Thanks Amir...that's helpful. So in essence for audiophiles, the are looking perhaps at equipment where 'within operating tolerances' is not enough...they are constantly trying to narrow and narrow and narrow the operating tolerances where they [think] they can. Just like Minneapolis Heart Hospital using all Shunyata Power Conditioners on their heart monitors and getting a measureable improvement in legibility and accuracy of their heart scans...they were pushing their scanning equipment to operate within tighter tolerances than perhaps even the manufacturer had spec'd. the scans 'worked fine' without Shunyata, but they have now confirmed their scanners work measurably better WITH Shunyata.
How much of burn-in/ break-in (in hours) is objective vs. getting used to sound?
- Thread starter caesar
- Start date
Thanks Amir...that's helpful. So in essence for audiophiles, the are looking perhaps at equipment where 'within operating tolerances' is not enough...they are constantly trying to narrow and narrow and narrow the operating tolerances where they [think] they can. Just like Minneapolis Heart Hospital using all Shunyata Power Conditioners on their heart monitors and getting a measureable improvement in legibility and accuracy of their heart scans...they were pushing their scanning equipment to operate within tighter tolerances than perhaps even the manufacturer had spec'd. the scans 'worked fine' without Shunyata, but they have now confirmed their scanners work measurably better WITH Shunyata.
Hello Amir
Do you realize the ramifications of what you are saying and how completely wrong it is?? So if I design using a 5% tolerance after I assemble my boards I have no idea what I have?? When we are designing a satellite payload I have no way of knowing if I can meet the power budget for the box because the parts are so variable I can't model it in a simulator?? Not my experience at all. Parts are very much in family especially parts in the same manufacturing lot. If what you say is true it would be a miracle if anything worked at all and that is certainly not the case.
Rob
Hello Amir
Do you realize the ramifications of what you are saying and how completely wrong it is?? So if I design using a 5% tolerance after I assemble my boards I have no idea what I have?? When we are designing a satellite payload I have no way of knowing if I can meet the power budget for the box because the parts are so variable I can't model it in a simulator?? Not my experience at all. Parts are very much in family especially parts in the same manufacturing lot. If what you say is true it would be a miracle if anything worked at all and that is certainly not the case.
Rob
Hi Rob. I was explaining how the sausage is made.
There are many variation in part values. And with thousands of parts, the combination of all of those by definition is quite broad. Even with simulation, you don't know all the variables. What if a worker creating the soup that goes into one component was half drunk that day? I say that half seriously. The chemical processes involved in component manufacturing ultimately cannot be controlled.Addressing what you mention, that is a different situation. Where you are only building a handful of devices for a vertical application and reliability is of utmost importance, you can qualify and quantify everything. This is why such devices also become quite expensive and hence, not mass market.
As to the conclusion you are worried about, no, I was not saying anything in support of that. Engineers know all of these variations and hence design circuits where such variations are not important to final performance of the system. Take the power supply capacitors. Does it make a difference if the capacitor is 1000 microfarad or 1010? Or 982? No. In the case of high-end especially, they are over-speced to begin with since cost is not at important. That power supply is feeding power to an amplifier that itself has very large indifference to such power supply output variations. Again, in high-end design it better be.
There are some components that matter and those are usually in high-end gear are hand-selected and often hand tuned. Outside of that, the chips will fall where they will fall as far as what combination of parts you get in your specific unit. Good engineering makes sure that if I pick a random unit out of that set, it will meet the advertised spec for fidelity and performance. If it does not, they sure as heck won't have me as a customer!
The bottom line here is that we cannot look at variation in part values when subjected to operation/run time and say they will result in positive differences in the output of the device, i.e. the sound we perceive. There are so many variations in the design itself and would completely dwarf those changes. We need to buy equipment that is competently designed where I can pick a fresh unit out of the batch, put it on the bench and have it perform superlatively. If it does, I am golden. It cannot be the that the performance depends on some random event -- i.e. me "breaking in" some equipment -- for it to perform. I refuse to be part of any manufacturing process should that even be needed.
