New Headphone Burn In

Zarathustra[H]

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
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So,

Controversial topic indeed.

I used to think that the concept of headphone burn in was a bunch of silly pseudo-scientific audiophile placebo nonsense.

To be fair, when I first bought my first decent headphones (Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro) 7 years ago, I noticed them being harsh and sibilant for the first several weeks, until I slowly no longer noticed it anymore. All this time I had been confused that I was actually my ears getting used to them, and not headphone burn-in.

That was, until when I just bought another pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro's, and they exhibit the same harsh sibilance I remember from when my first pair were new.

This is an indicator to me that I was wrong, and there actually is something to burn-in, because if it were just down to my ears getting used to them, both my sets should sound the same.

So, I never intentionally burned in my first set. I just kind of listened them in, so to speak. This time around I'd like to try to accelerate the process.

Do you guys burn in? What methods do you use and how long for?
 
I believe the burn in effect is mostly from people putting socks over the earpads, which softens the pads and changes the direction that the sound enters the ear. Electrical and speaker material changes should not occur over any short period of time.
 
I have no method. I just play music. In my case that often means a lot of bass and noise. Even now I have a headset plugged in while I listen through my monitors.

It's like anything mechanical, it needs some time to break in and get all the parts moving together smoothly. Some companies do this during assembly, some just glue parts together.

Buy a new bike, ride it like you stole it.
 
I remember talking to a higher-end audio store, and they said they would burn in their subwoofers by leaving some test tones running in a loop overnight for a couple of weekends. They said 1-2 nights was enough to notice the difference. Personally I could notice a bit in the response on the speaker, but it wasn't much to my ears.
 
First off, to all the naysayers, it's totally real. It's just putting that wear onto the drivers so that they reach the place where they are broken in and where they are designed to perform.

Generally it doesn't take much. I would just grab an iPod classic. Put it at a normal listening volume (whatever that is for you), and just throw it into your closet for 24 hours. That'll be plenty. There might be a little more time that it takes for them to be completely worn in, but it will be more than enough to have them be in a place that will be ready to use.
 
Play pink noise through them at moderate volume or just use them as usual and if burn in is real then they will eventually burn themselves in. I know the designer of Totem speakers believes in burn in but he believes in a few wacky ideas I don't subscribe to.

 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/06/sennheiser-hd-650.html

Read the "Driver Break In" section.


FYI, this is the blog of the guy who designed the O2.
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Ahh yeah, he's the guy who got into that tiff with Schiit Audio over power on/off voltage issues a few years back, was a bit of an asshat, succeeded in getting himself banned on Head-fi, and then fell off the face of the planet :p

He certainly does seem to know his shit though. He doesn't give much information about HOW he does his break in though.

UnknownSouljer said:
Generally it doesn't take much. I would just grab an iPod classic. Put it at a normal listening volume (whatever that is for you), and just throw it into your closet for 24 hours. That'll be plenty. There might be a little more time that it takes for them to be completely worn in, but it will be more than enough to have them be in a place that will be ready to use.
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You think this would be effective on higher impedance (250ohm in this case). Would an iPod be powerful enough to properly perform a break in?

rezerekted said:
Play pink noise through them at moderate volume or just use them as usual and if burn in is real then they will eventually burn themselves in. I know the designer of Totem speakers believes in burn in but he believes in a few wacky ideas I don't subscribe to.

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Well, that's just it, there are so many different opinions about this, and difficult to find what is right. Some - like above - say to just play regular music, others suggest the pink noise as you do.

I'm guessing that now that I have a tube amp, it's probably not th ebest idea to leave it on 24/7 for break-in purposes, given all the heat they put out and the life span implications for the tubes.

I eagerly anticipate your guys opinions.

--Matt
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Do you guys burn in? What methods do you use and how long for?
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I tend to buy used so I don't have to deal with burn in... 'course the major savings is the primary reason for used.


