

 

[Head Injury]

Quote:

Burn in exists....
And i realised it when i monitored my Ultrasone DJ1 from the first hour until now that it has more than 80 hours of play time....
I am not imagining thinks and sure i am not telling my brain to hear stuff....

Then you should provide some proof. I hear "burn-in", but I'm not afraid to admit I'm making it all up. In fact, I do admit that I'm making most of it up. The brain is an incredibly powerful thing.
 
Even what I don't make up can be explained through other means. Headphone placement makes a huge difference. Try it with any on-ear or full-sized. Push it far back on the ear, far forward, up higher than usual, and down lower than usual. Every movement changes the sound considerably in measurable ways. Or listen to it in the middle of the day when ambient sounds outside and around the house are at their highest, then listen late at night when they're low. I don't consciously notice the difference in ambient volume from day to night, but it's big, and it makes a big impact on sound. I always do my most critical listening at night, because everything sounds better.
 
Then there's the notoriously bad audio memory of humans. Listen to a song once, and an hour later it can "sound" completely different. We can remember the notes, lyrics, and melodies, even tone and some large details, but subtle things like ambient cues fade from memory almost instantly. Otherwise I wouldn't need high-end equipment would I? I could just go listen to my favorite album at a local store, and remember all the details from it. If we can't remember specifics of sound an hour or a day from now, how can we remember what a headphone first sounded like 200 hours ago?
 
You can't say burn-in exists if all you have are subjective experiences. And you can't prove it exists by comparing two headphones, one new and one used. The variations between headphones of the same model can be surprisingly large. The only way to "prove" it is to take one each of many different models of headphones, measure them fresh out of the box and every hour or so during burn-in. It must be the same headphone being measured because of driver variation. Even that won't always work, because of the headphone placement I mentioned.
 
Drivers will change over time as they wear out, and I can believe an initial break-in time of an hour or so for them to loosen up from the factory. The differences are subtler than some want to believe, and they will not change a headphone that you absolutely hate into one you absolutely love. That's all in your head.
 
I think that "Stop the nonsense" thing in the thread title had the opposite effect 

 

[Trasselkalle]

Isn't the whole burn in discussion moot? Even if the effect is psychological, doesn't that mean those people enjoy their headphones more?
 
Unfortunately I don't have funding right now for a research project into which sound signatures (out of the box) tend to lead to which perceived burn-in impressions, how long this takes for people to accept/reject, and perceptions carried into the test. Maybe we could also straighten out how our brains are affected in subsequent tests by the immediate reaction we had the first time listening, as well as how the other activities we've done before our listening sessions affect our impressions? 
 
The brain is a big place, and none of us have a clue how it works as a whole.
 
Who are you all trying to convince? Both sides seem set in their paradigms. Why can't we leave it up to each individual to decide? If you get me the funding to test this from a holistic scientific perspective (meaning at the very least electronics + behavioral/neural psychology), maybe we could at least get a good start for the discussion. After that, next research project would find a better way to test this, come up with their suggested implications, then a third project which contrasts the first two with their own even more inclusive approach, and... well you get the point. This forum isn't big enough for any kind of conclusions on this topic. We're all here speculating and sharing opinions and experiences. None of us like to get called out for something we strongly believe in or don't believe in. 
 
But maybe I'm just a chicken from non-confrontational Sweden?

 

[3602]

I thought Tyll of HeadRoom was going to build something to measure burn-in.
 
Sweden is nice. Meatballs, IKEA, girls, Stridsvagn 103. In that order.

 

[Trasselkalle]

Quote:

I thought Tyll of HeadRoom was going to build something to measure burn-in.
 
Sweden is nice. Meatballs, IKEA, girls, Stridsvagn 103. In that order.

 
Was Tyll doing more than these?
 
Part 1: http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/evidence-headphone-break
Part 2: http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/break-part-deux
 
 
And yes, Sweden is nice but expensive as hell. Except for meatballs at Ikea. 
 
PS.
Until human candidates are used under controlled conditions (i.e. where all dependent variables are known and may be systematically altered), Tyll will only measure the electronics side of 'burn-in'. That can be useful to some extent obviously, but what decides how we actually perceive things is the real question, i.e. what makes some people swear by it and others call it placebo? Can this effect be controlled or at least nudged in certain directions somehow?
DS.
 
PS2.
Quoting Tyll (summary of first part): "Did I show break-in exists? No. There are too many variables still. Was it simply movement? I don't know. If I did it again to another brand new pair would I get the same results? I don't know. If I did it to an already broken in pair would I get the same results? I don't know."
DS2.

 

[3602]

The only thing I can say after reading that... Maybe I really should quit the entire "high-fidelity" domain. 
Alas. Any true Swedish cars left? Volvo is Chinese and SAAB is GM.