Curiously in most high-end gear sometimes we are paying a lot more for precision products not for their precision, but for some sonic effect associated to the component in a particular circuit, not because of the intrinsic precision of its more common electrical properties, such as resistance, capacitance or inductance and its drift versus temperature or age.
Just an example. As far as I know, no one in the typical electronic industries cares about the residual magnetic properties of components or connectors. According to a well known high-end designer, John Curl, it is a mandatory aspect to look at.
We do not have any scientific analysis of most components influence in sound quality, except for electrochemical or ceramic capacitors. But most high-end designers have clear preferences in this aspect.
there is any different quality sound if we burn first than ordinary use ?
According to many audio scientist expert gurus, yes with some audio electronic components; including loudspeakers (drivers and surrounds), power amplifiers, CD players, cartridges, speaker crossovers, interconnects, speaker wires and AC power cords.
* When they recommend to break-in/burn-in our speakers, @ the same time we are also burning-in the other audio components from our hi-fi stereo chain.
Some audio manufacturers recommend that we leave our audio components always on. It makes sense for tube equipment, and we also know that constantly turning our components on and off is stressing/wearing some internal parts more than others.
There are many schools on this subject depending of the ones we attend to. The scientific researches vary from different groups of audio scientists.
Personally I believe that each system in its own environment with its own thermal conditions has its optimal burn-in time period, from the time we purchase it new, to the time it reaches its optimal performance. Only that burn-in time period can affect our sound perception, psychologically or scientifically...or both.
I also believe that leaving our system always on helps for optimal performance. It is a personal choice in relation to other factors, like class A amps, heat, electricity, surges, etc.
This is just my own personal variation of opinion. We all can google the research done on this subject by the master audio architects of science.
The material composition of electronic parts, metals, chemicals, ...and their values can certainly be affected by current and heat transfer, and the change of those values, minimal as they can alternate could definitely impact our perception of music reproduction...the music listening quality...the overall audio quality.
To what extent? It depends; of the audio components comprising our hi-fi chain, and of the audio signal connections used. That's my own take.
* Welcome to What's Best Forum!
We all have read about cable cookers, cable freezing/cryogenic, cable manufacturers recommending long burn-in/break-in periods for their best Ultra hi-end cables.
They swear and so their customers.
• https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-...onents-sound-better-after-a-period-of-burn-in
• http://sound.westhost.com/cables.htm
? http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/mindcontrol2/part06.htm
Can we generalize? No, because no two people use the exact same audio components in the exact same room under the same temperature conditions and with the same exact music recording material.
What do you believe yourself? I searched for mathematical and physical scientific research with detailed analysis and factual measurements in real life conditions and I am still searching...
What is the absolute truth? I don't truly know but when it's really hot like it is here today, my music seems to be sweating just like I.
And when it's cooler with a gentle breeze she appears (?) cooler too...with a natural warmness and ease of expression. ...Like breathing more air.
If your room is like mine, and over 80 degree Celsius, with fans going (or air conditioning sucking air to cool it with fans), those motors can certainly interfere with audio signal waves entering trough several audio channels, including AC power cords.
During winter the electric heaters have their own timers and influence.
Who here knows all there is to know with exactitude the burn-in/break-in period of each audio gear till it can reach its optimal micron performance?
Why some experts say that it don't matter @ all while others say it matters a lot? Who's telling the truth who's telling a lie? Or are they both wrong or both right?
I am still searching for measured evidence from the audio scientific world organisation.
They swear and so their customers.
• https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-...onents-sound-better-after-a-period-of-burn-in
• http://sound.westhost.com/cables.htm
? http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/mindcontrol2/part06.htm
Can we generalize? No, because no two people use the exact same audio components in the exact same room under the same temperature conditions and with the same exact music recording material.