-PK- said:
I believe the burn in effect is mostly from people putting socks over the earpads, which softens the pads and changes the direction that the sound enters the ear. Electrical and speaker material changes should not occur over any short period of time.
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Many manufacturers of phones to speakers believe in break-in. It's tantamount to their design process.

http://www.klipsch.com/education/how-to-break-in-speakers
Both surrounds and spiders are flexible; therefore, allowing them to experience their full range of motion and loosen up results in freer movement and better response. Think of it like stretching before you exercise. There are several simple ways to break a speaker in; while you could choose to buy costly gear to do so, it really isn’t required.
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https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/blog/how-run-speakers
Why do I need to run in my speakers?

Running in your new speakers is a lot like breaking in a recently purchased pair of shoes.
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http://celestion.com/speakerworld/guitartech/3/104/How_to_break-in_a_guitar_speaker/
A brand new, out of the box guitar speaker will subtly shift in tone over the first few hours of playing as the fibres within the cone start to relax and become more pliable. Don't worry too much about this change, its natural and many people believe that this improves the sound, making it more 'rounded' and pleasing to listen to.

Some players prefer to speed up this process, this is what is referred to as breaking-in; they deliberately soften up the cone in order to bring the speaker to it's optimum state in terms of tonality.
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Zarathustra[H] said:
Ahh yeah, he's the guy who got into that tiff with Schiit Audio over power on/off voltage issues a few years back, was a bit of an asshat, succeeded in getting himself banned on Head-fi, and then fell off the face of the planet :p

He certainly does seem to know his shit though. He doesn't give much information about HOW he does his break in though.
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He does more than know his stuff, like I said he designed the O2 DAC/AMP, objectively one of the best amps available. As far as the Schiit ordeal, as far as I understand it that may have been a bit unfair. Head-Fi is a clanny, cliqueish place that will actually ban you if you diss their sponsors. One of which happens to be Schiit. I'm inclined to believe he was banned unfairly (zealous individuals get banned easily...) but for the purposes of this, it's irrelevant anyhow. There's a section further down where he mentions how he broke it in.

BREAK IN: To see if there are measurable differences before and after break-in I made several measurements when the 650 was new right out of the box. And then I ran them at moderately loud volume for 48 hours and repeated the measurements. I went so far as to leave them undisturbed on my “simulated head” the entire time. I also rechecked the measurements in open air and with them on my head and the difference was consistent. The bass resonance shifted slightly lower by a few hertz and that’s what you might expect as the driver’s suspension loosens up a bit. Imagine a new pair of shoes being stiff and after you’ve worn them for a while they break-in and flex easier. That’s roughly what’s likely going on here. That said, the difference in resonance frequency is so slight it’s hard to imagine it’s audible. But it’s possible other characteristics, like distortion, also improve with break-in. Collectively all the changes together could be audible. And it’s very possible other headphones, with different driver designs and suspensions, would show much bigger changes after break-in:
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Like I said this guy created the Objective 2 AMP AND DAC. One of the best tested combos available. No BS.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
You think this would be effective on higher impedance (250ohm in this case). Would an iPod be powerful enough to properly perform a break in?
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Some headphones will required an amp. If you have a small portable amp you should be fine.

As for pink noise, I think that's a fine option, but not necessary. Just have it play what you normally listen to. If pink noise just floats your boat, go for it. I wouldn't say it's "wrong", just that it won't make a substantive difference versus anything else.
 
UnknownSouljer said:
Some headphones will required an amp. If you have a small portable amp you should be fine.

As for pink noise, I think that's a fine option, but not necessary. Just have it play what you normally listen to. If pink noise just floats your boat, go for it. I wouldn't say it's "wrong", just that it won't make a substantive difference versus anything else.
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I've had earbuds in the past I've burned in and they improved, I do not use headphones a lot lately.

Just crank them up and leave them on when not wearing them myself with regular music, white noise did not seem be a requirement to me, as long as there was bass in the music.

Has always worked well for me at any rate, have had a few earbuds sounded a lot better to me after about 50 hours breaking them in from when I bought them to just using them later personally.

I've had a few I've bought and almost sent back, then burned them in and they sounded a lot better to me after the first listening.

People argue about it a lot I guess, but I have always thought there was some break in involved, it might even be different from one manufacturer to another.
 
