Eric,
That's curious, and it may be true.
Your method appears to accelerate the burning-in effect, due to stress.
That reminds me a special cam I wonce bought for a car I had.
On the instructions it said (and was what I did) that at the first power on, the motor should be driven at 4000 RPM for at least 20 minutes without ever decreasing RPM.
I felt like after all that work I was going to have a heart attack seing a newly repaired motor being driven that way, but no problem at all.
Electrolythic caps, for instance, really need to burn-in to give their best.
Speakers are another obvious one.
The suspension of the drive units is stiff when new, and only after a few days you can hear them singing properly.
But if you drive them hard, maby it can be just a few hours, who knows?
Believe it or not, even cables need to burn-in, and I heard obvious effects (for the better) two days after burning-in a new pair of interconnects I made.
Speaker cables too.
I can't find a real explanation for burning-in cables, maby there is, but it may have nothing to do with electronics.
That's curious, and it may be true.
Your method appears to accelerate the burning-in effect, due to stress.
That reminds me a special cam I wonce bought for a car I had.
On the instructions it said (and was what I did) that at the first power on, the motor should be driven at 4000 RPM for at least 20 minutes without ever decreasing RPM.
I felt like after all that work I was going to have a heart attack seing a newly repaired motor being driven that way, but no problem at all.
Electrolythic caps, for instance, really need to burn-in to give their best.
Speakers are another obvious one.
The suspension of the drive units is stiff when new, and only after a few days you can hear them singing properly.
But if you drive them hard, maby it can be just a few hours, who knows?
Believe it or not, even cables need to burn-in, and I heard obvious effects (for the better) two days after burning-in a new pair of interconnects I made.
Speaker cables too.
I can't find a real explanation for burning-in cables, maby there is, but it may have nothing to do with electronics.
I have experienced "burn in" twice. I always hear the sound changes when gear has been turned off and are powered on again, but that´s another story 🙂
First was with my first pair of decent speakers, a pair of Sonus Faber Minuetto´s. After a week or two, playing for a a couple of hours a day I heard a warmer sound with more bass. I wondered "what the he.." . Soon someone told me that it was expected and normaly that is what happens to a new speaker.
This was easy to accept since a speaker is a electro-mechanical device and the supension simply must loosen up after conditioned for many hours.
Second time was a 1-2 years ago when I moded my SCD-XB940 with LClock and Zapfilter. The imporovements with the clock came directly and I´m not sure I ever heard an improvement after that. However afte the Zapfilter was installed I was in for a big surprise.
I had read about the impressions from people that had moded with the Zapfilter and some words was "warm" "clear" "extreme high resolution" "like a tube circuit" and so on. My first impressions was clear and highly resolved BUT a kind of hard and harsh analytical edge to it that I didn´t like really. Actually I thought to myslef "oh ****, I should have kept the BB opamps in the machine and be satisfied with the clock mod". Even though I heard a more resolved sound with the Zapfilter it was not relaxing and "musical" 🙂
I played the machine 6-8 hours the first day and a major improvement came that same day, in the evening it sounded real good. A friend came over to listen and he also felt the sound was a little cold and "non-relaxed". The next couple of days the sound was loosing up even more and my friend was back to listen a day or two after the first visit. Both he and I was surprised to hear that a little piece of circuit like that could change so much during break in. Actually the difference in sound was BIGGER than one usually finds between two decent CDP´s.
After a week the sound was stable with no further improvements to me.
I can not say I ever have heard my power amps or cables becoming better but it´s possible that a change took place without me noticing it. Also my rig was not as resolved back then as it is now.
Audio is fun!!! 😀
/Peter
First was with my first pair of decent speakers, a pair of Sonus Faber Minuetto´s. After a week or two, playing for a a couple of hours a day I heard a warmer sound with more bass. I wondered "what the he.." . Soon someone told me that it was expected and normaly that is what happens to a new speaker.