What do you believe yourself? I searched for mathematical and physical scientific research with detailed analysis and factual measurements in real life conditions and I am still searching...
What is the absolute truth? I don't truly know but when it's really hot like it is here today, my music seems to be sweating just like I.
And when it's cooler with a gentle breeze she appears (?) cooler too...with a natural warmness and ease of expression. ...Like breathing more air.
If your room is like mine, and over 80 degree Celsius, with fans going (or air conditioning sucking air to cool it with fans), those motors can certainly interfere with audio signal waves entering trough several audio channels, including AC power cords.
During winter the electric heaters have their own timers and influence.
Who here knows all there is to know with exactitude the burn-in/break-in period of each audio gear till it can reach its optimal micron performance?
Why some experts say that it don't matter @ all while others say it matters a lot? Who's telling the truth who's telling a lie? Or are they both wrong or both right?
I am still searching for measured evidence from the audio scientific world organisation.
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ED MEITNER INTERVIEW WITH HIS VIEWS SUPPORTING CRYOGENICALLY TREATING MATERIALS FOR AUDIO
A great interview with the SACD engineer himself, on SACD, is at:
www.positive-feedback.com/0802/pappas.Meitner.rev.8n2.html
Also, the July 2001 Hi Fi News Record Review has an interesting article by Keith Howard, "The Freezing Issue..."
with a brief interview with Ed Meitner:
"Here Ed Meitner of EMM Labs talks about his pioneering work with cryogenic treatment.
'We know what copper looks like under heavy magnification - It has a very erratic lattice structure, and we know that this comes from the way it is made. Most materials come from a liquid and are shocked, more or less, into a solid. So the lattice structure of the material isn't in its natural state. What this does is produce stress, residual stress.
'If you treat the material at low temperatures, where the strength of the atomic bonds starts to diminish, it reverts to the natural crystal structure. So this process relieves the residual stress. It is a function of temperature and time. The absolute temperature doesn't matter very much, but if you only go down to, say -100 degrees F it may take several weeks. If we take it down to liquid nitrogen temperatures then it happens much faster. Our treatment time for copper was 12 hours on the way down, 12 hours soak, and 12 hours back. You don't want to go too fast: then you put thermal stresses into the material and break it.
'As a sanity check on this, I also took permanent magnets and treated them - and of course they deplete.
'We're still using this technique but we haven't concentrated as much on it because this is not my real livelihood. Even though I like to tweak with hi-fi stuff, we're building commercial products here - recording studio consoles and test equipment. I have a friend in town who uses it for vacuum tubes becaue what it does is cut resonance. Residual stress increases the Q of resonances. A vacuum tube is riddled with resonances, so it's very beneficial.
'We also used it with CDs. That was most interesting because it proved a point so well. If you put a CD player into an anechoic chamber, in front of a loudspeaker, and sweep frequency you will find a really vicious peak in the focus servo current around 800 Hz, very high Q. The disc resonates and the focus wants to follow it.This current demand modulates the power supply and generates jitter, which is influenced by the acoustic energy going to the CD player from the speakers.
'Since its around 800 Hz, we have this problem with female voices. If you know somebody who can sing in that frequency range, very loud, they can shut CD players down. Cryogenic treatment doesn't change the frequency of that resonance, it just changes its Q (damping). Once you are talking high velocity vibrations, as they are at 800 Hz, clamping doesn't change things much. We tried damping mats and all sorts of stuff: they improved things a little but never as much as the cryogenics did.
'Stereophile had a whole bunch of their test discs treated. Some were treated and some not. Almost everyone they sent them to agreed that the treated discs sounded better. Another thing that happened which was probably even more interesting was that Analogue Devices came to us and we treated some 20-bit DAC chips. They sent out u ntreated and treated chips for people to try and again the same things happened: the treated ones sounded better. Again, you have mechanical resonances and they are attenuated by reducing the residual stress.
