How much does volume matter when breaking in amps and cables?
I'm not here to debate break-in. I generally leave new amps, components, and new cables playing low volume for a for long periods to start the break in process. Just curious how much does volume play a role in breaking in such. I get that speakers probably need pretty good amounts to push drivers, but what about other components?
They got the memo about that snake oil silliness. It’s pinned to the break room bulletin board for everyone to laugh at next to the a print out of your website.
Nobody who designs any electronic device for any use or purpose considers the snake oil you mentioned because it makes no difference.
>>>>I certainly have no explanation for such back-sliding retro behavior on your parts. Oh, well, live and let die.
@kalali
Roger, I’m honestly curios, don’t you think there’s been improvements in the way electrical components are made since the 50’s? People’s hearing could have been better but that’s also open to debate at another time.
A Marantz Model 8B of the 1960s is as good as anything I can do today other than make the power supply caps bigger. Now big uFarads are cheap but were not then. Otherwise what Sid Smith did was exemplary. I had the honor of lunch and did a yet unpublished interview with him and separately one with Saul. The designs are entirely Sid's work. I copied his tertiary feedback winding for my model 9 (before the interview, just from looking at the schematic and wondering). My Model 9 is starting to rise in value on the used market, so a new generation is catching on.
The 8B is one of my benchmarks. BTW, the loved my many Citation power amps of the same period are not.
I read Stereophile religiously. Go right to the measuremets, then the review. Im not impressed with what ARC, CJ, Cary etc are doing. They are making models with high distortion, poor damping. Just look at Atkinson's measurements and comments. Its a wonder they send them in knowing they will be inspected under JA's test routine.
As to resistors and capacitors. The expensive hype ones do not interest me. I dont need Nude Vishay resistors where the leads break off if you look at them. I dont need oil coupling caps that take on moisture and pass DC. I replace them with good Mylar or PPN caps that last forever.
Roger, I’m honestly curios, don’t you think there’s been improvements in the way electrical components are made since the 50’s? People’s hearing could have been better but that’s also open to debate at another time.
Better add burn-in to the list of things amp designers didn’t get the memo about. Along with fuses, fuse and wire direction, vibration isolation, power cords, power cord directionality. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, their designs are so good they’re immune to things like that. 😀
Who needs David Hafler, Peter Walker, Sid Smith, Bill Johnson, Frank Van Alstine, Ralph Karsten, Tim deParavicini, Nelson Pass, Roger Modjeski, and all the other Hi-Fi electronic designers? Uh, anyone who wants and/or needs electronics for the reproduction of music. You know, those who want a real Hi-Fi. If designing Hi-Fi electronics were left to audiophiles, almost all of us would be out-of-luck. For any audiophile who wants to build his own amp, Modjeski teaches a class in Berkeley, wherein he helps you realize your design idea. You are free to use any parts or fuses you like. ;-)
The above names don’t need to be dropped, the sound quality of their designs speak for their abilities. I’ve never heard one of them claim to work at any organization they actually didn’t (talk about name dropping and appeal-to-authority!), or to shamelessly boast about their products. They don’t need to, the sonic benefits of them are audible for all to hear. All that actually bother to audition them, of course. Some don’t feel a need to listen to those not containing "magic" parts. Now THAT’S a skeptic. ;-)
If black holes were real why weren’t they discovered in the 1950’s?
If gravity waves were real why weren’t they discovered in the 1950’s?
I don’t think these analogies are at all apt to the situation. Audiophiles were dedicated listeners in the 1950’s and more technically knowledgable than most are now. People built their own amps, technical articles had "meat" not fluff. Read "Audio" reprints from the 1950s.
We needed the Hubble and other things to find black holes. We needed nothing but our ears to hear break-in in the 1950s. Audiophiles weren't as gullable then. They demanded real stuff, real advances and they didn't spend money like it was water back then. This hobby has really gotten so out of hand it sickens me.
If you want to do the same thing for no cost take a 12-24 volt AC wall
wart, cut off the plug and go to it on your cables. Its going to do the
same thing
...Sort of....
What happens in that case, is there ends up being an approximate 60hz-sh lumpiness to the sound, for about 100hrs. Typical break-in scenarios...
