Last year I built a tube amp and speakers for my home office.
It sounded good once I got done, but here it is nearly a year later and every once in a while
I will get caught with a pleasant surprise as to just how good a particular song sounds.
It's all the same setup and the only thing that has changed has been time.
So it's either that I'm accustomed to it or everything has broken in.
It sounded good once I got done, but here it is nearly a year later and every once in a while
I will get caught with a pleasant surprise as to just how good a particular song sounds.
It's all the same setup and the only thing that has changed has been time.
So it's either that I'm accustomed to it or everything has broken in.
Ah ah ! Some years ago I was so happy in finishing building a two way.
At the very start of the listening session it sounded good so I kept on pumpin'
techno music at loud volume: after half of a hour the basket was hot, I felt it by touching the rim. Techno music is not good for setting a speaker right, they all sound good, but I did the fastest break-in
At the very start of the listening session it sounded good so I kept on pumpin'
techno music at loud volume: after half of a hour the basket was hot, I felt it by touching the rim. Techno music is not good for setting a speaker right, they all sound good, but I did the fastest break-in
Speakers absolutely do break in. Not so sure that tubes do, apart from losing emission over time.
I find that cartridges break in after 100 hours, then sound even better at 200 and then after the sound keep changing.
Transistors don't break in much after 10 hours, sound is still bad after 24 hours power on.
On tubes, a slight sound change happens at around 100 hours roughly. However it really shines after a good 1.5 hour power on.
I never noted a change in speaker sound, new or old. They should actually break in like cartridges but I find no difference maybe because it happens so gradually.
I don't believe in your equipment improving noticeably with break-in. However the tubes should be left on for a good hour which makes a big difference, transistors change too after couple hours on but I don't find this change positive.
Transistors don't break in much after 10 hours, sound is still bad after 24 hours power on.
On tubes, a slight sound change happens at around 100 hours roughly. However it really shines after a good 1.5 hour power on.
I never noted a change in speaker sound, new or old. They should actually break in like cartridges but I find no difference maybe because it happens so gradually.
I don't believe in your equipment improving noticeably with break-in. However the tubes should be left on for a good hour which makes a big difference, transistors change too after couple hours on but I don't find this change positive.
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They do indeed. If you measure the Thiele-Small parameters of a brand new driver out of the box, and then after break-in, you will usually find several of those parameters have changed. Typically Qms and Fs are both a little lower after break-in. Those changes affect many of the other parameters too (Vas and Qts to name two.)
The speaker design team I knew used to use a sine wave turned to a frequency below Fs to break in a driver. This lets you get enough cone excursion to loosen up the stiff new surround and spider, while putting less power (and therefore less heat) into the voice coil.
-Gnobuddy
This is a huge factor that people so often forget when making subjective reviews of audio gear. The exact same piece of music played through the exact same audio gear will sound better or worse to me depending on my emotional state at the time, whether I'm hungry / tired / sleepy or not, and on other factors I can't even pin down.Sometimes I will enjoy a piece of music, sometimes I can't bear it
Ever notice how different a piece of music can feel immediately after you've experienced a personal tragedy? Or the opposite, after something happens that makes you very happy?
-Gnobuddy
I understand that sometimes I enjoy a piece of music more.
I'm talking about the system it's self reproducing it where it sounds extra clear, etc.
it will be something along the lines of I'm working and had music on and it will
catch my attention and I'll stop and listen thinking wow that sounds good
it certainly does make me wonder.
I'm talking about the system it's self reproducing it where it sounds extra clear, etc.
it will be something along the lines of I'm working and had music on and it will
catch my attention and I'll stop and listen thinking wow that sounds good
it certainly does make me wonder.
Of course they do.
Tube parameters shift around. They settle in after about 36 hours of hard drive.
Speaker materials softens up over some initial amount of time.
With tube guitar amps we burned the power tubes in for 36 hours before matching them.
I honestly am not sure.
I'm leaning towards the system having somehow improved because
it's really only with that system that I noticed the change for the better.
On an off note I was "Cranking it up" maybe that made things limber up.
Whatever it is I'm enjoying it.
The point is that there is nothing precise about subjective experiences...you cannot be precise about them.
We are subjective creatures, and subjective experiences are what enrich our lives, but they are a poor basis for attempting to make objective observations about audio, or anything else. Allow subjective experience to be mistaken for objective reality, and you can end up believing that transistors or capacitors can break in. Whatever "break in" means.
-Gnobuddy
We are subjective creatures, and subjective experiences are what enrich our lives, but they are a poor basis for attempting to make objective observations about audio, or anything else. Allow subjective experience to be mistaken for objective reality, and you can end up believing that transistors or capacitors can break in. Whatever "break in" means.
-Gnobuddy
There is a key word in the thread title, believe. To believe is to conclude or accept that something is true. The characteriztion of something as a belief usually implies that one either does not have or does not need objective verification of the putative truth, rather one is accepting it as true based on one's experience, gut feel or faith. This is in contrast to having objective knowledge that something is true, usually based on the gathering of objective technical data that supports the knowledge. I believe that the area of psychoacoustics is sufficiently subtle and subjective that without objective knowledge one can convince oneself of just about anything.
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The following auditory illusions lend weight to this belief:
1) YouTube
2) Sound effects: Five great auditory illusions | New Scientist
Auditory illusions trick our ear/brain system into hearing things that aren't there, just like the familiar optical illusions that trick our eyes and brains into seeing things that aren't actually there.
Since our ears can be fooled (quite dramatically so in some of the examples above), it's pretty clear that we cannot trust them to provide objective evidence about anything we hear.
-Gnobuddy
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