'There was never a failure. We treated tons of solid state stuff, whole circuit boards, and the only bad thing that happened was that the electrolytic capacitors would lose their shrinkwrap. That was it. We even treated speaker voice coils.
'What I've found over the last 15 years of being in high-end audio is that most of the minds are pretty closed. And this is strange: it's the opposite of what you would expect. So now I'm back in the pro audio business. What's even more puzzling is that you have all this megabucks equipment out there where the cost of the treatment would be of no concern. It would be a tiny fraction of the overall cost.
'Cryogenic treatment is not nuts. The windows on the space shuttle are treated with liquid neon. Wehave a company here in North America which sells fishing line that's treated. Apparently it holds the load better. A friend of mine in Boston has a big cryogenic facility and one female customer sends in cheap pantyhose for treatment because they run less.!' "
A great interview with the SACD engineer himself, on SACD, is at:
www.positive-feedback.com/0802/pappas.Meitner.rev.8n2.html
Also, the July 2001 Hi Fi News Record Review has an interesting article by Keith Howard, "The Freezing Issue..."
with a brief interview with Ed Meitner:
"Here Ed Meitner of EMM Labs talks about his pioneering work with cryogenic treatment.
'We know what copper looks like under heavy magnification - It has a very erratic lattice structure, and we know that this comes from the way it is made. Most materials come from a liquid and are shocked, more or less, into a solid. So the lattice structure of the material isn't in its natural state. What this does is produce stress, residual stress.
'If you treat the material at low temperatures, where the strength of the atomic bonds starts to diminish, it reverts to the natural crystal structure. So this process relieves the residual stress. It is a function of temperature and time. The absolute temperature doesn't matter very much, but if you only go down to, say -100 degrees F it may take several weeks. If we take it down to liquid nitrogen temperatures then it happens much faster. Our treatment time for copper was 12 hours on the way down, 12 hours soak, and 12 hours back. You don't want to go too fast: then you put thermal stresses into the material and break it.
'As a sanity check on this, I also took permanent magnets and treated them - and of course they deplete.
'We're still using this technique but we haven't concentrated as much on it because this is not my real livelihood. Even though I like to tweak with hi-fi stuff, we're building commercial products here - recording studio consoles and test equipment. I have a friend in town who uses it for vacuum tubes becaue what it does is cut resonance. Residual stress increases the Q of resonances. A vacuum tube is riddled with resonances, so it's very beneficial.
'We also used it with CDs. That was most interesting because it proved a point so well. If you put a CD player into an anechoic chamber, in front of a loudspeaker, and sweep frequency you will find a really vicious peak in the focus servo current around 800 Hz, very high Q. The disc resonates and the focus wants to follow it.This current demand modulates the power supply and generates jitter, which is influenced by the acoustic energy going to the CD player from the speakers.
'Since its around 800 Hz, we have this problem with female voices. If you know somebody who can sing in that frequency range, very loud, they can shut CD players down. Cryogenic treatment doesn't change the frequency of that resonance, it just changes its Q (damping). Once you are talking high velocity vibrations, as they are at 800 Hz, clamping doesn't change things much. We tried damping mats and all sorts of stuff: they improved things a little but never as much as the cryogenics did.
'Stereophile had a whole bunch of their test discs treated. Some were treated and some not. Almost everyone they sent them to agreed that the treated discs sounded better. Another thing that happened which was probably even more interesting was that Analogue Devices came to us and we treated some 20-bit DAC chips. They sent out u ntreated and treated chips for people to try and again the same things happened: the treated ones sounded better. Again, you have mechanical resonances and they are attenuated by reducing the residual stress.
'There was never a failure. We treated tons of solid state stuff, whole circuit boards, and the only bad thing that happened was that the electrolytic capacitors would lose their shrinkwrap. That was it. We even treated speaker voice coils.
'What I've found over the last 15 years of being in high-end audio is that most of the minds are pretty closed. And this is strange: it's the opposite of what you would expect. So now I'm back in the pro audio business. What's even more puzzling is that you have all this megabucks equipment out there where the cost of the treatment would be of no concern. It would be a tiny fraction of the overall cost.