This was easy to accept since a speaker is a electro-mechanical device and the supension simply must loosen up after conditioned for many hours.
Second time was a 1-2 years ago when I moded my SCD-XB940 with LClock and Zapfilter. The imporovements with the clock came directly and I´m not sure I ever heard an improvement after that. However afte the Zapfilter was installed I was in for a big surprise.
I had read about the impressions from people that had moded with the Zapfilter and some words was "warm" "clear" "extreme high resolution" "like a tube circuit" and so on. My first impressions was clear and highly resolved BUT a kind of hard and harsh analytical edge to it that I didn´t like really. Actually I thought to myslef "oh ****, I should have kept the BB opamps in the machine and be satisfied with the clock mod". Even though I heard a more resolved sound with the Zapfilter it was not relaxing and "musical" 🙂
I played the machine 6-8 hours the first day and a major improvement came that same day, in the evening it sounded real good. A friend came over to listen and he also felt the sound was a little cold and "non-relaxed". The next couple of days the sound was loosing up even more and my friend was back to listen a day or two after the first visit. Both he and I was surprised to hear that a little piece of circuit like that could change so much during break in. Actually the difference in sound was BIGGER than one usually finds between two decent CDP´s.
After a week the sound was stable with no further improvements to me.
I can not say I ever have heard my power amps or cables becoming better but it´s possible that a change took place without me noticing it. Also my rig was not as resolved back then as it is now.
Audio is fun!!! 😀
/Peter
A couple miscellaneous comments:
The Walt Jung comment was a bit of a straw-man. Most suppliers of op-amps do provide PSRR vs. frequency graphs. I don't have everyone's databooks on hand, but certainly National Semiconductor, AD, and LT show them.
Speaker driver break-in is well-established and even (gasp) measurable. There's zero controversy there- a speaker driver is an electroMECHANICAL device.
The Walt Jung comment was a bit of a straw-man. Most suppliers of op-amps do provide PSRR vs. frequency graphs. I don't have everyone's databooks on hand, but certainly National Semiconductor, AD, and LT show them.
Speaker driver break-in is well-established and even (gasp) measurable. There's zero controversy there- a speaker driver is an electroMECHANICAL device.
Just for the record, burn-in of semiconductors, and probably
other components as well, is not strictly an audio phenomenon.
I am not sure how it is nowadays, but MIL-spec'd digitial ICs,
for instance, used to be burned in at factory, by running them
at elevated temperature for a specified number of hours. I am
not sure, but I think the main purpose is to make faulty devices,
that would fail early, fail already during this burn-in period.
Howver, burning in devices, one way or another, seem also to
affect the performance of digital circuitry. People who overclock
their CPUs often burn them in by running them at overvoltage
for some time and many claim their CPUs can handle higher
clock frequencies afterwards. I have no explanation for this
effect.
Edit: An interesting question, especially in the case of audio
circuitry, is, does it matter how we burn in a device? For instance,
is there any difference between burning in an op amp in
the actual amplifier it is to be used in and burning it in separately
in one way or another, for instance running it on a protoboard
and feeding it from a signal generator? Has anybody made
experiments with this?
other components as well, is not strictly an audio phenomenon.
I am not sure how it is nowadays, but MIL-spec'd digitial ICs,
for instance, used to be burned in at factory, by running them
at elevated temperature for a specified number of hours. I am
not sure, but I think the main purpose is to make faulty devices,
that would fail early, fail already during this burn-in period.
Howver, burning in devices, one way or another, seem also to
affect the performance of digital circuitry. People who overclock
their CPUs often burn them in by running them at overvoltage
for some time and many claim their CPUs can handle higher
clock frequencies afterwards. I have no explanation for this
effect.
Edit: An interesting question, especially in the case of audio
circuitry, is, does it matter how we burn in a device? For instance,
is there any difference between burning in an op amp in
the actual amplifier it is to be used in and burning it in separately
in one way or another, for instance running it on a protoboard
and feeding it from a signal generator? Has anybody made
experiments with this?
not that hard...
