Breaking in a speaker is no joke

O

okaenegen

Audiophyte
Newly invested hifi owner here. I’ve read so many threads about the need to “break in” speakers and always thought that claim might be a little exaggerated.

Well…

When my Buchardt s400mkii arrived, I was a bit underwhelmed. Mids sounded good. But the bass just seemed missing. And that is a selling point for em. I had to use a lot of eq to make music sound exciting.

But now, even just a week later, wow. Bass is really hitting a lot harder. I thought I had some eq preset on last night but nope, it’s just the speakers sounding more limber and dynamic.
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
You sure it isn't you that got broken in?
agreed, while depending on speaker design there can be some amount of 'break in' , but for sure the large part of the adjustment factor is the individual IMO as well.
 
F

fmw

Audioholic Ninja
The reason the hi fi industry pushes break in periods is that customers tend to like their equipment better with a little time to become accustomed to it. Speakers don't actually break in. Listeners do. Glad you like your new speakers, though. Sounds like they will serve you well for a long time.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
The mind is a powerful thing. :D
Especially when it's suggested that such a thing is a thing. While yes of course perhaps some drivers may need a bit of mechanical break-in it's not likely audible let alone any reliable sonic memory to do an actual comparison.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
Especially when it's suggested that such a thing is a thing. While yes of course perhaps some drivers may need a bit of mechanical break-in it's not likely audible let alone any reliable sonic memory to do an actual comparison.
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
Especially when it's suggested that such a thing is a thing. While yes of course perhaps some drivers may need a bit of mechanical break-in it's not likely audible let alone any reliable sonic memory to do an actual comparison.
Exactly, it cracks me up when Maggie owners claim that their plannars need at least 500 hrs to 'open up' !
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
The reason the hi fi industry pushes break in periods is that customers tend to like their equipment better with a little time to become accustomed to it. Speakers don't actually break in. Listeners do. Glad you like your new speakers, though. Sounds like they will serve you well for a long time.
I think part of it is to persuade people to keep equipment purchased at a B&M store when they might want to return it. After a wasted trip to the store, they don't want to go back. "Wait until they break i n" = "I don't want to give you a refund and end up losing money on these speakers because I can't legally sell them as 'new' ".
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
Exactly, it cracks me up when Maggie owners claim that their plannars need at least 500 hrs to 'open up' !
Maybe it really does take 500 hours or more for especially thick-headed audiophiles to hear to adapt to the differences.
 
F

fmw

Audioholic Ninja
I think part of it is to persuade people to keep equipment purchased at a B&M store when they might want to return it. After a wasted trip to the store, they don't want to go back. "Wait until they break i n" = "I don't want to give you a refund and end up losing money on these speakers because I can't legally sell them as 'new' ".
Exactly. It is designed to get people to keep what they bought. It works. People actually do confuse familiarity with a break in period.

We had chance to check this with a quick blind test at the audio store. The store was prepping some speakers for delivery and we ran a bias controlled test comparing the new speakers to the demo pair on the sales floor. Those speakers had been on the floor for a few months. No difference in sound quality.
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
Exactly. It is designed to get people to keep what they bought. It works. People actually do confuse familiarity with a break in period.

We had chance to check this with a quick blind test at the audio store. The store was prepping some speakers for delivery and we ran a bias controlled test comparing the new speakers to the demo pair on the sales floor. Those speakers had been on the floor for a few months. No difference in sound quality.
When I worked at a stereo store, most people would care about getting the full warranty more than having any idea that they might sound different from a set that was fresh out of the boxes. The owner didn't like lighting birthday candles for demo equipment, so we would have 'Demo Days' sales and when he was traveling, we staged 'The Manager Is Out Of Town' sales- the first time, he didn't know anything about it, but heard from friends that we did it and he wasn't happy about it, at first, but warmed up to the idea after he saw how much we sold.
 
everettT

everettT

Audioholic Spartan
I think part of it is to persuade people to keep equipment purchased at a B&M store when they might want to return it. After a wasted trip to the store, they don't want to go back. "Wait until they break i n" = "I don't want to give you a refund and end up losing money on these speakers because I can't legally sell them as 'new' ".
Exactly!
 
Mikado463

Mikado463

Audioholic Spartan
Exactly. It is designed to get people to keep what they bought. It works. People actually do confuse familiarity with a break in period.

