Hi all,
For those of you who burn in your system/components I would like to mention the Cascade Noise Burn in sound file from TARA Labs.
It is an mp3 file with low to high frequencies continuously overlapping. IMHO a quite impressive difference using it, however, from a practical point of view please note that it can be VERY noisy so I would suggest starting out at low volumes (and maybe in general be careful with loudspeakers and headphones).
Download link is here: https://taralabs.com/media/cascade-free-burn-in-disc/
( ... not intending to start a discussion about whether or not burn in matters ... I reckon there may be many opinions about this ... )
Cheers,
Jesper
For those of you who burn in your system/components I would like to mention the Cascade Noise Burn in sound file from TARA Labs.
It is an mp3 file with low to high frequencies continuously overlapping. IMHO a quite impressive difference using it, however, from a practical point of view please note that it can be VERY noisy so I would suggest starting out at low volumes (and maybe in general be careful with loudspeakers and headphones).
Download link is here: https://taralabs.com/media/cascade-free-burn-in-disc/
( ... not intending to start a discussion about whether or not burn in matters ... I reckon there may be many opinions about this ... )
Cheers,
Jesper
Grabbed the first minute and plotted the spectrum:
Odd spectral humps - not sure what the point of it is when white and pink noise sources are commonly available....
Odd spectral humps - not sure what the point of it is when white and pink noise sources are commonly available....
Hi Mark ... Interesting to see what the spectrum looks like - thanks for posting ...
The reason why I use this burn in noise file is that I find it to be easy to use - basically just play it back - and then that at least to my ears the positive effect of using it is quite discernible. I reckon, however, that there may be other approaches as well.
BTW I use it for 24 - 48 hours to get the full effect (in my system & again to my ears).
Cheers, Jesper
The reason why I use this burn in noise file is that I find it to be easy to use - basically just play it back - and then that at least to my ears the positive effect of using it is quite discernible. I reckon, however, that there may be other approaches as well.
BTW I use it for 24 - 48 hours to get the full effect (in my system & again to my ears).
Cheers, Jesper
But pink noise mp3's aren't hard to source and have well-defined properties... The only thing that might need burning in is a new sub-woofer driver's suspension, and for that you need full-travel bursts of low frequency (bursts to avoid overheating, full-travel to move the spider fully). Electronics is fine from cold, just powering it up will re-form any dodgy old capacitors.
I also note thier waveform is heavily pre-clipped, so will be able to take most music amplifiers well into their over-heat the power-supply regime since the rms to peak ratio is very low, unlike true pink noise. Certainly makes a good torture test.
You can use a dummy load and a signal source for bias testing under high power too. But a single tone is all you need for that.
I also note thier waveform is heavily pre-clipped, so will be able to take most music amplifiers well into their over-heat the power-supply regime since the rms to peak ratio is very low, unlike true pink noise. Certainly makes a good torture test.
You can use a dummy load and a signal source for bias testing under high power too. But a single tone is all you need for that.
Do you mean there is no temporarily accelerated wear of any kind on any and all new components when they are first powered on (excepting bass speakers)? There is no reduction in leakage current at all in any type of electrolytic capacitor over the first few hours of use? Quartz crystal oscillators don't stabilize over time despite measurements showing reduction in phase noise occurring over several days or a few weeks starting from first use? Nothing anything like that exists in any electronic components?
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@Mark Tillotson :
Hmmm ... thanks for your consideration, Mark - but, you know, my ears just tell me differently. And, as I wrote in post #1, I am not really interested in entering into a discussion about this - just thought I'd post a link to the burn-in noise file as I personally find it to be quite a bit more efficient than normal music for the burn in I perform. In no way as good sounding as music, though 😉
Cheers, Jesper
Hmmm ... thanks for your consideration, Mark - but, you know, my ears just tell me differently. And, as I wrote in post #1, I am not really interested in entering into a discussion about this - just thought I'd post a link to the burn-in noise file as I personally find it to be quite a bit more efficient than normal music for the burn in I perform. In no way as good sounding as music, though 😉
Cheers, Jesper
Nothing that affects audio in a meaningful fashion I reckon, nothing that hits the specs.
