This thread sounds to me like:
"I bought a new pair of glasses.
I want to burn them in.
What is the best technique for that?
Should I read a lot?
Fiction - non fiction - newspapers?
Should I watch TV?
What kind of program is best? .... action movies? .... Sports? .... cooking shows?
Should I watch continuously through them or open-close my eyes in 5 minute intervals?"
"I bought a new pair of glasses.
I want to burn them in.
What is the best technique for that?
Should I read a lot?
Fiction - non fiction - newspapers?
Should I watch TV?
What kind of program is best? .... action movies? .... Sports? .... cooking shows?
Should I watch continuously through them or open-close my eyes in 5 minute intervals?"
The amplifiers you build don't need burn in JMFahey 🙂 Please don't try to convince others what and what not is truth.
Quite an inapropriate comment @JMFahey . You expressed your opinion on the subject, which is 100% subjective fyi like the rest. And you write condescending remarks, which should say a lot about your opinion and personality in general. I respect knowledge and what is done, but i find it hard to respect people that value their opinion over the other ones, especially in such a manner.
Ok ...let's just use the products we buy...
Still...if you have to choose between two new products, of which one sounds better out of the batch, would you choose the worse one cause it will " burn in" and eventually get better than the other? Well...the better one will " burn in" too if you use it 😉
I vote with the 6V2 Zenners!Guess why?!
Still...if you have to choose between two new products, of which one sounds better out of the batch, would you choose the worse one cause it will " burn in" and eventually get better than the other? Well...the better one will " burn in" too if you use it 😉
I vote with the 6V2 Zenners!Guess why?!
Did that as well a few times and found the slightly different (worse?) sounding one just sounded the same after a few hours. I blame it on the electrolytic caps. Let's agree over one thing: whatever the issue, it is always the caps 🙂
I accept that only with unipolar electrolitics, I refuse even the bipolars not just the nonpolar film ones unless we're talking about more than 3 decades older capacitors .The problem with electrolitics is that they have limited shelf life, but some are much, much better than the others in this respect. We might have an ideea how much time the product spent on the shelfs by production date, but it's not a rare thing that manufacturing companies are using 10...15 years old capacitors they had in stock or just bought from somebody else. Theoretically they can get reformated up to a degree which is always unknown, but if the rail voltages are +-15V and the csps are rated for 16V ,good luck with the reformating process done by just plugging the equipment to the mains!I'm not even sure how much better are the newer capacitors compared to some rubycons of the 80's or nichicons of the 90's.I bought a few hundred new bipolar nichicon muse in 2017 and had the chance to compare thrm to a 1990 stock and the 1990 stock didn't loose a single microfarad while the 2017 stock lost 5% of the value just by sitting at room temperature.The unipolar nichicon muse kz i bought from Mouser the same 2017 year lost at least 10% of their cspacitance if unused.
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Is there any quantitative test data showing improvements in electronics' performance with age? Without this the entire concept is no better than religion.
Capacitors and rechargeable batteries need a few discharge-charge cycles to get their best shape...just chemistry...but that's easily achievable within 3... 5 cycles for batteries and about 20 Current Limited charge discharge cycles for relatively new or good electrolitic capacitors
Why would you need that if you can hear it and accept it? Do you ask for the datasheet when they put a pace maker in you? If there is quantitative test data showing improvements in your future performance?
This is about consumer stuff and besides that the effect is only when brand new and mainly in the first hours. Not after years. It happens anyway so just enjoy it or ignore it and tell that here if it makes you feel better. I think it's really odd to dispute something many others experience. Why would one deny that?
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If someone does tests, its ASR. And according to their tests, khadas tone board is heaps and miles better than r2r nos dacs, which simply isn't true and by your ear you will notice the difference, of course if favor of the latter. Not everything is in the measurements. In my opinion, the use of both is the way to achieve greatness.
It’s hard for some to accept that burn-in occurs between the ears
Because belief without evidence (faith, in other words) is not a reliable path to truth and progress in any shape or form. If we can understand why or how listeners hear or think they hear a difference we can actually move forward and not become mired down in personal revelation, however this seems adequate to countless minds and many subjects - maybe it's me that has it wrong...
Evidence-led science is the reason we live in the world we currently enjoy, and it is faith which divides families and nations, beheads infidels, and flew aircraft into the Twin Towers.
Please don´t misunderstand me: nothing against testing and improving our beloved Audio equipment.