If they don’t believe in fuses, power cords or wire directionality who needs em? End of story. Call it Old School or stick in the mud, whatever. You’re a lot better at name dropping than I am, so you get A+ for that. 🤗
Yeah, who needs David Hafler, Peter Walker, Sid Smith, Bill Johnson, Frank Van Alstine, Ralph Karsten, Tim deParavicini, Nelson Pass, Roger Modjeski, and all the other great designers and builders of hi-fi electronics? We have self-appointed amateur audiophile arbiters who REALLY understand music reproduction. and are not shy of proclaiming what is "true". Funny how some of them seldom mention what music they actually listen to. Many electronic designers are (or were if RIP) also often themselves musicians.
ramtubes I make tube amps. I cycle and burn them in for 24 hours but only to catch the infant mortalities, which I do. If burnin of electronics was real why wasnt it "discovered" in the 1950’s?
>>>>Oh, there’s the problem! Amp manufacturer. Problem solved! 🤗
If black holes were real why weren’t they discovered in the 1950’s?
If gravity waves were real why weren’t they discovered in the 1950’s?
You seem to keep up with many of these post here on Audiogon and other sites and your telling me you have not read John Curl, Ralph Karsten ,Neilson Pass, Caelin Gabriel to name just a few top designers talk about break in. You seem to have selective reading so Im calling BS and yes they have test gear but they also know that doesn't tell them how it will sound. You also like arguing with other members who hear differences.
Just because it cant be quantified doesn't mean you cant here a difference.
Kosst you need to list your system so we know why you cant hear a DIFFERENCE.
Cable break-in occurs as current flows through the conductors of wiring components. Dielectric stress from voltage differences between conductors also contributes. It takes many hours of in-system use for wiring components to break in, primarily because audio/video signals from normal program material are so low-level.
Consider an interconnect from pre-amplifier to power amplifier. The maximum signal level for full power output of the average power amplifier is 2 volts peak, and the average signal is much less. Typical input impedance of a power amplifier is 10 kohms at the low end for consumer gear; 47 to 100 kohms is typical for a solid-state amplifier, while several hundred kohms impedance is not unusual for a tube power amplifier.
Taking the best-case values from the above, the maximum current seen is 2 Volts/10k ohms, or 200 micro-amperes. This would not be continuous current, because the voltage value is peak, not rms. One can calculate a "use value" from the above equation multiplied by the total time this current flows. Let's call that the Current Time Value (CTV).
Playing an interconnect cable in an audio system for one week (168 hours) of continuous use would expose it to the following CTV: 168 hours x 0.0002 amperes = CTV of 0.0336.
The CABLE COOKER produces signal levels far higher than those seen in normal audio/video system use. The Cooker's sweeping square wave oscillator drives a high-efficiency "H" bridge MOSFET switching circuit. The output signal is a square wave from below 100Hz to above 16 kHz, plus harmonics. Output voltage is 12 volts rms. The measured current flowing through the interconnect is 120 milli-amperes.
Installing an interconnect on the Cooker for one week results in a CTV of 168 hours x 0.12 Amperes = CTV of 20.16. This is a value 600 times greater than under the most ideal audio system conditions. The "stress" on the dielectric is also much higher due to the higher output voltage. Results with the Cooker are typically audible after less than a day.
The same signal also feeds the speaker cable binding posts. The load at the speaker cable inputs draws a continuous 1.88 amperes of current through the wire. With a potential of 12 volts, this is equivalent to a continuous signal level in excess of 22 watts rms. This continuous signal level played through loudspeakers in a home environment would be unbearably loud. Put simply, there is no way for conventional in-system playback burn-in to approach the intensity and efficiency of the Cooker.
Hasn't Alan Kafton been pretty well cooked by now. Does anyone really buy these things or believe his writings?
If you want to do the same thing for no cost take a 12-24 volt AC wall wart, cut off the plug and go to it on your cables. Its going to do the same thing.
@mijostin
millercarbon there is a huge difference between mechanical devices and electronic devices. Undoubtedly, electronic equipment drifts slowly overtime as some component values shift with recurrent heat cycles although I have never seen objective evidence of this. There is no electronic device that I know of that changes its characteristics in the first several hours of usage. Imagine what that would do to computers! Certainly tubes need to warm up and stabilize. Maybe class A or highly biased AB amps sound a little different after they heat up although having had several class A amps I have never been able to hear this and again have not seen any objective evidence of this. People come up with a bunch of fuzzy theories why electronics and wires need to break in. All of them conjecture, mythology. I can say that all the full range ESLs I have dealt with do require a period of loosening up. Their diaphragms are tightened up with a heat gun after they are mounted and they do relax over time. This only effects the very low end. Perhaps some dynamic woofers may improve with break in as you can imagine their spiders and surround loosening up a bit with use. But again I have never seen any objective evidence of this.
