It’s the time of year for saving money!
On a Facebook audio group, I saw this question posted. And while I could have answered it on that page, I decided I wanted to get long winded about it here instead, so first, the question, or should I say questions…
“How do you know when a new piece of audio equipment has “burned in”? What is the indicator for you that this has happened? Do you find that the sound quality has improved enough to tell the difference? How many hours do you figure it takes?”
Let’s deconstruct the questions with our own questions and definitions before we look at potential answers – how do we define burn-in? There are several potential definitions. It could refer to the initial break-in period, both physical and electronic, that occurs to various types of components in a sound reproduction system’s component chain.
Or it could refer to the time period before stuff breaks…but I strongly suspect the former.
How can you tell that burn-in (or whatever you choose to call the difference between when you turn on a system and when it is “burned in”) has occurred? The standard old audiophile answer is, of course, “when you hear an improvement in the sound.”
The third question is more of a “Huh?” question. If you don’t hear a difference from cold turn on to whenever and whatever arbitrary time you choose, then obviously, there hasn’t been any appreciable “burn in” phenomenon to experience. Or was that more of a “Duh?” question? OK, I promised not to be snarky…
Ok, pontification time – different components have different potential burn-in, break-in, or stabilization times. The most obvious, and audible to my ears, is the surrounds of a dynamic driver breaking in. I had one loudspeaker in for review recently that, when first set up, sounded like crap – foggy, no center-fill, not even vaguely good…but then after about two hours (I left them playing at mid-level volume for a while) I came back, sat down, and found a vast improvement in the overall sound in almost every respect. Now THAT was break-in.
I’ve also used a number of power amplifiers that improved noticeably after ½ hour or so of playing time after being turned on from cold. Both the Pass X-150.3 and Pass X-150.8 definitely improve in all respects after ½ hour of playing time.
Capacitors and resistors, when new and cold, can take a bit of time to stabilize. Whether that will be audible depends on the part, how it’s being used, and the rest of the circuitry. I have not personally experienced burn or break-in that resulted in a sonic improvement that I could attribute to resistor or capacitor, or any other individual part, but I don’t test parts as manufacturers and designers must do. If you, as a hobby, are listening to hear differences in resistors or capacitors, your hobby is WAY different from mine…
The last question “How long will it take?” is usually uttered by folks under torture. And depending on the component and nature of the burn-in, that time can vary. With some components I’ve seen claims of many hours before the device sounded optimal. Personally, I’ve never found much sonic difference (after initial break-in and warm-up) between a component after being used for one day and one that’s been used for one hundred days.
So, for me burn or break-in is a real thing. Experience indicates that some components and parts are more prone to producing an audible “break-in” or “burn -in” than others. With some, like loudspeakers, it can be a once, when new, phenomenon. Other components, such as power amplifiers, possess regular war-up cycles that are audible. The improvement in sound during warm-up from a cold start can be a regular part of what some stereo systems do…
So, yes, no, and maybe… I hope I’ve answered that question well enough to get a passing grade without bribing any teachers…
Burn-in. What a ball of snakes! I will be as brief as possible even though I could speak for hours (pages) about the phenomena.
I find the most obvious examples of break-in to be capacitors. Wire to an extent because it suffers from the same issues as capacitors, but on a much smaller scale. Capacitors are weird people. They can be bipolar, absolutely task oriented (electrolytics) or swing both ways (non-polar film caps). The issues are many, but IME it mostly comes down to insulator bias. Certainly dissipation factor, dielectric absorption, ESR all play roles in performance. It is, however, changes that occur in the energy states of the insulating material between the plates of a given capacitor that determine performance.
You, as a great photographer, have experienced capacitor forming with the performance of your flash. It is a real deal. Back in the day (50 years ago) when I needed my flash to be predictable it needed 3 flash cycles to stabilize. The same thing happens in audio. Cymbals, instead of sounding like a burst of white noise when the cap is new or cold, become a discernible harmonic series that actually sounds like a cymbal. With adequate break-in strings can become sweet instead of strident. Horns? Blatty instead of brash. Female vocals sound breathier. It goes on and on. Music just sounds… more musical.
Certainly these qualifications are influenced by a given system being able to resolve differences that determine a real “they are here” event. Qualitative differences produced through adequate break-in or warm up of amplification devices (tubes being what they are – finicky) including sand amps are at best subtle. It is subtlety in any art form that defines the exceptional above the mediocre. The good from the meh…
Break-in is something that happens on a quantum level. When a material’s properties change, the material’s influence upon its function changes, and so on.
Is break-in real? Is it a thing? Why do pitchers warm up?
long winded, maybe for you, but no answer… no discussion of any actual description of what it is, just a choice for us to pick from, an anecdote of some mysteriously badly performing new speakers that the manufacturer somehow forgot to break in before shipping to review (!) and, well, not really much of anything else. Consummate fence-sitting on an contentious claim, and nothing else. Thanks for nothing.
You’re very welcome, Graham. Glad you got what you paid for…and let me know when your entitlement runs out…