But I am also realistic, and in the case of Digital equipment (include your DAC here), or Class D amplifiers, there is a widely known (if you specifically ask for it) but apparently ignored fact (in the sense of not considering it or giving it importance) which is the fact that you normally have a clock there, and gates (considered the simplest building block) and everything made out of them are being CONSTANTLY switching ON-OFF tens or hundred thousands times a second, full rail to rail or rail to ground 😱
Hint: "Digital" or "switching"
They are constantly working, Music or not.
They couldn´t care less what kind of Program is going through them, or even zero signal.
So, if anything, "burn in" comes from simply being turned ON, period, because then they will be working as hard, stressed as much, as with any program going through them.
I gave a general answer, but since it seems to be obscure or incomplete for some, let´s go into more detail:
But then shake it, drop it on the floor, subject it to heat or temperature extremes, let it ON non stop for a long time, subject it to saline spray, corrosive gases in the atmosphere, strong electromagnetic fields (lightning storm/EMP/being near a powerful transmitter), feed it very poor unregulated Mains varying wildly, etc.
Program signal by itself? .... not so much.
Or are ideas opposing a certain presumption pre censored?
Not much of a discussion then.
As of:
Probably justified in interplanetary probe electronics, where device will be millions of miles away, and we expect years of service; otherwise .....
By the way, all components are being "activated", in the sense of "doing their job", all the time while it´s ON
But I am also realistic, and in the case of Digital equipment (include your DAC here), or Class D amplifiers, there is a widely known (if you specifically ask for it) but apparently ignored fact (in the sense of not considering it or giving it importance) which is the fact that you normally have a clock there, and gates (considered the simplest building block) and everything made out of them are being CONSTANTLY switching ON-OFF tens or hundred thousands times a second, full rail to rail or rail to ground 😱
Hint: "Digital" or "switching"
They are constantly working, Music or not.
They couldn´t care less what kind of Program is going through them, or even zero signal.
So, if anything, "burn in" comes from simply being turned ON, period, because then they will be working as hard, stressed as much, as with any program going through them.
I gave a general answer, but since it seems to be obscure or incomplete for some, let´s go into more detail:
No signal induced stress.
Ok, a worthy objective.
But then shake it, drop it on the floor, subject it to heat or temperature extremes, let it ON non stop for a long time, subject it to saline spray, corrosive gases in the atmosphere, strong electromagnetic fields (lightning storm/EMP/being near a powerful transmitter), feed it very poor unregulated Mains varying wildly, etc.
Program signal by itself? .... not so much.
Try it if you wish, it´s your own time.personally doubt any electrical change will happen,but hey ....
Does the idea "no such thing as burn in as far as sound is concerned" count as valid?
Or are ideas opposing a certain presumption pre censored?
Not much of a discussion then.
As of:
Might be, but sounds overblown/overthinking to me.
Probably justified in interplanetary probe electronics, where device will be millions of miles away, and we expect years of service; otherwise .....
No and no, see above.
By the way, all components are being "activated", in the sense of "doing their job", all the time while it´s ON
As mentioned by others, bad idea.
This exactly matches my reading glasses burn in protocol to a T, not sure why some might feel offended by that, the analogy is transparent.
Bad idea.
Excellent idea and I applaud the double blind test.
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It is exactly that clocks/XOs that, like the caps, need some time. I noticed this a few times when replacing XOs. Ah well, call it faith or what you want. Fo many it is a fact that new stuff needs some time to sound good/optimal whether you like it or not.
do you feel it's possible to rationalise or quantify what is happening within the equipment, or does it simply 'sound better to your ears' after some indeterminate number of hours' use? At what stage would you consider a piece of equipment 'burnt-in', acoustically, and why? I am guessing that you would agree that five seconds is too short a time, and five thousand hours probably excessive.
Further, how do you exclude personal psychoacoustic effects/expectation bias within your evaluation over time? I am at a total loss to explain my own changing and acoustic perception of my system from one day to the next; there is a good reason only a small part of the brain processes hearing compared with sight since our ears are a somewhat blunt instrument compared with most folks' simply spectacular optical processing and pattern recognition. As an example, very few people could hear a minimal change in pitch from one hour to the next but many could see that a picture is now hanging out of square.
You might feel I'm putting you on the spot - I am - but please trust me that it's not for the sake of ridicule, it truly is to improve my own and hopefully others' understanding of this oft-repeated but rarely explained phenomenon.
I have a theory that double-blind ABX testing is deliberately avoided in audio reproduction since it would prove that most 'Golden Ears' are far from it! (Yes, I'm looking at you, Ivor Tiefenbrun...)
Like Dorothy, Toto, and fellow travellers in Oz were told in no uncertain terms, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"