Thanks for the above. I make tube amps. I cycle and burn them in for 24 hours but only to catch the infant mortalities, which I do. If burnin of electronics was real why wasnt it "discovered" in the 1950's?
jL35, people do not buy expensive gear that they do not like. They buy expensive gear that is flashy only to find out that they do not like it then are told "Gee, you just have to break it in." People like geoffkait are suckered into believing that is true. Aberyclark, try not to buy equipment you do not like which admittedly is not easy. I cower to think how much money I have wasted over the years. It is always buyer be ware unless you are geoffkait then everything you buy is just wonderful especially after it breaks in. The only item that breaks in is your brain. Of course certain people, who shall go unmentioned have a hard time finding theirs. OK moderator, is that polite enough?
I think some fail to return equipment they don’t like, hoping for the glorious moment that mesmerizing sound takes over their rooms. By the time they figure it’s not going to happen, the return period has passed
We’ve already covered that. Snooze, you lose. The break in of speakers, cables, capacitors, etc. is a physical, a mechanical phenomenon. It manifests itself electrically, as fate would have it. Try to keep up with the discussion.
Mechanical devices like speakers and automobile engines may have a break in period as things loosen up a little. Many amps particularly tubes amps and preamps sound a little better after they warm up for a few minutes. But, breaking in of electronic devices and cables is total and compete MYTHOLOGY perpetrated by "experts" in the audio business and believed by gullible individuals that do not know how to evaluate their own hearing which can change with barometric pressure. While I am at it, there are good cables and bad cables. Good cables do not alter the signal, bad cables do. It is much easier to make a good cable than it is a bad cable. Putting a fancy chain mail jacket on it or adding a box full of nonsense does not a better cable make. It doesn't even justify the higher price. Next I am going to get my head cut off by people who have to figure out a way to justify the ridiculous amount of money they spent on BS.
Two other items I found needed break-in: my Sony 940C 75" TV and my KitchenAid 29 cuft. frig. The TV had a overly sharp looking picture. After 30 days, the image smoothed out. Then I calibrated it. The frig was worse as it made many noises, shooshing, creaking, whirring, etc. noises. After 6 months, a long time, it became nearly silent (4 years later, same). I attributed that to compressors, motors, etc. breaking in.
I am a cable beta tester for a manufacturer. I can never tell if a cable is worthy until after it breaks in for at least 24 hours. Most of the cables sound good but have affectations which limit my enjoyment using them at the beginning. After 24 hour burn-in at 1.5 to 2 volts for ICs, a frig use for IEC / A/C cables and unknown voltage/current for speaker cables just through use, I get a definitive result, better, about the same or worse than the existing design.
a few years ago I bought a used Aesthetix Romulus CD player that hadn't been used in 6 months. I called Aesthetix and was told it would take a month plugged in for it to return to full performance...
just got some new (for me) Dynaudio monitors...the manual says all their speakers need a few weeks of break-in,,,I think some engineers work there...I know they do measurements...
Tecknik, interesting point. In fact, I do not know of a high end manufacturer, that states their equipment sounds optimum as soon as you plug it in and start playing music. So many products owners manuals, written by the engineers and designers, talk about the breaking in process. As far as kosst and others, they are measurement people, and go by the " if it can't be measured, it can't be heard ". Just need to ignore them, 'cause they keep coming back. Enjoy ! MrD.
In are head" any decent set of ears! listening to a resolving system can hear new cables, resistors, circuit boards, transistors, breaking in'.
Some of the best designers have acknowledged the " breaking in process" and if you think its in our head you need to change hobbies cause your clearly wasting time and funds on this hobby.
It is all quite real. Everything, ime, requires some time to break in, or " settle ", and this is determined by listening, nothing more, nothing less. No measurements, just listening. It is easier to hear, if ( 1 ) you have a system that is highly resolving ( 2 ) a system familiar to you; ( 3) constant, and consistent, with minimal changes in the system; ( 4 ) with music you have heard over and over again; ( 5 ) the ability to listen, with excellent, and sometimes, experienced listening; ( 6 ) , and with, maybe, a trained ear, to hear this break in, warm up, settling in.