'Cryogenic treatment is not nuts. The windows on the space shuttle are treated with liquid neon. Wehave a company here in North America which sells fishing line that's treated. Apparently it holds the load better. A friend of mine in Boston has a big cryogenic facility and one female customer sends in cheap pantyhose for treatment because they run less.!' "
I prefer 'burning' (maybe there is a better word) in power cables on the gear. This way the power cable and the gear sync with each other. On the other hand, I think that by using an external method to burn in the power cable that can over burn in the cable.
Let me give an example. A few years ago, I bought a Shunyata Alpha Digital power cable for my file player. However, rather than directly attach it, I ran it a couple of weeks on my Oppo 103 BR player. At the end of the two weeks I was amazed at how much better the picture was, with more depth, detail, and vibrant colors. So, I decided to buy another for the Oppo.
When that cable arrived, I hooked it up to an old Panamax power system, and ran three fans 24/7. After a week I thought this is really burnt in, and will look great. I hooked it up to the Oppo, and almost choked. The picture looked terrible, and was green saturated. Anyway, over time the cable settled in with the gear, and then performed as expected, but I was really surprised at the initial result.
Let me give an example. A few years ago, I bought a Shunyata Alpha Digital power cable for my file player. However, rather than directly attach it, I ran it a couple of weeks on my Oppo 103 BR player. At the end of the two weeks I was amazed at how much better the picture was, with more depth, detail, and vibrant colors. So, I decided to buy another for the Oppo.
When that cable arrived, I hooked it up to an old Panamax power system, and ran three fans 24/7. After a week I thought this is really burnt in, and will look great. I hooked it up to the Oppo, and almost choked. The picture looked terrible, and was green saturated. Anyway, over time the cable settled in with the gear, and then performed as expected, but I was really surprised at the initial result.
The temperature climbed to 30 degree Celsius today in my home; the fridge thermostat is set to max and cannot keep up. Milk is warm, juice too, and the freezer is hardly keeping my ham and chicken frozen.
The top of my amps are hot, my plasma is hot, brief I need to cool off all my electrical appliances. No burn-in for me...just the opposite.
Them Rio Olympics games are demanding...
Yes, 65 degree F is better for electronics and other electrical stuff. Probably the main important factor in music listening pleasure. ...Between 60 and 70 F.
The top of my amps are hot, my plasma is hot, brief I need to cool off all my electrical appliances. No burn-in for me...just the opposite.
Them Rio Olympics games are demanding...
Yes, 65 degree F is better for electronics and other electrical stuff. Probably the main important factor in music listening pleasure. ...Between 60 and 70 F.
Hello Amir
Thanks for your clarification and I couldn't agree more. Ideally the design should be robust enough so it does not matter. I have actually had the opportunity to audit a couple of part manufacturing lines. You would be surprised at how well they control what they consider to be critical processes and how well documented they are. In addition how well the people in those positions are trained and supervised. They take it very seriously as a bad batch of resistors can cause you all kinds of grief if they fail in a box.
Hello Micro
Depends on the connector types if you went into an ITT Cannon catalog for Mil Type connectors you would find non magnetic options available. They had them there before I started in the industry so a long time. If you are looking at cheap surface mount connectors you won't find that option. You can also just choose connectors that use non magnetic base materials to address the issue. All you have to do is use copper based alloys throughout the construction. It all boils down to careful part selection and common sense if you want to avoid it.
Rob
(...) Hello Micro
Depends on the connector types if you went into an ITT Cannon catalog for Mil Type connectors you would find non magnetic options available. They had them there before I started in the industry so a long time. If you are looking at cheap surface mount connectors you won't find that option. You can also just choose connectors that use non magnetic base materials to address the issue. All you have to do is use copper based alloys throughout the construction. It all boils down to careful part selection and common sense if you want to avoid it.
