The Audiophile Myths and delusions thread

[DigDog]

What about a good pair of leather shoes? At first they might be stiff, they often need to be worn in to loosen the leather up but once they are comfortable, they don't then fall apart at the same rate, they can last for many years.
.

If there is any change in the material, it’s because it is stressed until it adapts to the system, and then the change in material suddenly stops.
Now, I have no problem believing this.

as you can see, i already answered you. material deformation can happen, i'm not that stupid. materials are stressed, then conform to a system. the system is that which stresses the material.

for example. rubber, glue, cloth, even metals used in teh construction of speaker cones.
these are subject to vibrations and heat, which stress the part to adapt to the system.

once the part has adapted, the stress ceases.

see, there can only really be two ways to this; either a stressed material continues to deteriorate, or it doesn't. for example, an eraser continues to wear out. otoh, shoes are streched by the foot, once the foot fits, they are not streched anymore.

other forms of stress can occur, other forms of deterioration exist - rubber hardens, glue becomes brittle, textiles become loose, metals oxidate. however they do so slowly, and they are not a factor of burn in, otherwise you would never get quality - who would want a product that sounds good only when it's at the end of its life?

so, it MUST be that burn in is a quick (relative to the lifetime of the object) process; WHY would they not do it at the factory?

@Rampant
()
dude.
this was my JOB.

i had to factor in heat, moisture, boards expanding, people's heads absorbing vibrations, do you really think i have a hard time understanding that the conditions of a material can change over time?




i have obiously not explained myself well enough. i now want to change my statement to "it's bullshit that audio companies expect you to burn in your own equipment".

also, note that, whatever variation there might be, it's most likely 1) minute and 2) occurs almost immediately.
i'm sure after prolonged use there wouldbe yet another minor change but really guys. how hot the day is makes WAY more difference and i seriously doubt humans have the capacity to hear that.

 

[Deders]

I guess it's up to each company to decide what their policy is. I personally think they should. Maybe it's running costs or physical space.

 

[DigDog]

i'm going on a limb here and guessing that "burn in" change in sound is primarely a psychological change in the listener - your mind adapts to hear those frequencies better; even your body deforms - try to wear in-ear vs over- and notice how, over time, your ears change. you can mimick this by simple tension behidn your ears (pull your skin muscels a bit, you will notice better highs and less lows, and vice versa if you let your ears "droop").

did i mention my 2 years study in physioacoustic actually covered this stuff as well? *smug*

 

[Deders]

It's one thing to guess, and another completely to have personally experienced much more than a minor change, having used multiple test scenarios to see if it really was due to burn in, or psychosomatic.

One such testing scenario was comparing a non burned in pair with a well used one of the same model, at the same time. There was a huge difference.

And then when other people who have owned the same model had the same findings as I did, it goes well beyond guesswork.

 

[JAG87]

It's one thing to guess, and another completely to have personally experienced much more than a minor change, having used multiple test scenarios to see if it really was due to burn in, or psychosomatic.

One such testing scenario was comparing a non burned in pair with a well used one of the same model, at the same time. There was a huge difference.

And then when other people who have owned the same model had the same findings as I did, it goes well beyond guesswork.

Did you have any other kind of sensory bias when you were comparing the old to the new, or did you install brand new pads on the old headphones and have someone switch them on your head while blindfolded? Mhmm, yea I thought so.

This is like claiming that two sets of tires on two identical cars driven around the same track for the same amount time, will have exactly the same wear and tear. It's such bullshit that it's not even funny. There are so many factors that are going to affect how a driver burns in:

Humidity
Air pressure
Temperature
What signal is reproduced by the driver
How loud the signal is
How long it is played

I could go on and on but I can't be bothered.

 

[Deders]

Did you have any other kind of sensory bias when you were comparing the old to the new, or did you install brand new pads on the old headphones and have someone switch them on your head while blindfolded? Mhmm, yea I thought so.

This is like claiming that two sets of tires on two identical cars driven around the same track for the same amount time, will have exactly the same wear and tear. It's such bullshit that it's not even funny. There are so many factors that are going to affect how a driver burns in:

Humidity
Air pressure
Temperature
What signal is reproduced by the driver
How loud the signal is
How long it is played

I could go on and on but I can't be bothered.

Like I said, the effect was not subtle, I wouldn't need to go to these lengths like you would to test similar audio tracks as the difference was very very obvious.