Frank,
I wasn't talking THAT hard.😎
Just a little louder than normal.
Of course, you can't leave it with that volume at night...
Frank,
I wasn't talking THAT hard.😎
Just a little louder than normal.
Of course, you can't leave it with that volume at night...
Christer said:
This is exactly correct. MTBF histograms are "U" shaped. That's also why American consumer electronics stores hawk their service policies so aggressively; infant mortalities are covered under warranty, and the other end of the U is well past the time when the service policy has expired. They're "insuring" the customer for the lowest part of the histogram. A very profitable bet!
The operative word here is "claim."
Straw Men?
Sy,
If you read what he wrote, that's not what he said!
He quoted specific devices; you're right, most manufacturers do give this data today. Within context surely the point is one HAS to look beyond the headline figures.
It's unfair to call it a straw man.
As for general component burn-in it's well documented among anyone who designs precision circuitry.
Metal film resistors, for example, can have drift of 50-75ppm / year, and up to 200ppm change during the initial burn-in phase. They can take 4-5000 operational hours before full stabilisation. Burning in at rated power for one week is an accepted way of bringing more rapid stabilisation.
Look at the data sheets for some metal films - you may be surprised.
Andy.
Sy,
If you read what he wrote, that's not what he said!
He quoted specific devices; you're right, most manufacturers do give this data today. Within context surely the point is one HAS to look beyond the headline figures.
It's unfair to call it a straw man.
As for general component burn-in it's well documented among anyone who designs precision circuitry.
Metal film resistors, for example, can have drift of 50-75ppm / year, and up to 200ppm change during the initial burn-in phase. They can take 4-5000 operational hours before full stabilisation. Burning in at rated power for one week is an accepted way of bringing more rapid stabilisation.
Look at the data sheets for some metal films - you may be surprised.
Andy.
Amplifier burn-in
For what it's worth, "burn-in" was just starting to get lots of press when I sold high-end audio. After our discovery of blind amplifier/cable tests we decided to try a blind burn-in test.
We were doing a home install of a high-end system. We had the CD player, pre-amp and power amp on display in the sound room. All three had been used for many months. We unboxed the three new components being used in the home install and hooked them up in the sound room. We let them warm up for 15 minutes as the pre-amp was a tube model (the pre and power amps were Audio Research). The demo gear had been on all day.
We then had one of us swap the speaker wires back and forth between the well "burned in" demo gear and the brand spanking new stuff playing the same CD in both systems. Guess what? None of us could hear a difference. We even tried listening to vinyl on both systems (we all had our reservations about CDs back then).
I think the whole "burn-in phenomena" comes from the following:
1 - Speakers really do require break-in to perform their best. I think it was easy for some audiophiles to extrapolate that other components do as well. That's how myths are born.
2 - Some electronics (especially tube gear and those that are marginally designed like some high-end gear) need to come up to operating temperature before the bias points and other quiescent parameters are correct. When they're cold, they may have excess distortion that might be audible. But this isn't a matter of "break-in", it's a matter of "warm-up" (and in some cases poor design).
3 - The "burn-in" phenomena provides a wonderful excuse for why something new doesn't sound as good as someone expects it to. The salesman sells a $4000 amplifier, the customer takes it home, plugs it in, and alas, it sounds pretty much like the $600 amplifier it repaced. He goes back the next day to complain and the salesman smiles, points to any high-end magazine review, and says "you need to burn it in for at least a week before it really starts to sound its best." This excuse also works at CES, when reps run around trying to sell stuff to dealers, etc.
4 - Burn-in falls under the same psychological bias as all the other perceived differences we've discussed in this thread. I have no doubt that many of you believe you've heard the results of it. But it just doesn't stand up to blind testing or other objective verification.