I managed a plant for Delphi back in the day. The saying was “break it in how you are going to drive it”. If something fails pushing the car a bit hard in the first few miles, it’s not the rpm’s it’s a faulty component.
from pure science prospective "breaking in" cables is kinda nonsense....however as all kind of cables age micro cracks are developed in insulation and solder joints . making them worth over the years . cables will never be better over time. i wouldn’t worry about speaker wires ,besides banana or other type of connectors contacts or soldering there is nothing to worry about. now about "break in" in electronics.electronic components age in time under heating and cooling conditions. resistors increase in value and capacitors decrease.it might be some changes in inductors . when scientific labs build very precise electronic meters they use aging process . they heat and cool components numerous times and then measure them for actual value.The value can change ...i would say under 5%. and then they build the device .So in our case of consumer electronics , components deviate 5-20% of stated value and the hole "enchilada" works just fine. there is no exact formula for "aging" electronic components .i would guesstimate "break in " period from 6 month to a year.would anybody hear the difference in sound? i doubt that very much ... will the system sounds better or worth ? it can go both ways...don’t forget that "break in" in speakers is more "dramatic" and happens only because of mechanical aspect. as semiconductors go, they work or they don’t. My advice as a specialist in consumer electronics is .... do not use your system for the first 2 weeks in high volumes, so not to cause damage to speakers.... that's it..... enjoy !
Abery, The short answer is: 1. 40 hours 2. Start low and work the volume level up with each run increasing the run time as well 3. Use a variety of music to cover different frequencies 4. You can use 8 ohm 100 watt dummy loads in place of speakers 5. Unless the inputs are couple using a capacitor or transformer you do not need to do each input for 40 hours
BUT Break in or Burn in as it was called in the 80's and 90's was done because of part failures. It was found that if a part was going to fail it would fail within the first 40 hours. Therefore, products received some run time and samples were run for longer periods. This was done in a controlled environment with measurement equipment.
Note the word controlled and measurement. Words like Stress, Cook, Continuously Powered for long periods are not used.
So why do this today?
Products can fail today. The forums contain post of fires and major failures in products made in China. Reviewers have had failures and even fires, see Stereophile.
So what you are trying to do is: 1 Ensure that the product is not going to fail 2 Do so where you can monitor it and make sure it does not take out another piece of equipment 3 Gradually loosen up capacitors, inductors, transformers, and speakers
Do not 1 Leave the equipment unattended 2 Push the equipment as hard as you can 3 Leave the equipment on all the time as the power has to go somewhere 4 Run it in a 90 degree room 5 Violate manufacturers recommendations 6 Attempt to stress the equipment and therefore create its death 7 Run the equipment when it is too hot to touch. If this is normal then it is a poor design
Just use common sense. 1 If the equipment is getting hot to the touch, turn it off. 2 If it is making noises, turn it off. 3 Follow normal listening practices. Just because an amplifier can do 100 watts does not mean you should run it for 10 hours straight into 100 watts. 4 Use slow ramp ups in volume and run times. Many pieces of equipment fail at turn on just like a light bulb
After 40 hours or a period of 5 to 6 days you should be able to feel comfortable with the equipment under normal operating conditions. And the various bits should be loosened up.
How many watts through headphone cables? One watt or less? How many watts through interconnects? My guess 1/2 watt. Preamp internal wiring? My guess .01 watt. How about tonearm wires? 0.01 watt? Who knows?
Undoubtedly, electronic equipment drifts slowly overtime as some component values shift with recurrent heat cycles although I have never seen objective evidence of this. There is no electronic device that I know of that changes its characteristics in the first several hours of usage.
So you know electronic equipment changes, and yet there is none that you know of that changes. Fascinating.
mijostyn again:
Maybe class A or highly biased AB amps sound a little different after they heat up although having had several class A amps I have never been able to hear this
That would appear to be the problem then, wouldn’t it? You can’t hear it.
mijostyn, stepping in it Big Time:
I own two 911s a 2006 Speed Yellow C4S and a 2014 Guards Red Turbo S. Porsche’s break in recommendation has always been "keep it under 4000 rpm for the first 2000 miles." Absolute torture but there is no substitute.
You must be new here, or at any rate not following me long enough to know I’m a PCA Driving Instructor (Driver Ed, Autocross, Driver Skills), and former PCA Region President with something like 200k miles personally driven on his 79 SC that has been rebuilt, good friends with scads of Porsche techs. Can you say, oops?!?
First off, the factory break-in that is in "the" manual is different depending on which country the car is sold in. Same car. Different laws. That 4000 rpm has nothing to do with break-in. Sorry. But you could look it up.
Now what’s really interesting, not only for Porsche but all internal combustion engines, the one thing that really does need to be broken in a certain way early on is piston rings.