And after leaving the earphones playing for 12 hours, I came back to them and they sounded much much closer to the old pair I had. That would be the point that If I really wanted to test the difference I would have to take into account all you said.

I'm really not sure what to make of your analogy. One set of earphones was brand new, the other was the set I'd been listening to for over a year by that point.

Humidity, Air pressure and Temp would have been the same, I was in the same room, with the earphones, at the same time.

I had a splitter so I could have both sets playing from the same source at the same time. I even tried without the splitter and the difference was still there. They were played at the same volume from the same source, for very similar amounts of time.

 

[JAG87]

Like I said, the effect was not subtle, I wouldn't need to go to these lengths like you would to test similar audio tracks as the difference was very very obvious.

And after leaving the earphones playing for 12 hours, I came back to them and they sounded much much closer to the old pair I had. That would be the point that If I really wanted to test the difference I would have to take into account all you said.

I'm really not sure what to make of your analogy. One set of earphones was brand new, the other was the set I'd been listening to for over a year by that point.

Humidity, Air pressure and Temp would have been the same, I was in the same room, with the earphones, at the same time.

I had a splitter so I could have both sets playing from the same source at the same time. I even tried without the splitter and the difference was still there. They were played at the same volume from the same source, for very similar amounts of time.

My analogy was meant to make fun at how you think other people in other places in the world experience the exact same burn in results as you. It's a one in a trillion chance that your drivers and their drivers "burned in" exactly the same way.

Also, you seem to think burn-in is controlled and always has a positive effect? What if it had a detrimental effect? People who believe in burn-in seem to always believe that burn-in leads to better, when they have absolutely no control over the changes at the molecular level. Want to know why? Because no matter how shit a transducer is, your brain compensates and makes things sound better after a while. Instead, plastic/paper/metal does not always change for the better.

 

[Deders]

My analogy was meant to make fun at how you think other people in other places in the world experience the exact same burn in results as you. It's a one in a trillion chance that your drivers and their drivers "burned in" exactly the same way.

Also, you seem to think burn-in is controlled and always has a positive effect? What if it had a detrimental effect? People who believe in burn-in seem to always believe that burn-in leads to better, when they have absolutely no control over the changes at the molecular level. Want to know why? Because no matter how shit a transducer is, your brain compensates and makes things sound better after a while. Instead, plastic/paper/metal does not always change for the better.

When I said others from all over the world, I was talking about a link I made in a previous post, as well as many other pages where I've read people had the same kind of experience of this particular range of headphones. It might not have been exactly the same on a molecular level, but the overall effect was they improved vastly over a 12 hour period of playing.

As I've previously mentioned I'm not entirely sure whether after a couple of years, these earphones do wear down slightly and not have quite as much oomph as they did. So yes it's possible that not all wear in is a good thing. Although I've not heard a pair of well made speakers that have sounded significantly worse within the first year or so.

There is a lot to be said for how our brain interprets sounds at different times. Hell, music sounds faster to me when I've just woken up than when I've been awake for a long time, but what I was talking about was definitely mechanical. I think both of these phenomena happen.

 

[Kaido]

Audio is like religion. Some believe, some don't, hardly anyone has proof one way or the other.

That's a good explanation. Like with the burn-in thing, is it real? I don't know, but in my experience, I've never heard it on any of my equipment. But like in the case of perfect pitch, that's not something I possess, so maybe there are people out there who are more sensitive to slight changes in audio & care enough about it to make it a big deal...and hey, if amping up minor changes in your equipment is your hobby, more power to you. But taking a step back, are minor changes enough to rant & rave about online? To me, no. Just buy a better set of headphones or speakers, haha.

If I were a marketer at an audio company, this is the perfect excuse to put human psychology to work: if you spend 200 hours listening to a set of speakers or headphones, over time your brain is going to compensate for the variations & make it your new standard. It's like when I hop in my car & switch it from XM radio to FM radio...it sounds like crap for the first few minutes, but by the end of the song, I've forgotten about that & I'm just enjoying the music. On burn-in in particular, Wired's article says no, not real:

http://www.wired.com/2013/11/tnhyui-earphone-burn-in/

Shure has tested some thoroughly used pairs of its E1 earphones, which first launched in 1997. And guess what? They measure the same now as when they came off the line. In fact, during the 15 years Shure has been actively selling earphones, its engineers have reached the same conclusion again and again: The sound produced by these tiny transducers during final testing is the same sound you’ll get in a day, in a year, and in five years… unless something goes wrong.

