Is that what pink noise really is D:
1 Like
Fucking literally laughing out loud now 
1 Like
Hemp cables sound dope FACT.
2 Likes
Sometimes you can burn in as much as you want, it simply just doesn’t help:
1 Like
And why they poop rainbows?
Because Cuddle Bears have their ways with unicorn’s. 
Makes perfect sense: pink noise and rainbows.
1 Like
I have my doubts on the actual mechanical aspect of burn in but I definitely have heard improvements on all my headphones over time - regardless of what the reason is, I enjoy the fact that it happens.
But now another question - If I have 2 exact same headphone, burn one of them in on THX 789 and the other on a DarkVoice, do you then have 2 different headphones?
1 Like
Oh well, that’s a really interesting, really audiophile-oriented question, heh! 
I’d say vibrations are vibrations, and with the same playlist, THX hits “harder, better, faster, stronger” (yeah that song), so burning in would just take less time, in theory?
(Also Hazi59 is probably laughing out loud reading this 
).
1 Like
Did you read my post? I specifically avoid listening to the new can in question - except checkpoints for :20 or :30 minutes every 10 hours of break-in, and listen to my two benchmarks an equal amount.
Frequency response is a very poor measuring tool for changes in planars (pretty much all I listen to except 1 dynamic). Did you measure bass damping? Rise time? Decay? No to all.
To pontificate with limited data is to be a scold that brings no light, but only heat. Arrogance? Look in the mirror.
Fact: Mylar gets more stretchy over time. Since like all things in the physical world it has resonances, and WILL react to a square wave quite differently at 1 hour than at 1k hours.
I have built quite a few bass boxes - transmission line, vented, not vented, tuned venting, push-pull - and I have myself measured longer travel in woofers including very expensive ones like SEAS, and torn down Gradient 57, and Martin-Logan’s and GUESS WHAT?
Dynamic woofers get longer travel when they break in resulting in tonally and measurably different to all ears better and deeper bass. Go try measuring that, it’s simple, but somehow you folks missed it - or maybe supressed it, because its easy to prove, and throws your theory into the hopper.
Tyll Measured intermodulation distortion improving a few db consistently in the burn in tests he did with the AKG headphones he tested. Resolve Reviews also measured changes with his DPS On ears with the Beryllium drivers of the ZMF headphones… and I’ve heard similar about the the Focals, which also have Beryllium drivers… Both have drivers that physically do a lot of movement too.
I used to be more in the camp of “break-in isn’t real” but it’s a bit hard to dismiss it entirely… and I don’t know why anyone else testing “burn-in” hasn’t followed more closely with the intermodulation distortion route. Even Rtings ignored those measurements entirely when they did theirs, despite being the only area Tyll found any real changes.
I think break-in definitely makes some extremely minor changes, but not enough to fundamentally change the characteristics of a headphone, though. In the case of intermodulation distortion, I think it could help some slightly sharp peaks that might occur from time to time in the treble for example… but I do believe it’s mostly going to come down to your brain
2 Likes
You are speaking on deaf ears due the tone in which you write, seeing as it is conducive to argument rather than discussion. I’m not trying to change anybody’s mind, but you most certainly won’t be changing mine.
1 Like
My Grado definitely did, the he4xx I let play for a day or 2. 24 hours a day and would listen to them if I was at my desk. I did like them quite a bit more after they had played a while.
Rather we choose to believe it or not. I do know that Grado Labs plays it’s higher end headphones for about 100 hours before they package them.
Cavelli audio recommends burning in it’s amp designs, even the liquid spark for about 100 hours.
Schiit audio and large number of other high end audio company will burn in the really high end products before they ship.
So I think there has to be something to it, right?
Does that mean I need to burn in my PC after I built it so my motherboard sound card will sound better? 
1 Like
That’s about another thing lol amp burn in. For tubes it’s hard to deny. But for solid state… Hmm
For tubes it is certain because excess gasses remain trapped. It wont necessarily change the sound, but hum and buzz most certainly will be removed.
Lol, Zeos went on a pretty funny rant in one of his latest videos where he ranted about, “DO hospitals burn in their MRI Machines?!”
I mean, Maybe there is something to charging up and filling capacitors in certain amps, but that should take no more than seconds… IMO.
2 Likes
The main reason why they “burn in” solid state DACs is probably just to check if they still work well before sending em to customers.
Interesting info: Sabaj D5 goes from 107dB SNR to 119dB SNR after 30 minutes. Something about heatsinks (it’s not “burning in” but it’s interesting).
Electrolytic capacitors also tend to wear out over time and I do believe that could also affect performance over time… and increase warm-up times…
As an example… I have an old Sony PVM… with a bunch of old capacitors… and it tooks around 30 minutes before the picture finally aligned properly and colors would stop misconverging.
I eventually had to recap the main board on the TV with brand new capacitors to fix the issues… and now the TV works good as new.
I’m wondering if that can occur with some analog amps as well? Like some sound changes could occur over time due to the capacitors wearing out?
One test is not science. There are plenty of studies arguing that the world is actually cooling down, but other studies then challenged how they came to that conclusion. No-one has done that for headphone burn-in, therefore it’s a study, not science.