 

[Trasselkalle]

Quote:

The only thing I can say after reading that... Maybe I really should quit the entire "high-fidelity" domain. 
Alas. Any true Swedish cars left? Volvo is Chinese and SAAB is GM.

Lol - just stay away from the theoretical end of the pool. There is little music on that end anyhow.
 
For the record (but maybe we better stick with what the thread was about after that?), Saab was sold to Spyker quite a while ago so they are semi-Dutch. Most Volvo and Saab cars are still designed, engineered and built in Sweden however.
 
 

 

[RPGWiZaRD]

Didn't read the whole but saw quite a few good points there.
 
Now what I wanted to comment on was the cables, yes I also believe in cables making a difference as I can hear it by myself, using different cables it sounds different, now paying more than 10-$20 for a cable would be nuts but it's a good thing to buy a higher quality cable say around $10 or so than using an included cable with your amp or a cheap 1~$3 one cuz there can be quite a difference actually. Currently I use this extension cable but it's male to female when needing a male to male to connect between soundcard and amp so I also use another shorter stereo cable included with the amp. Now if only using the cable included with the amp it sounds brighter, soundstage is more narrow. I also had a low quality 2m stereo cable I tried with but it actually sounded worse with that one than using these 2 different cables.... weird.
 
That being said what would be a good stereo cable to opt for, need around 2.5 meters or so, I live in europe though so doubt you can give suggestion of such an "universal" cable easily found here. 

 

[Currawong]

Have any of you guys thought, for just a minute, that something such as burn-in may neither universally exist nor universally not, but only happen with some equipment and headphones but not all?
 
On the rant though, I think much of what this is about is something I've discovered, that most of what we attribute to being good or bad about anything has to do with its tonal balance or frequency response. Gear synergy is mostly about that. 

 

[joelpearce]

Quote:

Have any of you guys thought, for just a minute, that something such as burn-in may neither universally exist nor universally not, but only happen with some equipment and headphones but not all?

When it comes to drivers and moving parts, absolutely.  I'm sure different designs break in at different rates.  Cables, though?  That, I find much harder to buy.
 

 

[Sil3nce]

Quote:

Have any of you guys thought, for just a minute, that something such as burn-in may neither universally exist nor universally not, but only happen with some equipment and headphones but not all?
 
On the rant though, I think much of what this is about is something I've discovered, that most of what we attribute to being good or bad about anything has to do with its tonal balance or frequency response. Gear synergy is mostly about that. 

It's all in your head? 
 
But that makes it more real.

 

[svyr]

Let's say that burn-in is only in our heads, how does that explain the very same headphones sounding different simply because one has a few hundred hours to it's name and the other is new. This appears countless times in the forum and I've witnessed it myself with a HFI-780 and DT880. If the drivers aren't physically changing after a few hundred hours then production control is non-existent, therefore the question should be what's more likely; a headphone changes after a number of hours or every headphone is different because of poor production control. I would think it more important that every headphone is identical in sound from the getgo, if a driver warms and settles after a number of hours this is fine.
 
In addition why is it there are different versions of the Beyer T1, I've heard a 'normal' version and a bass-heavy version, this was also seen in the biocellulose drivers of the early Sonys. Furthermore I have a pair of phones from the late 70s that physically change in sound after about 30 minutes, this is as evident to my ears as warming a tube amp. What is your stance on warming a tube amp prior to a listening session, is this also a ritual?

pad/headband wear in altering the positioning of the HP on the head/distance between drivers seems likely.


>I am not imagining thinks and sure i am not telling my brain to hear stuff....

Look at some AES presentations relating to audio research. Cognitive biases, placebo and adaptation are there regardless of whether you 'expect' them or know they exist. The people who write/present the tech papers say it themselves time after time that they need to DBT on themselves and measure, measure and measure


>I used to believe that I can hear the channel imbalance with those asymmetrical IEM/earbud cables.

your ears canals are not necessarily identical fyi and YMMV with insertion as well. The attenuation due to slightly higher impedance on one channel will be a lot less than 0.5db, so it's very doubtful you'd hear it.



>Have any of you guys thought, for just a minute, that something such as burn-in may neither universally exist nor universally not, but only happen with some equipment and headphones but not all?

yes, I've also pointed out it may be different depending on the transducer type and tech (seems like diaphragm material might play a role as well)

 

[Currawong]

The thing people lack is common sense.  Reading very old Head-Fi threads, you'd get people saying they'd, say, heard a difference between A and B, then later saying "whoops, seems I was wrong".  No drama, no pages of arguments, just the admission and calm acknowledgement from others.  This "It's all true.", "It's all BS" or "A is definitely better than B and everyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot." attitude about things pervading the forum is the problem.

 

[Graphicism]

Quote:

 pad/headband wear in altering the positioning of the HP on the head/distance between drivers seems likely.

LOL! I like your enthusiasm.