There's an article that gets cited a lot that tried to measure break-in:

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/evidence-headphone-break

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.

Some more discussion on that & another one here:

http://www.tested.com/tech/accessories/459117-science-and-myth-burning-headphones/

"While the data showed only very small differences, the data was clearly above the noise, and a general trend observable," he writes. "While, it seems to me, much of the change observed could easily be due to movement, especially in the frequencies above 5kHz, some changes seem more likely due to break-in. In particular, the changes in frequency response around the fundamental resonance of the driver at 80Hz, and in %[Total Harmonic Distortion]+noise at the same frequency and at around 40Hz."

Later he performed a single-blind test and was able to distinguish between a broken-in pair of Q701s from a pair that hadn't been burned in. Hertsens writes:

"It's clear to me, having had the experience, that there is indeed an audible difference when breaking-in a pair of Q701 headphones. I've seen measured differences, and now experienced audible differences. While the measured differences are small, I believe the human perceptual system is exquisite and able to perceive, sometimes consciously and sometimes sub-consciously, subtle differences.

...

"While the data showed only very small differences, the data was clearly above the noise, and a general trend observable," he writes. "While, it seems to me, much of the change observed could easily be due to movement, especially in the frequencies above 5kHz, some changes seem more likely due to break-in. In particular, the changes in frequency response around the fundamental resonance of the driver at 80Hz, and in %[Total Harmonic Distortion]+noise at the same frequency and at around 40Hz."

Later he performed a single-blind test and was able to distinguish between a broken-in pair of Q701s from a pair that hadn't been burned in. Hertsens writes:

"It's clear to me, having had the experience, that there is indeed an audible difference when breaking-in a pair of Q701 headphones. I've seen measured differences, and now experienced audible differences. While the measured differences are small, I believe the human perceptual system is exquisite and able to perceive, sometimes consciously and sometimes sub-consciously, subtle differences.

I like this comparison at the end of that article:

My hiking boots break-in; my sneakers break-in, too. But my hiking boots aren't going to turn into sneakers over time."

Going back to the Wired article:

Indeed, what keeps this debate going is really the lack of quantifiable evidence debunking the advantages of burn-in. Well, no one has disproven it, say audiophiles.

So to me, based on my personal experiences, it seems that burn-in:

1. Doesn't exist in a night & day kind of way
2. Does exist technically as minor changes over time
3. Is used by people to justify & defend their purchase decisions to random strangers online
4. Is backed by the audiophile community who believes in it as "well, no one has disproven it"

Again, I don't have studio-grade ears. I can't pick out a note from a song & tell you what letter it is on the music scale. I appreciate high-quality audio, I can hear a difference between Apple Earbuds & Sennheiser HD-650 headphones, but I can also enjoy plain old FM radio because for me, the point is to enjoy the music, not to banter about minor & possibly imperceptible changes to my audio equipment over a period of time. The science says there is a minor but basically useless change that can happen physically, but is it anything to get excited about? To me, personally, no. To someone who has good ears & enjoys the technical side of audio, sure, maybe, why not.

Again, going back to the audio marketer's perspective: if burn-in truly existed, then why not sell pre-burned-in headphones (at a premium price, to save the consumer time!), so that people are getting a 100% optimized product? I don't see any headphones being marketed in that way, nor do I see any reviewers who purchase these burned-in headphones saying "gee, they haven't changed at all because they're already burned in!" Kind of bizarre that this phenomenon would actually exist, and yet there's no market for it!

There was a post on Reddit a couple years ago where the poster did an unofficial measurement study & claimed to have proof of changes:

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile...hone_burnin_i_recorded_the_actual_difference/

But again, stepping back...the graph there represents a few decibels of change. Sooooo...just crank your volume up (or down) a bit to compensate. Again, is it real? Maybe, and if it is, even the studies people have tried to do have proven to only have extremely minor changes, and yet, like you said, people get religious about it & become zealots, posting passionately about it online. OK. That's not the end of the hobby that I personally enjoy, but I'm not going to go around stomping on someone else if they want to discuss that for pages & pages in a forum thread, because all I can speak for is my own experience of never having heard a burn-in change & probably not being able to notice if there ever was one, given that my ears aren't in the top 1% of sensitivity available planet-wide.