Rob
Rob,
Yes, for some specif applications magnetic materials must be avoided, but the motif is intrinsically quite different from that presented by audio designers. For some applications the use of magnetic materials is forbidden because they could cause side effects in other systems, not because they affect the flow of the electrical signal. Just as an example, some types of photomultipliers are extremely sensitive to magnetic fields, that can distort electron trajectories. Or in systems with high magnetic fields magnetic materials are strictly forbidden.
The main difference in the perspective is that when the effects you are considering are well known you have solid anchors to base development - as in your case. However high-end audio is a fringe area, where systematic knowledge is still behind practice.
BTW, we are still waiting for your opinion about the Fairy Tale Polarization of film capacitors in speakers. Does your industry have any views on it?
An interesting remark about burn-in - it seems it can also have negative effects. In his recent review of the new Naim NAP 500 amplifier Martin Colloms reports that after intensive laboratory "torture" tests the amplifier took a few days of music playback to recover the subtleties of its musical qualities.
I also remember reading about "over-cooking" cables with high amplitude cable drivers using synthesized burn-in signals.
I also remember reading about "over-cooking" cables with high amplitude cable drivers using synthesized burn-in signals.
Hello Micro
What are you taking about a mass spectrometer helium leak detector?? We build Rubidium frequency standards and used to build Cesium Standards and in both the detectors were heavily shielded with Mu metal and no magnetic material were used in the areas shielded. Sounds like a similar application especially with respect to the cesium detector.
Get back to you on the film caps
Rob
Hello Micro
What are you taking about a mass spectrometer helium leak detector?? We build Rubidium frequency standards and used to build Cesium Standards and in both the detectors were heavily shielded with Mu metal and no magnetic material were used in the areas shielded. Sounds like a similar application especially with respect to the cesium detector.
(...)
Rob
Yes, these are good examples of classical application that need screening from the omnipresent Earth magnetic field or other external magnetic interferences. Nothing related with our debate on burn-in and tweaks however.
Pioneer S-1EX speakers used with 5" magnesium midrange and coaxial beryllium dome tweeter. Omnimic software, mic placed about 2" from dome tweeter, centered on tweeter. Mic was not moved while cable was being burned in for 5 days on an AudioDharma Cable Cooker 2.0.
Cable used was ZenWave Audio SL17 speaker cable which uses an aggregate 17g of UPOCC copper litz wire. Litz wire has a much larger surface area in contact with the dielectric vs conventional wire and burn-in effects are very pronounced with this cable vs cables made using conventional wire.
IMO, frequency response is one of the more subtle aspects of burn-in, but the test shows unmistakable and relatively large changes in frequency response. It's fair to say a lot more is going on besides frequency response changes during burn-in, but this is the best I can do for now. Subjectively, the changes during burn-in are very pronounced.
1/6 octave smoothing
Cable used was ZenWave Audio SL17 speaker cable which uses an aggregate 17g of UPOCC copper litz wire. Litz wire has a much larger surface area in contact with the dielectric vs conventional wire and burn-in effects are very pronounced with this cable vs cables made using conventional wire.
IMO, frequency response is one of the more subtle aspects of burn-in, but the test shows unmistakable and relatively large changes in frequency response. It's fair to say a lot more is going on besides frequency response changes during burn-in, but this is the best I can do for now. Subjectively, the changes during burn-in are very pronounced.
1/6 octave smoothing
Hello Dave
Can you change the resolution and scale?? Something like 20db to see what's going on. Why doesn't your marker match the graph did you have to adjust the amplitude to over lay the curves??
Thanks Rob
Amplitude was not changed, used the same settings on stepped preamp volume control. I'll see if I can mess with scaling, but it's pretty obvious what's going on, not exactly a subtle change and well within the measurement system's capabilities as I can repeat measurements with little to no deviation above a few hundred hz. Subjective impressions match measurements as well.
Sorry about the actual proof, but here it is!
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