If an electrolytic cap is that shot that its initial leakage affects an amp audibly, junk that part, its defective! Electronics generally just works fine from cold, unless thermionics is involved of course, but then you are shooting yourself in the foot from the get-go aren't you? 🙂
The specs of individual components are one thing. At the other end of the spectrum might be a precision scientific instrument that needs components to operate at better than minimum spec, and it may take days or longer to stabilize once its powered on, either initially or after some time powered off. That's also true for certain precision medical instruments. I can assure you of that.
Somewhere in between the extremes are audio devices that maybe the average guy never sees or works with. Its certainly no BS IME and according to measurements that ultra-low phase noise crystal oscillators take time to settle into their most stable operation initially, and then later for a lesser period of time after being powered off for too long. Those of us that work with better than standard consumer grade audio gear know there are things that don't settle to best performance within 2-minutes of power on. If you don't work with such systems then why don't you visit a site that does. Maybe you will learn something new in the process.
In fact, even the average audio guy may not know how long some of the devices in his own system really take to warm and and or initially settle in. For instance, do you know what happened if you turned off and original Topping D90 from the front panel or the remote control? In case you don't, it blanks the display and mutes the outputs. Everything else stays powered up. Maybe you don't have any idea why they would do that? If not, maybe your system isn't up to exposing the differences? Not knowing can be real risk if everything is designed according to commonly used measurements that don't really measure everything simply because measuring some stuff is hard. Thus standard measurements usually only measure the easy to measure stuff. Unfortunately that makes some engineers come to believe the easy stuff is all there is, or all that really matters.
The Nobel winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman described the associated cognitive bias as WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is). If all you see are common standard measurements then its easy to come to imagine that's all there is, all there can be, that they cover every possible audible effect in every system and for every human listener in the whole world.
Somewhere in between the extremes are audio devices that maybe the average guy never sees or works with. Its certainly no BS IME and according to measurements that ultra-low phase noise crystal oscillators take time to settle into their most stable operation initially, and then later for a lesser period of time after being powered off for too long. Those of us that work with better than standard consumer grade audio gear know there are things that don't settle to best performance within 2-minutes of power on. If you don't work with such systems then why don't you visit a site that does. Maybe you will learn something new in the process.
In fact, even the average audio guy may not know how long some of the devices in his own system really take to warm and and or initially settle in. For instance, do you know what happened if you turned off and original Topping D90 from the front panel or the remote control? In case you don't, it blanks the display and mutes the outputs. Everything else stays powered up. Maybe you don't have any idea why they would do that? If not, maybe your system isn't up to exposing the differences? Not knowing can be real risk if everything is designed according to commonly used measurements that don't really measure everything simply because measuring some stuff is hard. Thus standard measurements usually only measure the easy to measure stuff. Unfortunately that makes some engineers come to believe the easy stuff is all there is, or all that really matters.
The Nobel winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman described the associated cognitive bias as WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is). If all you see are common standard measurements then its easy to come to imagine that's all there is, all there can be, that they cover every possible audible effect in every system and for every human listener in the whole world.
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The humps in the spectrum plot - looks like they just started with something flat and ran it through the 'ol analog graphic eq. Everyone has their custom spectrum for doing this 'n that.
Glad to read this one works for its intended purpose. The -20 db step from 19 to 20K and up seems a little ridiculous - why bother? "20" being some magic number? Unless that's an artifact of the analyzer, or playback method....
Glad to read this one works for its intended purpose. The -20 db step from 19 to 20K and up seems a little ridiculous - why bother? "20" being some magic number? Unless that's an artifact of the analyzer, or playback method....
It's free, and the company has been around a long time, selling cables. It's in their interest to have a tool that works effectively.
" The new CASCADE noise burn-in disc is a proprietary combination of white noise with frequency tone bursts and pink noise mixed at different levels. However, what makes it really effective is a series of descending and ascending (cascading) multi-octave square sweeps for better and more complete results than any other “burn-in” discs that have been made to date."
Okay but what does that mean? In the time domain the burn-in noise signal may look like a lot of different waveforms being used at different times and or in different combinations. In a spectral view fully half of that time domain information is lost because it was encoded in the phase information which was discarded in order to make a simplistic average frequency magnitude display.
Why place so much interpretive value only on the half of the original information?
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Not sure exactly what the so-called "burn-in" file does or or doesn't do as a practical matter. Haven't tried it. Do know its an .mp3, which does raise certain concerns.
The reason Topping D90 leaves some circuits running in standby has nothing to do with your dogma. The standby function in D90 is designed to detect a valid signal to turn on automatically. To achieve this some parts need to be running even in standby.