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Break In Failed

There is a new set of speakers on the way and after looking for tips on speaker break in, the topic hits left me smirking.

Good advice like face the speakers and wire one out of phase, use heavy blankets and leave on 24-7 for weeks.

The amusing part was exercising them at ~90dB for excursion during away hours. My current speakers have seen that level in my apartment for maybe an hour in the years since owning them. Did I fail at break in protocol?

I anticipate feedback recommendations of connect and enjoy the music after leaving them on for a couple of weeks at my normal listening levels, which has served me well in the past.

manogolf
kota1
2,706 posts
 

Once setup consider vibration control. If you get this far next steps would be room treatment and DSP:

budget

better:

https://www.mapleshadestore.com/speakerstands.php

 

kota1
2,706 posts
 

OP, I checked your virtual system, components look great but the walls seem less than ideal for acoustics. Consider a room kit:

 

sns
3,003 posts
 

I've used the  face to face, out of phase blanket method, very effective. Present speakers make that pretty much impossible, so I've just listened through break in, unless something seriously off break in shouldn't be that difficult. Most noticeable thing I hear during break in of all components and parts substitutions, and I do a lot of the parts substitution thing, is a certain sense of what I'd call 'up tightness'. Excess of attack, lack of sustain or decay, and veiled quality. Over time as things begin to loosen up I hear this sensation of 'blooming', an opening up or relaxing of presentation, this may also include larger sound stage and more dimensional imaging. Sometimes this blooming can be sudden thing, one minute up tight and very next the blooming begins, quite an amazing thing when this happens. Really is very educating to listen through entire burn in. Still, I don't bother with listening through burn in with any component or part prior to amplifier, you can do this silently with signal flowing from source.

 

Also, I certainly concur with those who believe burn in applies to our ear/brain complex. We ourselves need time to adjust to sometimes very subtle changes in sound quality, over time we develop comfort zone for present sound qualities, changing things brings back analytical mode so we may be overly critical or 'uptight'.

gs5556
1,218 posts
 

A few thoughts on the subject:

In my experience the only thing that sounds worse new out of the box is a vacuum tube.

Do driver manufacturers run new production drivers for hundreds of hours to "break in" before testing, or do they test them right off the assembly line?

Do capacitor manufacturers state on their data sheets that hundreds of hours of use are required prior to use in critical filtering or timing circuits in medical or aerospace equipment?

If something doesn’t sound right out of the box then it always will.

kota1
2,706 posts
 

Do driver manufacturers run new production drivers for hundreds of hours to "break in" before testing?

Yes, most manufacturers will also provide break in guidelines. For example, my JBL 230's took about 80 hours before they sounded "right":

 

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