As always hilde45 you get to many of the most salient points in the discussion and I for one appreciate the clarity you bring. It seems relevant that the subtleties in sound of which we are discussing can best be heard by the young whom don't have much experience at listening for them. While us old geezers will have trouble hearing what may or may have not changed. Another irony in life I guess, but it will not impede my quest for something that may be inaudible to me. I will know it's there whether it is or isn't.
Burn in and peer reviewed brain research
Not to broach a religious topic, but I know burn in discussions happen all the time in audio circles. Until today, I had not found any scientific research from the brain side.
This article was interesting: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10898501/
It is a 2024 review in Cureus (Kalchev, PMC10898501) that surveyed the physiological, psychological, and social dimensions of audio burn-in. It found no substantial evidence for mechanical changes producing audible differences, and instead identified several well-documented mechanisms — ear fatigue, confirmation bias, placebo effects, and neural acclimatization — that adequately explain perceived changes without requiring the equipment to have changed at all.
Has anyone found other literature of this type – physiological, psychoacoustic, rather than engineering/mechanical? I'd be curious to learn about it.
Of course, anyone who wants to put their hand on a bible and swear that burn in is real based on personal experience is welcome to do so, but I'm hoping to find things beyond the anecdotal.
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Dr. Floyd Toole and Dr. Sean Olive, apparently, studied this phenomena. Dr. Toole’s findings are published in Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms. Gemini sighted the PubMed article you mentioned as well. It also came up with this study https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/15/8425 It’s not directly a study of psychoacoustics, per se, but it concludes that any perceived changes are a result of psychological phenomena rather than physical changes in the materials that would be audible to the listener. |
That’s not at all what the linked article claims: ... Objective tests revealed slight changes in speaker impedance and amplitude response after burn-in, but these differences are inaudible to the average listener ... (Emphasis added.) Other studies, including work by Floyd Toole, consistently report that experienced, trained listeners score higher at detecting audible differences. I would suggest that most audiophiles are not "average" listeners - almost by definition. |
@cleeds, dishonest researchers often compare results for the average person (listening, tasting, viewing, etc. depending on what is being studied). Then they go on to claim that there are no meaningful differences. As you indicate, work by honest researchers uncovers those differences. That being said, differences before and after burn-in seem to be smaller than differences among components. I've found that various components seem to improve somewhat after burn-in, but I've never found a case in which there was a big enough difference that a poor sounding component sounded good after burn-in.
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cable “burn-in”, in reality should be called aging, is real, period! burn-in, which is an accelerated aging, requires to apply elevated stress conditions, such as increased temperature, current, frequency, voltage, etc. bad quality cables age faster. cheap dielectric degrades faster comparing to used in aerospace / test equipment cables. equipment (amps, cartridges, speakers, etc.) used for cable “burn in” checks, ages x1000 times faster than worst cable, thus apples-apples comparison is not possible. |
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