Fyi
Does anyone know how many hours to typically break in the studio 60's?
here are Paul Barton's(designer & co-founder of PSB speakers) views on that very mysterious subject?
People often mention capacitor and speaker break-in,
here is what Paul Barton founder of PSB speakers has to say
about it.
"Break-in refers to running components for a long time (sometimes hundreds of hours) to the point where their components "settle" into their proper operating mode. Barton doesn’t doubt that some components do change subtly, but he thinks that the major improvements people think they’re hearing aren’t in the components at all.
Barton doesn’t doubt that people are hearing these changes,
but thinks that what they’re hearing is actually brain
break-in.
"Barton has examined his own speakers to test this. He has
taken a Stratus Gold loudspeaker, built and measured some ten years ago, and re-measured it today. The deviation is slight, perhaps 1/4dB at most. Although that deviation can possibly be heard, it is certainly not a huge difference that one may attest to hearing. Instead, Barton surmises that the difference in sound that people are hearing over time is conditioning of the brain. He cites experiments done with sight that indicate the brain can accommodate for enormous changes fairly quickly and certainly within the hundreds of hours that audiophiles claim changes occur in. Could this apply to hearing, too? Barton thinks that more often than not, what happens is that the changes in perceived sound that are attributed to component break-in are simply the brain becoming accustomed to the sound. He warns listeners not to fool themselves."
I have been thinking about Paul Barton's comment above regarding "brain break-in" and it's apparent application to evaluation of loudspeakers (and perhaps also new caps)over time.
At first I agreed fully with this as a short term effect (e.g. listening for a period of 1/2 to 3 or more hours in a single session). I have experienced this phenomenon wherein something objectionable in the speaker's performance gradually became acceptable and unnoticed after a while.
But, I also wondered about repeated breaks in between listening sessions of 1 or more days and what effects going back to the same music with the same loudspeakers would have regarding the evaluation of break-in. Would the brain's acceptance of a loudspeaker's sonic deficiencies gradually become acceptable SOONER or, even immediate during a new listening session?
This led me to investigate psychoacoustics. Wikipedia's description of it includes the following:
"....There are true psycho-acoustic effects introduced by the brain. For example, when a person listens to crackly and needle-on-vinyl hiss-filled records, he or she soon stops noticing the background noise, and enjoys the music. A person who does this habitually appears to forget about the noise altogether, and may not be able to tell you after listening if there was noise present. This effect is called psycho-acoustical masking. The brain’s ability to perform such masking has been important for the adoption of a number of technologies;..........."
The first sentence above is in full agreement with my personal experience. However, it's that second sentence in the quote above that answered my question regarding repeated listenings over time. So, psycho-acoustical masking may be at the crux of our notion of speaker/capacitor break-in. That is, if Wikipedia and other 'answer' sites are truly correct.