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MongGrel said:
I've had earbuds in the past I've burned in and they improved, I do not use headphones a lot lately.

Just crank them up and leave them on when not wearing them myself with regular music, white noise did not seem be a requirement to me, as long as there was bass in the music.

Has always worked well for me at any rate, have had a few earbuds sounded a lot better to me after about 50 hours breaking them in from when I bought them to just using them later personally.

I've had a few I've bought and almost sent back, then burned them in and they sounded a lot better to me after the first listening.

People argue about it a lot I guess, but I have always thought there was some break in involved, it might even be different from one manufacturer to another.
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I work under the assumption that people will actually want to use their headphones sooner than later, crazy right? I think a majority of the wear in will happen within' 24 hours. Will there be improvements after that? Maybe (maybe even probably). But I just don't feel like they're substantive to prevent someone from enjoying their headphones sooner (that is to say the difference between 0-24 has A LOT happen versus 25-48, which would only have perhaps more rounded characteristics versus drastic change). If someone wants to do break in for a week, whatever, fine do it. But I think 24 hours is enough. People will argue over the number and do whatever they believe. And that is okay. But for me it's just about min-maxing and time efficiency. I bought headphones because I wanted to use them. A day is enough. Now they need to be on my head. If you agree, awesome. If not, that's fine too. But I personally don't have time to waste not enjoying my headphones.

(Also so we're clear, I am aware that you're for the most part agreeing with me in your response, but I'm making myself more clear with my statements).
 
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NP, was making a personal observation.

Just leaving them running in the background might be beneficial when you are not using them a short while was pretty much my only point.

;)
 
thesmokingman said:
Many manufacturers of phones to speakers believe in break-in. It's tantamount to their design process.
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Yea, but maybe they say that so you won't return their speakers in the first weak for a refund. If a person believes the speaker will sound better after break in then they might believe them and then keep the product too long to return it. Just a theory but might be their ulterior motive for saying burn in is real.

Watch Dave Rat's headphone burn in test.

 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
He does more than know his stuff, like I said he designed the O2 DAC/AMP, objectively one of the best amps available. As far as the Schiit ordeal, as far as I understand it that may have been a bit unfair. Head-Fi is a clanny, cliqueish place that will actually ban you if you diss their sponsors. One of which happens to be Schiit. I'm inclined to believe he was banned unfairly (zealous individuals get banned easily...) but for the purposes of this, it's irrelevant anyhow. There's a section further down where he mentions how he broke it in.
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Yeah, but if you go back and read the thread, he was hounding them pretty bad, and being an asshat in general. I think the ban was deserved. Just being good at what you do isnt enough if you can't also be civil, which he most definitely was not.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
Like I said this guy created the Objective 2 AMP AND DAC. One of the best tested combos available. No BS.
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I don't believe in any such thing as "best". Every product has advantages and disadvantages.

That being said, it tends to review pretty equivalently to many other AMP/DAC's in it's price range. Certainly impressive work. I couldn't do it, but proclaiming it the king of DAC/Amps seems a bit... Well, excessive.
 
rezerekted said:
Yea, but maybe they say that so you won't return their speakers in the first weak for a refund. If a person believes the speaker will sound better after break in then they might believe them and then keep the product too long to return it. Just a theory but might be their ulterior motive for saying burn in is real.

Watch Dave Rat's headphone burn in test.
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That was a nice video and the results I expected. I've heard that manufacturers started adding in burn in instructions with their equipment because it was the audiophile thing to do, and so it's a way of marketing to consumers that their equipment is of high quality. It's like slapping an audiophile sticker on the box.
 
-PK- said:
That was a nice video and the results I expected. I've heard that manufacturers started adding in burn in instructions with their equipment because it was the audiophile thing to do, and so it's a way of marketing to consumers that their equipment is of high quality. It's like slapping an audiophile sticker on the box.
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As I mentioned above, I used to be a skeptic, but owning two Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro headphones in a row disavowed me of this notion.

They were both ear piercingly sibilant when new, and mellowed in after a while. After the first pair, I just though my ears got used to it, and was expecting my ears to be used to the second pair as well, but then they were ear piercing as well.

