Daniel_Wang

Speaker Burn In Methods

I recently purchase the Monitor Bronze series 4. They each have two 6.5 in drivers and one 25mm gold dome tweeter. What is the most efficient practice used to break in these type of speakers?

TimMc

Just play 'em.

Sorry, but some folks don't subscribe to the "burn in" pooh. I'm one of them - apparently so is Tom Noussaine, so I have decent company. If there was really something to speaker burn-in then we all know darned well that some enterprising speaker manufacturer would have come up with super-special factory burn-in as a brand differentiator. At the very least some of these finer speaker assemblers would have put a page in their extensive documentation on exactly how their product should be broken in and for how one.

And if that is not quite convincing enough - how many dealers have you ever heard of that offer burn-in as a service. And no, selling demos and trade-ins does not count, 'cause if it mattered then you would be paying extra for that service and that means demos would cost more than new in the box...

Speakers don't burn-in - your perception of them may adapt over time and that's more what produces any reported burn-in.

Daniel_Wang

So then the whole loosening of the drivers and that sort of thing is a myth? I mean if I put enough thought into it I could probably convince myself that it's all "pooh", but then I wouldn't seek out the advice of the veterans. Truthfully, I really havent seen any data that states white noise and the like can break in speakers faster.

TimMc

Daniel - I'll probably eventually get torched by the burn-in afficionados, but I did survive a prior thread that had lots of good comments and links. The one link that I'd found a while back and that does influence my thinking just a wee bit is this article by Tom Nousaine (http://bruce.coppola.name/audio/BurnInLegend.pdf).

I'll leave it to folks like Mr. Nousaine who are generally held as expert and objective to do the tests and report the results. I'll also admit that I fall closer to the "if you can't measure it then it's ain't there" camp than not (truth in advertising notice: biases have now been disclosed). I do tend to like the argument that if it's not offered as a product differentiator by the manufacturer or an added-cost service by a dealer then it's not really real, but that's probably just 'cause I typed it...

You can probably find that prior thread by doing a search in here on "village idiot" - that probably appears more than once where I've been involved (as in "Hi, my name is Tim and I am a village idiot" ;-).

Tony Genovese

You can't get a more complicated device for human consumption than a car. How do you break it in? You drive it. With speakers, same thing, you play them.

Aaron D

From my personal experience, my Paradigms took on a noticably whole other sonic attitude after playing them for several weeks (much much better bass response and warmer mids). I tend to wonder if break in is a true scientific phenomenon (being of a scientific myself), but for me, it is at least subjectively true.

The same argument could be made for breaking in speaker cables (something I would believe less than speaker break in), but there are commercially available devices to do that job.

Again this is likely subjective.

A

Garrett Lundy

I actually never questioned speaker break-in. Maybe I need to research more before I just do things. :b

Anyway, I have a stereo receiver in my garage and play my speakers on any FM station for a few days straight. That way I'm not "conditioning myself" and can better A/B speakers that are all broken in.

Chu Gai

Find out when you can return them for all your money back and play them long enough to decide if you like them but not so long that you can't return them.

Chris Tsutsui

ScottCHI

2nd and 3rd tracks of wish you were here