I have to agree with Janneman, it defies real logic that the post burn-in result is *always* better. If you consider it as a psychological issue, however, that outcome makes perfect sense. Further, I've watched GoldenEars listening to THREE brand spanking new components and being unable to tell them from well burned-in ones in a very revealing system.
For what it's worth, "burn-in" was just starting to get lots of press when I sold high-end audio. After our discovery of blind amplifier/cable tests we decided to try a blind burn-in test.
We were doing a home install of a high-end system. We had the CD player, pre-amp and power amp on display in the sound room. All three had been used for many months. We unboxed the three new components being used in the home install and hooked them up in the sound room. We let them warm up for 15 minutes as the pre-amp was a tube model (the pre and power amps were Audio Research). The demo gear had been on all day.
We then had one of us swap the speaker wires back and forth between the well "burned in" demo gear and the brand spanking new stuff playing the same CD in both systems. Guess what? None of us could hear a difference. We even tried listening to vinyl on both systems (we all had our reservations about CDs back then).
I think the whole "burn-in phenomena" comes from the following:
1 - Speakers really do require break-in to perform their best. I think it was easy for some audiophiles to extrapolate that other components do as well. That's how myths are born.
2 - Some electronics (especially tube gear and those that are marginally designed like some high-end gear) need to come up to operating temperature before the bias points and other quiescent parameters are correct. When they're cold, they may have excess distortion that might be audible. But this isn't a matter of "break-in", it's a matter of "warm-up" (and in some cases poor design).
3 - The "burn-in" phenomena provides a wonderful excuse for why something new doesn't sound as good as someone expects it to. The salesman sells a $4000 amplifier, the customer takes it home, plugs it in, and alas, it sounds pretty much like the $600 amplifier it repaced. He goes back the next day to complain and the salesman smiles, points to any high-end magazine review, and says "you need to burn it in for at least a week before it really starts to sound its best." This excuse also works at CES, when reps run around trying to sell stuff to dealers, etc.
4 - Burn-in falls under the same psychological bias as all the other perceived differences we've discussed in this thread. I have no doubt that many of you believe you've heard the results of it. But it just doesn't stand up to blind testing or other objective verification.
I have to agree with Janneman, it defies real logic that the post burn-in result is *always* better. If you consider it as a psychological issue, however, that outcome makes perfect sense. Further, I've watched GoldenEars listening to THREE brand spanking new components and being unable to tell them from well burned-in ones in a very revealing system.
Re: Straw Men?
Industrial burn-in is done at elevated temperatures that also don't apply to home audio gear. The burn-in audiophiles are talking about happens in days or weeks at normal temperatures.
Put another way, if the level of difference you're talking about really were responsible for the audible burn-in GoldenEars report, the normal tolerance differences between two components would make an even greater difference. So if a sample of an amplifier sounds "harsh, glaring, shallow and thin" before it was burned in, the next one they unbox is likely to be even worse AFTER it's burned in!
I agree with the first part, but that's over a YEAR and it's very very likely an amount that's completely negligible. The amount of change that's possible in say a week would be trivial and WAY under the tolerance and tempco of the part. It's just not a valid justification for audible burn-in changes.ALW said:
Industrial burn-in is done at elevated temperatures that also don't apply to home audio gear. The burn-in audiophiles are talking about happens in days or weeks at normal temperatures.
Put another way, if the level of difference you're talking about really were responsible for the audible burn-in GoldenEars report, the normal tolerance differences between two components would make an even greater difference. So if a sample of an amplifier sounds "harsh, glaring, shallow and thin" before it was burned in, the next one they unbox is likely to be even worse AFTER it's burned in!
Give me a break....in....
Yes the components can age and change their values...but i ask the same as other people as asked here...
Why the this last value must provide the better sound??
Wouldn't this "break in" be at work in the listener ears??
As the listeners ears will become habituated to the sound of the new component??