This affirmed my belief that there is at least something to burn-in. Maybe not for all models and all things, but at least for some.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Ahh yeah, he's the guy who got into that tiff with Schiit Audio over power on/off voltage issues a few years back, was a bit of an asshat, succeeded in getting himself banned on Head-fi, and then fell off the face of the planet :p

He certainly does seem to know his shit though. He doesn't give much information about HOW he does his break in though.
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Well, he defended the fact that Schiit had a shitty design at that time (and was completely right about it) that was dangerous for the headphones. He was banned because Head-fi is a business in the first place and didn't want to harm any of their sponsors. Rational discussion in Head-fi is completely forbidden.


Zarathustra[H] said:
That being said, it tends to review pretty equivalently to many other AMP/DAC's in it's price range. Certainly impressive work. I couldn't do it, but proclaiming it the king of DAC/Amps seems a bit... Well, excessive.
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Pretty equivalent to many other AMP/DAC? Not when it launched it wasn't. Now it is a very different story...

The problem with the audiophile community is that there is 0 science behind it. It is just a huge amount of bullshit held together by collective misinformation and more bullshit.
 
rezerekted said:
Yea, but maybe they say that so you won't return their speakers in the first weak for a refund. If a person believes the speaker will sound better after break in then they might believe them and then keep the product too long to return it. Just a theory but might be their ulterior motive for saying burn in is real.

Watch Dave Rat's headphone burn in test.

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I think I feel stoned now after watching that and have missed the testing part? Was anything done lol other than rambling?


prava said:
The problem with the audiophile community is that there is 0 science behind it. It is just a huge amount of bullshit held together by collective misinformation and more bullshit.
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Truth, especially on head fi. Random joes becomes gurus because they blindly mod phones with no basis in science and everyone agrees because some dude said it sounded great, lol.
 
prava said:
Well, he defended the fact that Schiit had a shitty design at that time (and was completely right about it) that was dangerous for the headphones. He was banned because Head-fi is a business in the first place and didn't want to harm any of their sponsors. Rational discussion in Head-fi is completely forbidden.
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The "defending their sponsors" thing doesn't hold up. If they were censoring unpopular comments against their sponsors, that thread would no longer be up, which it is. They haven't hidden anything.

If you read through it nwavguy may have been right, but he was not being civil, which is ultimately what got him banned.

Schiit's response in their web forum "book" was much more gracious than nwavguy's criticism, and in the end they thank him for calling an issue that they hadn't thought of to light.

Both the founders (Jason Stoddard and Mike Moffat) came from backgrounds in traditional high end audio equipment, where people know (or at least used to know) not to leave their stuff plugged in when powering amps on and off, because it can get damaged, and intentionally omitted a relay to keep the audio pathway cleaner, like one would in that market. They ahd some learning to do about the consumer electronics market.

Calling it a shitty design is not only misleading, it is also wrong. It was actually a better, cleaner, more reliable design if they were selling in the market they were used to, but they weren't. Personally, knowing what I do now, I'd probably prefer an amp without a relay. But I didn't know when I bought my first headphone amp, and I might have wrecked a set of headphones and been really pissed, so I can see both sides of it.
 
thesmokingman said:
I think I feel stoned now after watching that and have missed the testing part? Was anything done lol other than rambling?

Truth, especially on head fi. Random joes becomes gurus because they blindly mod phones with no basis in science and everyone agrees because some dude said it sounded great, lol.
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Agree. There is a ton of that over there. Head-Fi is not perfect, but there are some members who try to keep it real, and rely of objective measures, and when they do chime in it is very valuable.
 
HammerSandwich said:
Tyll worked on this at Innerfidelity back in 2011 & concluded that break-in effects are real but tiny. Here are the listening & measurement articles.
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I think there is more to it than that. The methodology is sound, and I trust the conclusions for the hardware that was under test, but designs differ, and something that is tiny on one set of headphones or speakers, maybe be massive on another, and have absolutely no effect what so ever on yet another. Sometimes even tolerancing resulting in lot to lot variations of the same model may respond differently to wear in/burn in.

