This is classic snake oil FUD:john curl said:
- there is a physical effect
- it is entirely irrelevant to audio - consider what would happen if the resistance of an interconnect cable halved or doubled
- we are not measuring low enough so we are missing something
The idea is that mentioning a real physical effect makes it harder for people to argue against it. The hope is that people will not think about orders of magnitude, which would show that the effect is entirely negligible for audio and almost all other purposes.
Why do people so want to believe in this stuff? No amount of rational argument seems to sway them, although I guess that is largely because they don't know enough science. They know enough words to say something, but don't understand their meaning sufficiently well to know what they are saying or understand any rebuttals.
Because, as they say, not everything we hear can be measured.
On the contrary! We can measure stuff nobody ever can hear! You got it backwards. 'They' say lots of things that are complete bollocks ;-)
Show me any audible difference in a controlled test, and I will show you the measurements.
Jan
Oh well, who cares anyway? Equipment works without 'burn-in' and it 'burns-in' in any case with use of the product. I looked up some evidence that contradicts some comments here in 'Electron Microscopy of Interfaces in Metals and Alloys' pp 314-325 that shows room temperature movement of grain boundaries of pure copper at room temperature. Perhaps metals are more 'active' than we normally presume?
Exactly what would be the audio effect of a grain boundary moving in a good conductor used as an audio interconnect?john curl said:
Hint: estimate what would be the effect of a much bigger change such as the resistance of the whole wire doubling or halving, first statically, then perhaps in time with the music. Somewhere around -80 to -100dB? Then think how many grain boundaries there might be in a metre of wire. Are we down to -160dB or just -120dB?
Wait a minute - everybody knows we can hear effects down at the -140dB level, it is just that unfortunately nobody has ever managed to find any evidence for this.
If I were a qualified engineer and respected designer (I'm not saying he is even that, to you he only 'seems' to be) and I thought that burn-in was a lot of placebo rubbish, I'd be tempted to make money out of the others by selling them a genuine but pointless product. In order to sell it, they need to talk the talk.
So, having a device that plays a sound at various output levels is not a reliable indicator that someone beleives in burn-in.
Having said that, a device that plays sounds at various levels is actually a very helpful device for checking things work... You do get these devices in professional sound rental warehouses so they can run test tones through each unit of an array before going out on hire. Something for home audio is helpful if you're doing DIY or testing before selling etc. Maybe he designed a device for testing but then decided he could market it as a burn-in device and sell more?
If you look at his UFO turntable strobe video, he doesn't come across as a respected designer.. he sells an LED strobe with strobe patten beneith it, 3D printed etc for some $199. Must cost about $10 to make.
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Did the amplifier sound better after the transformer windings went through the 'annealing' process?
No answer, no surprise. Burn-in threads belong with the cable threads. With all due respect Mr. Hagerman's arguments with respect to "exercising" the magnetic properties of copper cables are also nonsense.
Difficult to comment on that. Someone we don't know says there are things we don't know.plasnu said:
If the electron is a fundamental particle then it may be that there is nothing to be discovered; an electron is just an electron, it behaves like an electron should. Perhaps the mystery is the muon (and tau): why are there three 'electrons'?
The "open door" policy, we don't have a complete unified theory of everything so we need to keep the door open to the possibility that anything someone comes along with might be valid until proven wrong. In other words scientific relativism.
I described changes that I found evident after circuit initial static calibration operation and subsequent stepped level and brief clip event that I would call initial burn in permanent change.....perhaps there are some low level magnetisations going on that from then on influence system low level behaviour.
Dan.
Dan.
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I did state that this effect happens upon first power up of newly constructed pcb, or newly reworked existing pcb.
The effect is subjective distortion that reduces after first clip events and occurs once only.
Dan.
But no measurements to substantiate the claim? Is the experiment repeatable? Have other subjects performed the same experiment and confirmed your observations? Have they done so blind?
Given that we can measure much finer differences than ears alone can detect, has anyone measured differences in the circumstances you describe?
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