Is break in quicker with Planars and Stats?

I agree with Philjolet.

When I owned Sound-Lab speakers they required several months and so did my Dali Megalines which are cone plus ribbons. I think this is true for all speakers.

Typically, the higher resolution the speaker (and the system it's in), the more obvious break in is.

It's a shame that the information Musicnoise typed out gets run at Audiogon. Invariably there will be newbees that believe what he said and possibly sell a good pair of speakers before ever knowing what they really sound like.

Lightminer is correct:

with Magnepans at least you can take a Radio Shack SPL meter and measure the falloff at a certain level of input in bass, and 3 months later the response curve is different. I don't know as much about cone speakers and personal experience with breakin but I can say scientifically that the Maggie 3.6s sound *very* different on 1st day and 3 months later. And, as I said, I can verify this with instruments and graphs.

Both scientifically and by common sense and old fashioned listening to music.

Sure, we can all learn to cope but that is very different than spreading information as truth that is not.

There is not nearly the network of dealers and support as when I first got into this business and lots of people use the internet for all their information. When information such as "speakers don't really break in" gets taken as fact, then someone can get burned.

Frankly I wish it were simple, just plug and play and all is well. The truth is, break in a fact of life and applies to everything from CRT monitors to disc brake pads, auto engines, Teflon wire, audio capacitors, speaker surrounds and even phono cartridges.

It's not voodoo and should not be hard to understand, if you stop to think about the mechanics involved.

I'm going to really stir the pot with this post.

My Dali Megalines required 450 to 600 hours before they performed to their maximum. The bass was non existent until after 300 hours and deep bass not until nearly 600.

A good friend and member of my audio group experienced similar frustration with his Kharma Exquisite 1De. He waited beyond 650 hours before his speakers produced best performance.

In both cases, I have ten or so associates that heard the long progress and final results. Believe it or not, it's absolutely true.

Maybe it's the ceramic drivers in the Kharma, maybe the 24 woofers in my Dali's move so little that break in is tardy in arriving. Whatever the reason, it's audible and frustrating to wait through.

My new tube crossover made a break through in performance this last Tuesday evening. Burn in was 605 hours at the end of the evening and a huge change from the week before when there was only 437 hours on the parts.

In the case of the crossover I know the slow break in is due to Teflon Caps, 14 in the main unit and more in the power supply. I called the manufacturer who designed and built the caps (the same guy that builds Cardas, V-Cap, DynamiCap and most of the other big names).

He was not surprised, said it would continue to about 1000 hours or beyond, same answer I got from several other engineers in the business.

My previous custom crossover was identical in design, hand built by the same guy and was working well at 50 hours, reaching maximum performance at about 350 hours.

The difference? It had traditional caps from Wima, F-Dyne and Illinois capacitor and half the chokes and power supply. Everything makes a difference when all the parts are pushed to the limit.