 

[Deders]

You make a lot of good arguments in a balanced way.

I think that because there is a lot of marketing based nonsense out there regarding audio, people do tend to be skeptical about anything they hear in this vein. As any good audio engineer will tell you, your ears are your best tool. If it sounds good to you then that's what matters.

I think the earbuds I have been talking about are an extreme example. I haven't had such a significant change in sound with any other equipment I've owned, but it does show it can happen.

As I've mentioned before I believe my newest sub has broken in after several weeks of use as I'm able to play the same music and films that I tried when I first got it, without having to use a 90Hz low pass filter to clean up the sound. The effect is much more subtle than with my earphones, but I do know what I'm listening for.

I'm not sure of the time it took, only that it is now able to handle a wider range of frequencies at the same time, without getting muddy.

The example on the reddit page only shows one aspect of the sound in the gif (and the DB changes are at different times in the track, it's not an overall db change that volume will compensate for), but listening to the before and after tracks, the differences are very subtle.

Shure really do know what they are doing. A lot of their Microphones get used in studio's, dynamic ones included. If they were to require a break in period then I don't think they would be as popular because an engineer will want consistent performance so they can choose the right mic for the sound they want. In this respect their name is actually quite relevant.

 

[DigDog]

just gonna say, people use Neumann U47's to record, 50 year old capsules (so delicate that slamming a door can break them) and they sound exactly like they did when brand new.

 

[Kaido]

You make a lot of good arguments in a balanced way.

I think that because there is a lot of marketing based nonsense out there regarding audio, people do tend to be skeptical about anything they hear in this vein. As any good audio engineer will tell you, your ears are your best tool. If it sounds good to you then that's what matters.

That's really what it all boils down to. Live & let live.

I'm watching Netflix right now on my knockoff Bose system, where Bose is a system that gets berated by purists...let alone a knockoff version, which is probably even worse But I'm enjoying it, and my first two metrics are "is the audio clear, and does it fill up the space I'm listening to it in with sound?", which it meets on both counts. Are they Focal Grande Utopia BE's? Nope, but they also cost $200 instead of $200k, which makes me pretty happy

 

[Deders]

just gonna say, people use Neumann U47's to record, 50 year old capsules (so delicate that slamming a door can break them) and they sound exactly like they did when brand new.

That is a condenser microphone, a very different technology to dynamic mics. They have a solid backplate and a thinner membrane on top that reacts to the sound. The combination of both acts like a capacitor. It's not suspended in the frame like dynamic mics or speakers.



On another note, I asked the guys at richer sounds when I bought my new system about how to avoid my tweeters blowing out. It's a problem I've had before. They advised me to play music at a medium level for a while to allow them to loosen up before using it at loud volumes for long periods of time. So far so good.

 

[Ionman]

Actually they do change in sound. Every U47 sounds slightly different.
It's not just the capsule though, it's the other components too, whose values drift over time.

 

[moonbogg]

I feel that audio companies perpetuate the myth, but its not their fault. They are stuck in an odd situation. They know some of their most die hard fans believe burning in is important, so in order to not insult the intelligence of their customers, they must regard burn in as at least a phenomenon worthy of mention, even if their engineers don't think its important.
Now, here's the strangest part and perhaps the most important. With something as subjective as audio, I believe that "burn in" is critical to the listener who believes its critical, and I don't mean that in a BS way. Yes, I think its placebo almost entirely, at least in most cases, but doing this enhances the person's experience with their audio product. The brain does all the work with the listening part, so if it finds something significant, then it will be significant, quite literally and legitimately, to that person.
I may not notice a difference. A measuring device may or may not measure a difference, but the user in question notices a difference in the same exact way that thinking of a beautiful sunset makes them happy, while thinking of a rainy storm might make them feel a little down. Subjectivity seems to act as an actual causal agent for further subjectivity.

 

[Deders]

I would agree with most of that, but only if I could liberally sprinkle the word "some" into that paragraph.

 

[thesmokingman]

I feel that audio companies perpetuate the myth, but its not their fault.

It's strange that you ignore what the engineers that designed these products say and instead attribute to them the perpetuation of this pandemic. It's just the ironing is too much.