We had chance to check this with a quick blind test at the audio store. The store was prepping some speakers for delivery and we ran a bias controlled test comparing the new speakers to the demo pair on the sales floor. Those speakers had been on the floor for a few months. No difference in sound quality.
interesting you mention this for years ago when the Martin Logan owners had a gathering/convention in Lawrence, Ks we were treated to a similar demo. A pair of run-in Summitt's vs a pair right off the line, we weren't told which were which until after. If memory serves me right there were 6 of us in the listening room and we all discerned a difference. The ones that had some hrs on them had better and somewhat noticeable panel/woofer integration. Regardless I remember even the M/L folks poo-hooing ridiculous 'break-in' time
 
ryanosaur

ryanosaur

Audioholic Overlord
Interesting tidbit:
In a different conversation, Dennis said that he can hear a clear difference between his older Revelator 8" woofers in his personal Speakers vs new ones being installed into new cabinets for delivery to customers.
Talking to Nick at Stereo Integrity, he said that the main component of the driver to change is the Suspension. Nothing else will alter as a Driver is used, but a new Suspension (Spider) is fabric and glue in most cases and exercising that will cause it to loosen up slightly.
This can be seen in good measurements of a Driver's parameters, but they are very small differences which do not cause significant changes in design.
Going back to Dennis, he has previously indicated an 'agnostic' view on Driver break-in. Even after that statement he made, I haven't seen him change his stance, necessarily, that there isn't really a need for breaking things in.
Now, going back to Nick and his process for running in a Driver. He told me to set it up in Free Air, running a tone below FS at approximately 50% Xmax, and then pulsing it on for 5 seconds, off for 5 seconds... after a minute of this, the Suspension is adequately exercised to be considered "broken in."
Of course, that still begs the question on whether an audible change would occur vs an engineering change. From a mechanical/design standpoint, getting the suspension loosened up on a very strong Motor is going to result in a more accurate final design. Still, most of the Designers I have spoken with still maintain that "Breaking In" a Speaker is a fallacy.

*shrugs

This is going to go down in history as one of those things we just will never know an answer to unless we can get somebody like Erin or Amir to Klippel-ize a Speaker for comparison, new vs run-in and see if the measurement suite reveals anything FOLLOWED by a proper blind test against a matching New Speaker.
 
F

fmw

Audioholic Ninja
interesting you mention this for years ago when the Martin Logan owners had a gathering/convention in Lawrence, Ks we were treated to a similar demo. A pair of run-in Summitt's vs a pair right off the line, we weren't told which were which until after. If memory serves me right there were 6 of us in the listening room and we all discerned a difference. The ones that had some hrs on them had better and somewhat noticeable panel/woofer integration. Regardless I remember even the M/L folks poo-hooing ridiculous 'break-in' time
A bias controlled test?
 
Swerd

Swerd

Audioholic Warlord
Interesting tidbit:
In a different conversation, Dennis said that he can hear a clear difference between his older Revelator 8" woofers in his personal Speakers vs new ones being installed into new cabinets for delivery to customers …
A number of years ago, Dennis conducted a simple blind listening test among a few friends. This was posted on another audio forum, because there was a lot of chatter about Cambridge Audio Aero 2 speakers needing a lot of break-in time, especially in the tweeter's range. The Aero 2 speakers were a 2-way design with a typical 6½" woofer and a Tectonic BMR driver instead of a typical dome tweeter. (It was these speakers that first alerted Dennis that those BMR drivers had promise as a mid-range, but were poor as tweeters.)

Two newly purchased Aero 2 speakers were used. Another of Dennis's many admirers had purchased them and shipped them directly to Dennis. He opened one of them and played radio broadcasts through it for more than 50 hours. The other speaker remained sealed in it's shipping carton.

After the 50 hours, I listened to them, one at a time, in A vs. B fashion. I listened to a variety of music, without knowing which speaker had been run-in, as Dennis switched back and forth. I listened on-axis, and about 30° off-axis. I was asked if I could tell the difference between the speakers, and if so, which I preferred. It was my experience that both speakers sounded so similar that I could not tell them apart.

Immediately afterwards, I watched as Dennis made frequency response measurements of the speaker which had been run for over 50 hours and the speaker that he recently removed from it's sealed carton (see them below).

I also listened to a direct comparison of the Aero 2 which had been run for over 50 hours and a different 2-way stand-mounted speaker, the Philharmonitor. In contrast, I found it easy to hear differences between the two, especially in the upper treble range. Under the same conditions (room, listening position, electronic gear, and music selections), I could easily hear differences between the Aero 2 and Philharmonitor, but I could not hear differences between the two Aero 2 speakers.

A total of three people participated in this blind test – not enough to make any statistically valid conclusions. At the time when these results were posted, all the chatter about break-in abruptly ended. Some of the more outspoken pro-break-in posters, who had frequently boasted that they could hear the results of speaker break-in, simply vanished.
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Interestingly, Dennis later told me that one of the three people who listened to these speakers did say he could hear minor differences as a result of break-in. But it wasn't in the tweeter. He said male voices sounded 'chesty' in the non-broken-in speaker, and that could not be heard in the run-in speaker. He made a living as a studio recording engineer, and had previously bought Phil 3s from Dennis. He said, in his experience, that woofers typically loosened up during the first minutes of use. The change is subtle, and it took place in the first minutes of use, certainly not longer.

That is quite similar to what you learned from Nick at Stereo Integrity .
 
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