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Burning in speakers and subwoofer

6K views 8 replies 7 participants last post by  Tappits 
#1 ·
Hi guys,


What do you think of this :
Quote:
"What is the best way to run in speakers?


If you are very anxious to hear your MA speakers at their best, then I would suggest running them face to face so they are more or less touching and wiring one of them out of phase. (Connect the negative to positive and positive to negative. Do this on one speaker only.) You can then run them at an average listening level and you will hardly be able to hear anything. They can then be run constantly for four or five days

What is the running in time for my speakers?


Running in is a very important stage of owning a pair/set of speakers. If the speakers are driven too hard straight out of the box, it can cause permanent damage, much like running in a car engine. The average running in time varies across the ranges from 50 - 60 hours for Bronze up to 70 - 100 hours for Platinum.

Do I need to run in my sub woofer?


Yes you do. The workings of a sub woofer drive unit is exactly the same as a conventional drive unit, just on a slightly larger scale. The electronics also require some time to bed in. The running in time for a sub woofer should be 60 - 80 hours.
"


Is there any merit to this or is it voodoo?
 
#4 ·
Let's explore bedding in electronics. What??? Does this mean our toasters, refrigerator, lamps aren't optimal when first purchased? Taking the car analogy, does this mean we should idle our cars for 100 hours or so before driving them? Imagine the safety concerns if this were true. Do the same instructions come with our computers? Our electric toothbrush? Where outside of this hobby have you ever heard that electronics get better over time?


On to drivers. If 100 hours breaks them in (I presume the conventional thinking is that this loosens them up) what happens after 200 hours? 1000 hours? Do they loosen to the point that they're flappy?


The purpose of engineering is to design a product or solution to a specific and consistent end state. If that end state is unknown at the time of manufacturing the engineering is flawed.


Pure snake oil. If I had to guess this one was cleverly devised to reduce 30 day returns. It works, but only because our ears break in, not our electronics or our speakers.
 
#5 ·
Well I too have little time for some of these burn-in claims. But we must remember a speaker is a mechanical device and perhaps the suspension media does loosen up a bit in the first hundred hours or so. But clearly the proposed setup is silly. Just use them normally and leave it at that. Any break in period will take care if it's self.


New analog electronic systems do stabilize over time as well but remember the factory may have already done a burn in for reliability purposes. Again just use the device, these burn-in CDs and other crap are a joke.


As for cable burn-in, that's junk science and audiophile voodoo. Ever notice that only consumer audio cables seem to need burn-in. Why is that? Why don't network or USB cables need burn-in too? After all they are both carrying the same thing, that is electrical energy.
 
#6 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Glimmie  /t/1476195/burning-in-speakers-and-subwoofer/0_60#post_23401941


Well I too have little time for some of these burn-in claims. But we must remember a speaker is a mechanical device and perhaps the suspension media does loosen up a bit in the first hundred hours or so. But clearly the proposed setup is silly. Just use them normally and leave it at that. Any break in period will take care if it's self....

Another factor is your ears. A new set of speakers in your room will have a different timbre than you are accustomed to. There is evidence that you (your brain/ears) need time to adjust to the "new" sound and become comfortably familiar with it.
 
#9 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Perry R  /t/1476195/burning-in-speakers-and-subwoofer#post_23403702


What do you guys think of this?

http://www.gr-research.com/burnin.htm

Looks like if you add electricity to things on planet earth and heat and cool them a few times they slightly change. You could monitor the structural change of pretty much anything that has electricity run down it and find it changes in some way.

Could this change the sound coming out of a driver? Probably maybe, is probably 90% of all end users bothered? No could this be engineered out? Probably yes but then you’re going to be paying the voodoo prices for equipment that less than 0.001% of people on this planet could afford. Out of those 0.001% that could buy that stuff what % of people would even be able to tell a difference? Less than 0.1% again
 
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