FYI, some of use believe what the engineers say, but that doesn't mean we all think that you have to run something for 500 hours to hear a difference. Don't drop us all into the same label.

 

[moonbogg]

It's strange that you ignore what the engineers that designed these products say and instead attribute to them the perpetuation of this pandemic. It's just the ironing is too much.


FYI, some of use believe what the engineers say, but that doesn't mean we all think that you have to run something for 500 hours to hear a difference. Don't drop us all into the same label.

No offense intended. The most important thing to always remember is that I am always right. Be a gentleman and tip your hat to me on this.

 

[Deders]

Well that explains everything

 

[krumme]

Imo the problem about all this sound bs is it takes away attention from what really matters big time for sound. The fundamentals.

My guess is most of you own boxed speakers. How do you think your perfectly engineered b&w and paradigm boxed speakers perform in a normal living room and not a damped studio? How do you think they meassure in your living room even with a so called digital "room correction" in front?

Its outrigt crap.

And instead of selling us dipole active speakers they continue to make speakers like we all live in a perfectly damped room or in the top of a flag pole.

Its so sad. There was actually a time for audio 25 years ago when there was no such thing as eg break in or idiotic expensive cables. Instead there was good sound. People had big speakers in their homes. Today is apple style junk and the music gets more and more compressed. Therefore music plays a lesser and lesser role as the primary attention.
Music is redelegated to the bacground.

As for sound the only companies driving this forward is a consequence of the headphone market. And its not the usual stupid expensive eu or usa hifi. Its small Chinese companies like audio-gd and hifiman that imo makes the best of it. They got the spirit.

Ofcource you can just buy a pair of shure srh 840 and plug into your phone and get 90% of the way but the rest is still worth going for.

 

[wiyosaya]

My guess is most of you own boxed speakers. How do you think your perfectly engineered b&w and paradigm boxed speakers perform in a normal living room and not a damped studio? How do you think they meassure in your living room even with a so called digital "room correction" in front?

Its outrigt crap.

Paradigm is one of the few companies that give specs for both an anechoic chambers and expected performance in a real room. I'm not saying they don't have marketing crap, just they apparently do make measurements that are applicable to real rooms. That is why their frequency response specs generally list two low end figures - an anechoic and a DIN figure.

Interesting that people are still discussing burn in. For it to be a matter of scientific fact, anybody making such claims would have to make scientific measurements using instruments designed to make such measurements both before and after and conclusively show that the measurements are different.

Unfortunately, the ear does not qualify as a reliable scientific instrument.

So we have at least Audioholics and Shure making such measurements with the requisite equipment and both show no difference after usage. Despite claims with religious fanaticism that burn in does exist, measurements done in a scientific manner show otherwise.

 

[krumme]

Even perfect on axis the polar response is way off.

Even in studios boxed speakers is bad.
In people homes its just so wrong it can not be described.

Stop wasting time discussing break in or cables if its good sound that is interesting.

 

[Deders]

Yeah, might as well give up on audio altogether.

 

[thesmokingman]

Paradigm is one of the few companies that give specs for both an anechoic chambers and expected performance in a real room. I'm not saying they don't have marketing crap, just they apparently do make measurements that are applicable to real rooms. That is why their frequency response specs generally list two low end figures - an anechoic and a DIN figure.

Interesting that people are still discussing burn in. For it to be a matter of scientific fact, anybody making such claims would have to make scientific measurements using instruments designed to make such measurements both before and after and conclusively show that the measurements are different.

Unfortunately, the ear does not qualify as a reliable scientific instrument.

So we have at least Audioholics and Shure making such measurements with the requisite equipment and both show no difference after usage. Despite claims with religious fanaticism that burn in does exist, measurements done in a scientific manner show otherwise.

You're like a broken record. :\

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38099281&postcount=90

 

[Deders]

You're like a broken record. :\

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=38099281&postcount=90

Also very selective as to remembering examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile...hone_burnin_i_recorded_the_actual_difference/

http://i.imgur.com/V7R1UVQ.gif

The gif clearly shows that at different points in time, there are differences in the output level of the combined frequencies, measured in DB.

Meaning that after a period of burn in, some of the frequencies are able to be rendered with less inhibition from the initially stiff materials, sometimes resulting with them being louder, and sometimes less prominent which can smooth out frequencies that may initially sound harsher.