Again, this makes sense. Power efficiency, minimum and maximum amount of power a thing can maintain, and power delivery all being so drastically different…combined with a small sized headphone driver is what makes arguing burn in difficult, no matter which side of the fence you are on. I have my beliefs, but nothing here can fully debunk either side, which is why I wish some people would not be so offended on the matter.
I had an experience with biodyna drivers sounding different a month or so after use. I don’t chalk this up as proof of burn in, cause I cant prove it was burn in that changed anything. The ambient temperature in my own environment was drastically different as I 1st got my TH610 in September of 2018 and I noticed the change in December. In addition, since the cups are made of wood, that adds a different variable to things.
Biodynas are a pretty good example of burn in, they do really do change with some movement (but not the crazy 200 hours they allegedly need or bs like that). But those are one of the main driver types cited for a larger burn in period
Without my musical experience with instruments, I probably wouldn’t trust myself thinking I heard a difference. You can learn to hear critically, but it isn’t easy. Especially since most human beings are naturally tuned to confirmation bias. A lot of people hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see.
Sounds like a th900 might be your style lol, they go pretty fast by the color of their cups. Also that’s clearly why the focal clear professional is superior, since it uses a fast red and black color scheme, which increases it’s speed
Re: planars, maybe one reason to think they’re more susceptible is that their membranes have higher tension and lower excursion than same-size dynamics, so any material deformation allowing extra movement would represent a higher % of the initial excursion than for already “piston-like” dynamics. But this argument could be completely negated by the different material properties of a planar membrane, I don’t know enough about that to say for sure.
True, I guess it would just depend on the headphone then. You could be using some ultra thin nano whatever diaphragm or some thick gold coated diaphragm which would have different properties for sure
I take no offense to this even though my favorite headphones are my ZMF Atticus. I also know for a fact that a lot of people are willing to pay those prices because Zach is one of the nicest guys in the business and he provides top notch craftmanship. Not to mention customer service. I ordered a pair of replacement pads for my Atricus and on the notes I mentioned how the previous ones I ordered were drastically mis-shaped severely and that I normally don’t complain about such things, just wanted him to know in case he had a defective batch. My earpads arrived 2 days later and were perfect. What I didn’t know is that he had refunded my purchase and put a hand written card in the the package. He was more upset that those pads got sent to me than anything else, since he and his wife both go through them all before shipping them out. Not sure if there is a better human being in the industry.
I mean yeah, it’s totally worth the cost, zach is great and very kind and generous, and you are commissioning him to create a work of art for you essentially, that deserves great respect for me at least lol
Suggesting that break-ins are always subtle if at all is as frankly misguided as saying that there is always a large change or no change with break-in. A position taken perhaps due to fatigue in arguing vs any actual experience.
You can call on experience, or you can call on studies.
All I can say is that I started taking on AB and ABX testing in the late 80’s. I can tell you from that:
I had a hard time telling balanced interconnects from each other, but SE interconnects were pretty easy.
Absolute phase I got about 75% of the time, but another guy was 100% (when it wasn’t hopelessly mixed up)
I didn’t get much of a sense of break-in with the HD-600, many of my best cans are used - so they are out. HE5SE didn’t change much. Alara and HE4XX changed more, HE6SE changed the most - but less than some DIY mods (such as fuzzor on HE-500 or pad changes (that are an improvement)) - does that make it “subtle”? Don’t care, it was quantifiable, and I described it as it was happening (on HF).
My advice - try to be as fair/objective as possible, avoid falling in love with all gear you spend money on. Use your ears (hopefully trained by live music). After that - its subjective. Do I like it? Does it sound real enough to make me think its real? Etc. At that point objectivists can try and claim that they got to the goal more effectively - might be true compared to some subjectist who tosses money and is invested in ego enrichment vs musical enjoyment. Outside of that sort of person I reject any further claims by objectivists - as being equal to my father can beat up your father.
I mean it was mentioned a decent amount of times that it is a case by case basis, and really depends on the gear at hand if burn in plays a significant role as you mention. I can agree though that I am not partial to arguments because in the end it doesn’t really matter, just use the headphones as normal on a proper setup and you should be fine lol
“Burn in” if soooo important why don’t manufactures burn in drivers before assembly? or should it be like performance cars and bikes before your first service limit the rpm to???.. or in the case of headphones and speakers db? lol
Most higher end manufactures will have burn in sessions along with normal testing for their products, so that does the job. Some don’t though, typically cheaper headphones won’t have this as @kinnikuren and @abm0 mentioned