Very high (read, full throttle) loads very early on (first few miles) are needed to seat the piston rings. What happens is that even highly machined parts still have some fine sharp peaks at the micro level. Subjected to high pressure these will wear on each other in a way that facilitates a better piston to cylinder wall seal. But these peaks are very fine and wear away very quickly whether babied or driven hard. The problem is if you avoid full throttle early on then by the time you do it they are smooth and you lose the benefit.
This is why you never hear anything about Porsche (or anyone else, this is universal to piston engines) breaking in their racing engines for thousands of miles. For damn sure they want their LeMans engines to last. Yet they do not break them in by babying them around at low RPM. This is why if you take factory delivery in Leipzig where they have a track right there and ask if you need to baby your brand new car they will say, "NO! Warm it up, then drive it as hard as you want. That’s what it’s made for."
Experience and knowledge, mijostyn. Imagination is no substitute.
I have never had meters on my amps and my rooms have changed in the past 6 years three times from average to above average to smallish where I am now. My guitar amps are 22 and 18 watts I can play pretty big places with 22 watts... I haven’t had the system running correctly for a couple years now. My cables are new and three years old...
As far as interconnects go I dont know the watts thru them. Never thought about it.
Cable break-in occurs as current flows through the conductors of wiring components. Dielectric stress from voltage differences between conductors also contributes. It takes many hours of in-system use for wiring components to break in, primarily because audio/video signals from normal program material are so low-level.
Consider an interconnect from pre-amplifier to power amplifier. The maximum signal level for full power output of the average power amplifier is 2 volts peak, and the average signal is much less. Typical input impedance of a power amplifier is 10 kohms at the low end for consumer gear; 47 to 100 kohms is typical for a solid-state amplifier, while several hundred kohms impedance is not unusual for a tube power amplifier.
Taking the best-case values from the above, the maximum current seen is 2 Volts/10k ohms, or 200 micro-amperes. This would not be continuous current, because the voltage value is peak, not rms. One can calculate a "use value" from the above equation multiplied by the total time this current flows. Let's call that the Current Time Value (CTV).
Playing an interconnect cable in an audio system for one week (168 hours) of continuous use would expose it to the following CTV: 168 hours x 0.0002 amperes = CTV of 0.0336.
The CABLE COOKER produces signal levels far higher than those seen in normal audio/video system use. The Cooker's sweeping square wave oscillator drives a high-efficiency "H" bridge MOSFET switching circuit. The output signal is a square wave from below 100Hz to above 16 kHz, plus harmonics. Output voltage is 12 volts rms. The measured current flowing through the interconnect is 120 milli-amperes.
Installing an interconnect on the Cooker for one week results in a CTV of 168 hours x 0.12 Amperes = CTV of 20.16. This is a value 600 times greater than under the most ideal audio system conditions. The "stress" on the dielectric is also much higher due to the higher output voltage. Results with the Cooker are typically audible after less than a day.
The same signal also feeds the speaker cable binding posts. The load at the speaker cable inputs draws a continuous 1.88 amperes of current through the wire. With a potential of 12 volts, this is equivalent to a continuous signal level in excess of 22 watts rms. This continuous signal level played through loudspeakers in a home environment would be unbearably loud. Put simply, there is no way for conventional in-system playback burn-in to approach the intensity and efficiency of the Cooker.
Warm up? That I can understand. I leave my electrical equipment on all the time since tolerances change as the temperature does.
The quality of the sound is dependent on how much you paid. If you take two bottles of wine, one costing $100 and one costing $20, and change the labels, almost everyone will tell you that the new $100 bottle is way superior to the old $100 bottle.
Explain to me what is changing in electrical equipment “break in”, other than temperature.
From the Cable Cooker review somewhere in cyberspace (Enjoy the Music)
“But now that may change. The first rays of a new cable-evaluating dawn are piercing my personal darkness. The audiodharma CABLE COOKER, developed and marketed by the enterprising Alan Kafton at Audio Excellence Az, is designed to maximize the sound quality of power, loudspeaker and interconnect (including A/V and phono) cabling by going far beyond the "normal" break-in that comes from using the cables in a system.
Kafton asserts, for example, that giving an interconnect a single day's burn-in on the CABLE COOKER equals a week or more of continuous system operation. He says that any kind of cable breaks in more thoroughly on a Cooker because of exposure to extreme signal levels and a special waveform that does not occur in normal system operation. The cooker's burn-in circuit supplies >1 watt for interconnects and 22 watts for speaker and power cabling, while generating a dynamic extended-frequency sweep.”
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