Yes the components can age and change their values...but i ask the same as other people as asked here...
Why the this last value must provide the better sound??
Wouldn't this "break in" be at work in the listener ears??
As the listeners ears will become habituated to the sound of the new component??
SY said:
Yes, I am aware of that. However, in the case of overclocking
one can do reasonably objective experiments. One can for
instance run some CPU-intensive test program a number of
times at each clock frequency tested and take note of how
many times it fails. Whether the, typically teenaged, overclockers
do any such reasonably reliable experiments is probably left
to our imagination. Of course, overclocking per se also raises
the operating temperature and so also gives a burn-in effect
which may muddle the effects of previous burning in by
elevated voltage.
Eyes wide open...
Well put NW...this and the other great excuse for bad sound...the acustic of the room!!!
Fine to find people that still hasn't the "eyes wide shut"!!!😉
Well put NW...this and the other great excuse for bad sound...the acustic of the room!!!
Fine to find people that still hasn't the "eyes wide shut"!!!😉
Clarity
Lack of clarity again on my part, the point being that during the initial burn-in phase, which is a shorter period of time, much larger changes than this can occur.
But even a 75ppm change in a precision circuit, which is after all surely what audio is, can be audible, if the system has all other error sources dealt with.
There are MUCH greater changes than this in semiconductors over much shorter time spans - I think we are in danger of looking at minutiae to support our own arguments, without being open-minded to the results.
If someone had told me years ago that a 1ps change in clock jitter within a CD player was audible I'd have laughed. If they'd told me that uV changes in PSU noise were audible I'd have done the same.
Not now though - audio is one of the, if not THE, most demanding precision applications you can design for. Those that believe otherwise will never produce consistently good-sounding designs, IMHO, simply because they are underestimating the sensitivity of the human ear, and the criticality of the task in hand.
Andy.
Lack of clarity again on my part, the point being that during the initial burn-in phase, which is a shorter period of time, much larger changes than this can occur.
But even a 75ppm change in a precision circuit, which is after all surely what audio is, can be audible, if the system has all other error sources dealt with.
There are MUCH greater changes than this in semiconductors over much shorter time spans - I think we are in danger of looking at minutiae to support our own arguments, without being open-minded to the results.
If someone had told me years ago that a 1ps change in clock jitter within a CD player was audible I'd have laughed. If they'd told me that uV changes in PSU noise were audible I'd have done the same.
Not now though - audio is one of the, if not THE, most demanding precision applications you can design for. Those that believe otherwise will never produce consistently good-sounding designs, IMHO, simply because they are underestimating the sensitivity of the human ear, and the criticality of the task in hand.
Andy.
Andy, I'm pretty familiar with resistor data sheets, having once run a facility making PTF resistors and having more than a few patents on that technology. You're conflating, I think, parameters which are important for precision DC measurements with parameters critical for audio.
Just out of curiosity, are there any valid listening tests (not just testimonials or anecdotes) establishing that 1 ps of jitter is audible? It just seems odd, but experiment is everything.
Just out of curiosity, are there any valid listening tests (not just testimonials or anecdotes) establishing that 1 ps of jitter is audible? It just seems odd, but experiment is everything.
Listen first, then buy
nw,
I don't want you to think I'm always against you.
I'm not.
But wouldn't a customer that's interested in buying a $4000 amp have the right to listen to it at home before he buys it?
That's not a supermarket amp.
I agree that not always burning-in gives better results.
In fact, I think all this is "black magic", a little like trying to explain what doesn't have a logical explanation.
Sometimes you notice clearly, sometimes you don't.
But sometimes it gives a noticeable improvement for the better.
Trying to explain or finding a reason why device A gives better results after burning-in and device B doesn't is a waste of time.
We all agree on speakers.
nw,
I don't want you to think I'm always against you.
I'm not.
But wouldn't a customer that's interested in buying a $4000 amp have the right to listen to it at home before he buys it?