If the tolerance range allows some parts to fit tighter than others, I would expect that the ones that fit the tightest would see a larger difference than those which are already more loosely fitting from the beginning.

This - of course - doesn't help take the subjectivity out of it, unless one performs these tests on statistically valid sample sizes across large numbers of batches.

What I can clearly state from my experience with my two sets of beyerdynamics - however- is that when my two headphones were new the high frequency harshness and sibilance was not subtle. It was enough to be absolutely ear piercingly painful. It has - however - been gone from my first pair for almost 7 years, and is already starting to mellow on my second pair. If it were - in fact - my ears getting used to the sound, and not the headphones burning in, I wouldn't have experienced it on my second pair, as I have been listening to the old pair all along, and never would have gotten unused to them. I also don't think that it is placebo, because I was actually convinced that I wouldn't have a burn-in period, and that burnin was a total waste before receiving my new headphones. I had blamed the issue with my old ones on my ears taking time to get used to them.

All that being said, I'll also admit that I may be more sensitive to higher frequencies than many others. I'm not trying to brag, or claim to have super ears like many snooty audiophiles do. Far from it. My ears are not what they used to be. I struggle with background noise these days. I used to be able to pick up a sound I was listening to, while surrounded by noise, much easier than I can today. Talking to people in noisy clubs can be a real bother. But, on the other hand, I have had several instances that confirm my suspicion that I hear higher in the frequency band than most people. I am often terribly bothered by things that ought to be too high in pitch for me to hear, including dog whistles, and our ultrasonic welding machines on the manufacturing floor. When no one else seems to react to them at all, I cringe when they go off.

Also a few years back, when kids were using high pitched notifications on their phones, so they could text in class without their teachers noticing, I could hear those things clear as day, to the dismay of my ex-stepsons.

So add to that, everyone's senses are different, and they probably experience things differently. This is why we should put more emphasis on instrumentation readings than on any one individuals hearing when trying to determine if the effect is real or not.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I think there is more to it than that. The methodology is sound, and I trust the conclusions for the hardware that was under test, but designs differ, and something that is tiny on one set of headphones or speakers, maybe be massive on another, and have absolutely no effect what so ever on yet another. Sometimes even tolerancing resulting in lot to lot variations of the same model may respond differently to wear in/burn in.
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All valid points.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
The "defending their sponsors" thing doesn't hold up. If they were censoring unpopular comments against their sponsors, that thread would no longer be up, which it is. They haven't hidden anything.

If you read through it nwavguy may have been right, but he was not being civil, which is ultimately what got him banned.
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First of all, do you even know if the state of that thread is the same as it was back when they made those posts? If you actually read the thread, he starts responding at around page 2. He's quite civil at the time. In fact, Schiit is the one that starts BSing around the point first. It's a very long thread, and I've found that even with initially reasonable people, when things wear on and people refuse to listen to you.
Read his view of it here:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/07/banned-at-head-fi.html
I won't claim that his view of the matter was right in this case, but this is all relative and subjective.

Furthermore, civility was not why he got banned, in case you didn't know:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/584763/the...ormer-ha-appreciation-thread/150#post_8144761
Apparently there was some talk of "Attorneys" and such in PM's. We have no idea who was right and who was wrong because this all happened in the background.

So considering that you obviously have not properly read up on this topic yourself and considered both sides carefully, I highly suggest you refrain from making further comments without doing so.

Calling it a shitty design is not only misleading, it is also wrong. It was actually a better, cleaner, more reliable design if they were selling in the market they were used to, but they weren't. Personally, knowing what I do now, I'd probably prefer an amp without a relay. But I didn't know when I bought my first headphone amp, and I might have wrecked a set of headphones and been really pissed, so I can see both sides of it.
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We're essentially arguing morality here. And I completely disagree with your stance. In my opinion, the purveyor of truth and knowledge is correct. If he needs to be a douchbag to drill it into us at some point, then so be it. I mean you're trying to defend a company that designed a product that could potentially ruin peoples' investment and then essentially mocked an individual that ended up being correct about the product, rather than thoroughly investigating their design. Really. You're calling something that potentially damages headphones as "not a crappy design"? Let me give you this GPU that has a small chance of blowing your computer up but gives you great performance.... probably. Awesome design, right? It doesn't matter what they were or weren't used to, and what market they were getting into. At the end of the day their product was flawed. There are no excuses. In my opinion, Schiit's stance here was nothing but simple hubris, and I definitely do not respect the company as much because of this load of crap.

Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't believe in any such thing as "best". Every product has advantages and disadvantages.

That being said, it tends to review pretty equivalently to many other AMP/DAC's in it's price range. Certainly impressive work. I couldn't do it, but proclaiming it the king of DAC/Amps seems a bit... Well, excessive.
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It's not excessive at all. It's nothing but the truth. The amp and dac combo was legitimately MADE to measure well. That was his whole goal in designing it. And it does indeed measure well. Now are there more expensive ones, with even more expensive components, that may measure even (probably negligibly) better? Maybe. But the thing is like someone else in the topic said, until the guy came around all headphone amps and such were just moreso psuedoscience and BS. He designed this as a budget amp that met performance goals. A true piece of engineering. That, at least, you can certain respect about it. The best? I never said it was. I said it was one of the "best tested". Which at the time I'm pretty sure that it was...

The design is available to everyone online and you can build it yourself. No smoke and mirrors.

Zarathustra[H] said:
<snip>
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Okay. So what's your point with this post? This thread was you asking about what burn in methods people use. Some people questioned burn in being possible at all, so I linked a source that objectively proved that burn in was possible with his pair of headphones, which sets up the rest of the topic to hopefully keep going smoothly about your original topic. I wasn't ever trying to prove that each and every single pair of headphones will exhibit burn in, or that there aren't variances. The point was simply that, yes, it does exist. Objectively. Burn in is real as a concept. What is all of the noise in this post?

I think I've said my piece. If you wanna keep arguing random crap on the side, that's fine. The topic doesn't exist anymore essentially because I doubt anyone has done any studies into what objectively burns in the headphone the "best".
 
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thesmokingman said:
I think I feel stoned now after watching that and have missed the testing part? Was anything done lol other than rambling?
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Just watch the end of the video for the conclusion. He found a tiny bit of measurable difference but no sound difference he could hear.
 
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StoleMyOwnCar said:
First of all, do you even know if the state of that thread is the same as it was back when they made those posts? If you actually read the thread, he starts responding at around page 2. He's quite civil at the time. In fact, Schiit is the one that starts BSing around the point first. It's a very long thread, and I've found that even with initially reasonable people, when things wear on and people refuse to listen to you.
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Well, maybe we are reading his tone differently, but it really looks to me like he had an axe to grind or something. Right off the bat he is jumping down their throats, calling them unprofessional and before long accusing them of cutting corners because of their "expensive" enclosures, and then he goes on tangents pulling in other companies I've never heard of. To me, he really comes across as being quite unhinged.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
Read his view of it here:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/07/banned-at-head-fi.html
I won't claim that his view of the matter was right in this case, but this is all relative and subjective.
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Yeah, I remember reading this a bunch of years ago.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
Furthermore, civility was not why he got banned, in case you didn't know:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/584763/the...ormer-ha-appreciation-thread/150#post_8144761
Apparently there was some talk of "Attorneys" and such in PM's. We have no idea who was right and who was wrong because this all happened in the background.
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That was my bad, I could have sworn I had read that civility was part of the cause, but honestly its been several years since I was reading about it, so my memories are hazy.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
We're essentially arguing morality here. And I completely disagree with your stance. In my opinion, the purveyor of truth and knowledge is correct. If he needs to be a douchbag to drill it into us at some point, then so be it. I mean you're trying to defend a company that designed a product that could potentially ruin peoples' investment and then essentially mocked an individual that ended up being correct about the product, rather than thoroughly investigating their design. Really. You're calling something that potentially damages headphones as "not a crappy design"? Let me give you this GPU that has a small chance of blowing your computer up but gives you great performance.... probably. Awesome design, right? It doesn't matter what they were or weren't used to, and what market they were getting into. At the end of the day their product was flawed. There are no excuses. In my opinion, Schiit's stance here was nothing but simple hubris, and I definitely do not respect the company as much because of this load of crap.
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Your completely disregarding the fact that they come from an industry where their customers are familiar with excess currents ant power on and off, and disconnect devices accordingly. They made a mistake - for sure - not considering that the market they were selling into was the same in this regard, and after having it pointed out, they fixed it, for every product already on the market.