That's not a supermarket amp.
I agree that not always burning-in gives better results.
In fact, I think all this is "black magic", a little like trying to explain what doesn't have a logical explanation.
Sometimes you notice clearly, sometimes you don't.
But sometimes it gives a noticeable improvement for the better.
Trying to explain or finding a reason why device A gives better results after burning-in and device B doesn't is a waste of time.
We all agree on speakers.
Re: Clarity
I try to keep an open mind. Where objective evidence can be presented that something makes an audible difference, I'm very willing to look into it further. For example, in this thread:
http://diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13415
Thunau reported performing a digital null difference test that changed with different power cords. I still don't have any explanation for his results, but if they're real results, they should be taken seriously. It's objective proof of some sort of difference. This is the sort of thing we need more of.
For the stuff you're talking about, you haven't presented ANY objective proof it makes ANY audible difference. I'm extrapolating, but I suspect most of your opinions/beliefs are based on common audiophile "knowledge" (some of which is myth) and your own psychologically biased listening results.
Well that's your opinion, and you're certainly entitled to it. I think a lot of us would like to believe that. But designing the input amplifier for a 1 Ghz oscilloscope, or a terabit ethernet router, or even the head amplifiers for today's disc drives are far more demanding tasks than consumer audio.ALW said:
I try to keep an open mind. Where objective evidence can be presented that something makes an audible difference, I'm very willing to look into it further. For example, in this thread:
http://diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13415
Thunau reported performing a digital null difference test that changed with different power cords. I still don't have any explanation for his results, but if they're real results, they should be taken seriously. It's objective proof of some sort of difference. This is the sort of thing we need more of.
For the stuff you're talking about, you haven't presented ANY objective proof it makes ANY audible difference. I'm extrapolating, but I suspect most of your opinions/beliefs are based on common audiophile "knowledge" (some of which is myth) and your own psychologically biased listening results.
Re: Listen first, then buy
I should also mention that phono cartridges are also prone to break-in. They're electromechanical devices with suspension systems and styli that wear down.
You might think so. But I think establishing if there really IS any difference between A and B is a GOOD use of time. In my experience, there is no audible difference bewteen a brand new component and a burned-in component (speakers excluded). I've never seen any objective evidence to the contrary.carlosfm said:
I should also mention that phono cartridges are also prone to break-in. They're electromechanical devices with suspension systems and styli that wear down.
Re: Amplifier burn-in
nw_avphile,
I agree with most of your post. As noted before, I know that physical properties of components change when powered up or burned in over longer periods. Speakers are an obvious example.
While I accept that, for instance, the bias current of an amp changes initially, I don't see why at the end it should be " right". If you switch on your amp, and the bias slowly goes from 80mA to 110mA for example, maybe the 80mA situation would be better? But all comments I read say: "....after the bias stabilized, the amp really sounded great..." or something like that. If you measure a sample of identical amps, they may vary in bias over +/- 50% anyway (I speak from experience here).
So, during switch on, it is anybody's guess where it starts end where it ends, yet we all claim that at the end it is at its best. I don't really have a warm and fuzzy feeling with this situation.
Jan Didden
nw_avphile said:
nw_avphile,
I agree with most of your post. As noted before, I know that physical properties of components change when powered up or burned in over longer periods. Speakers are an obvious example.
While I accept that, for instance, the bias current of an amp changes initially, I don't see why at the end it should be " right". If you switch on your amp, and the bias slowly goes from 80mA to 110mA for example, maybe the 80mA situation would be better? But all comments I read say: "....after the bias stabilized, the amp really sounded great..." or something like that. If you measure a sample of identical amps, they may vary in bias over +/- 50% anyway (I speak from experience here).
So, during switch on, it is anybody's guess where it starts end where it ends, yet we all claim that at the end it is at its best. I don't really have a warm and fuzzy feeling with this situation.
Jan Didden
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