I think this incident showed them to be a fantastic company, rather than the other way around.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
I think I've said my piece. If you wanna keep arguing random crap on the side, that's fine. The topic doesn't exist anymore essentially because I doubt anyone has done any studies into what objectively burns in the headphone the "best".
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You know, I'm not quite sure why we are arguing about this in the first place...
 
rezerekted said:
Yea, but maybe they say that so you won't return their speakers in the first weak for a refund. If a person believes the speaker will sound better after break in then they might believe them and then keep the product too long to return it. Just a theory but might be their ulterior motive for saying burn in is real.
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Did you know that the Thiele/Small parameters of a speaker can be measured even at a home lab? If not, be advised that a factory new speaker can dramatically alter it's parameters after the break-in period.

 
Hello Guys.I am newbie in here.I just join in here.
Nice to meet you all.This is my first post.
I hope i will be back soon.
 
After going through several IEMs and a handful of headphones (from crappy headsets to my current SRH 1840s) I can firmly say there is a 'burn in' period and it makes a difference. I think perhaps people try to disprove burn in, because of the wording? I guess to me it's more a 'settling' period where the parts/drivers themselves are 'settling' to their 'true state'. In the same way a couch will become softer over time with use, headphones change their sound (albeit usually subtly) over time as well. I find bass to benefit most here personally, and I once had a friend tell me 'it's not the bass getting better, it's the cans losing the harsh treble' which balances out the sound. Not sure if what he said was true, I can just confirm all of my audio gear has changed its signature subtly after being 'broken in'.

I'm also a member of Head-Fi and yes it's a very... specific type of person for the most part, and bad mouthing sponsors or certain peoples tastes/ideas/reviews will get you banned quicksmart XD.
 
ReaperX22 said:
I once had a friend tell me 'it's not the bass getting better, it's the cans losing the harsh treble' which balances out the sound. Not sure if what he said was true, I can just confirm all of my audio gear has changed its signature subtly after being 'broken in'.
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This matches my personal experience with my beyerdynamics perfectly.
 
rezerekted said:
And it concludes with: The bulk of a driver's compliance shift will occur at the time of initial burn in.

I don't know how many people know this but I read that all speaker drivers are sent a signal as the last step in manufacturing to do this initial "burn in".
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It seems you have never measured a new driver before and after burn-in yourself. There can be 100% or more difference in measured performance figures before and after.

This is not to say burn in isn't used as snake-oil placebo tool. For example with amplifiers, pre and post burn-in the measurements are the same within a fraction of a percent. Still some sellers swear that you have to break in the amp, even after switching owners!!
 
B00nie said:
It seems you have never measured a new driver before and after burn-in yourself. There can be 100% or more difference in measured performance figures before and after.

This is not to say burn in isn't used as snake-oil placebo tool. For example with amplifiers, pre and post burn-in the measurements are the same within a fraction of a percent. Still some sellers swear that you have to break in the amp, even after switching owners!!
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I posted a video about burn in by Dave Rat so why would you say the above. I said it is a small measurable difference but the audio difference is negligible. I have beyerdynamic DT990 and have had them for over five years and they sound the same to me today as the day I bought them. They only sound harsh when the music is harsh, people say they are sibilant headphones, no, the sibilance is already in the music and the headphones reveal that and many other headphones do not.
 
rezerekted said:
I posted a video about burn in by Dave Rat so why would you say the above. I said it is a small measurable difference but the audio difference is negligible. I have beyerdynamic DT990 and have had them for over five years and they sound the same to me today as the day I bought them. They only sound harsh when the music is harsh, people say they are sibilant headphones, no, the sibilance is already in the music and the headphones reveal that and many other headphones do not.
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I wouldn't call over 100% change in T/S parameters small.
 
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