Do Audio Speakers Break-in?

[beefkabob]

I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!!! KJHADSKLAJHSDKLAJHS!

You take a speaker when it's brand new and unbroken in. Then you test it without actually breaking the speaker in. How? Um... Fudge.

But seriously, 100 hours of pink noise. Then remeasure.

 

[maty]

As I have commented other times, I have only been able to appreciate improvement in the KEF Q100 with 5.25" Uni-Q coaxial driver, which sounded very bad at first, without bass.

Until then never. I guess it should be the exception to the norm.

 

[Soniclife]

Testing just one already used speaker for a "few hours" at low power and then claiming break-in is a fallacy is going a bit far. Pretty small sample group for bold proclamations if you ask me.

Do an impedance sweep and FR of a brand new out of the box speaker and then do it again after a number of hours exercising the bass driver with moderate excursion. Get the other Revel, the unused one from the pair?

I agree, the tests should be short, and more data points world be needed to be conclusive. But are there any data points showing the opposite with speakers?

 

[Soniclife]

There is no doubt in my experience used or demo speakers sound better than out of the box speakers. We used to put them side by side in the demo room. Identical speakers, one pair had been pushed in demos and the others we'd unpack to swap over so the customers would get the speaker they listened to and we'd run in the new pair. Also meant we knew the speakers that went out the door were as good as they could be and had no faults.

Pretty much every dealer that sells fancy cables does the same, and is also convinced by the difference.

 

[Shadrach]

Drive units do change over time and in some cases it is audible and measurable but it's not really what this thread is about.
Anyone who has 10" and above bass drivers may have had to deal with surround and spider sag. It does take some time.
I used to rotate some of the large bass drivers I've had to try and compensate for the slump. It can't be helped, like many things, they head downwards over time.

 

[Sunship]

So happy to read this!
There's this idea that new suspensions and spiders are stiff and prevent the cone from moving happily and freely.
Yes they do, but that's not a nuisance! They have a task to manhandle the cone and bring it back to zero.

 

[dukanvadet]

I FIGURED IT OUT!!!!!! KJHADSKLAJHSDKLAJHS!

You take a speaker when it's brand new and unbroken in. Then you test it without actually breaking the speaker in. How? Um... Fudge.

But seriously, 100 hours of pink noise. Then remeasure.

I nothing at all happens the first few hours and then in the 99th hour something dramatic changes it completely i would be concerned about that speakers longevity.

I dont think pink noise is a good signal , it will heat the voicecoil significantly more than normal dynamic music. Not that i think it would do much difference but not a good way to simulate normal listening.

 

[Juhazi]

More tech stuff

https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/speaker-break-in-fact-or-fiction

https://hificompass.com/en/reviews/wavecor-wf182bd03-midwoofer

But for some extreme cases, break-in really happens for very stiff-spider subwoofers. However this is mostly temperature dependent and reversible.
https://www.wavecor.com/html/sw178wa01.html

 

[DSJR]

According to a well respected UK speaker manufacturer, the main driver 'break-in' happens quickly in the unit being used, as the materials in the 'spider' suspension 'form.' Thereafter, the driver shouldn't change at all unless it's broken. Another brand, ATC, used to give their main drivers ten or twenty minutes at resonance (20hz or so in the 15" drivers I saw with cones pumping in and out hard), the intention being that if they withstood this, they'd withstand anything a pro studio would chuck at them.

I did see on a headphone test that the drivers there could take 48 hours for the 10 - 15khz levels to fully settle (only a db or so) but I don't have links to the plots I saw online. maybe ferro-fluid damped tweeters may take a few hours to fully settle, I don't know - and over ten years, tweeters can go off and lose output (any UK people remember the original Mission 770 with connectors on the bottom? The top was a bit 'whispy' (I'm being polite) and when we got one of the last tweeters to replace one of the pair, the difference was huge, the old one balancing perfectly while the new tweeter 'whisped' just as new (I think these tweeters - metal plate with broken concentric slots around the soft dome - may be made again now but not sure).

So fella's, please don't totally dismiss this as bunkum. I think we all know that 99% of this is the new owner getting used to them...

 

[TabCam]

It is always funny to see people measuring one item and jumping to conclusions. We have our scientific method but is is equally appropriate to distrusts it until there is a computer based measuring system that can predict soundstage, detail retrieval, potential room interaction, etc. Too many systems that measure (almost) the same still sound quite different.

The scientific approach helps a lot with sifting through a lot of equipment but in the end you have to listen to it for yourself. So for now I think there is no basis on buying on measurements alone.

BTW, I do not like cheap debating tactics. It is expensive to buy new speakers, buy an expensive measurements system to measure and have the proper room to be able to have a controlled environment in which the only variable is the speaker system. Demanding proof like that and at the same time discounting measured drivers is not the scientific method. The same can be said for the "proof". Were a lot of different speakers and samples tested? It should be about curiosity and investigation!

 

[xarkkon]

I appreciate the experiment, but what many people are saying in this thread makes sense. Because the nay-sayers have claimed 100 hours, showing data based on 3.5 hour usage will not convince them easily, especially when there are other experiments available online who claim to have seen a difference in FR after 100 hours of usage.

I note you'll be repeating the experiment with another speaker set. Looking forward to that!

 

[Crane]

Maybe the speaker you received was already broken in by the company

The only thing that gets break in are the moving mechanical parts that have leeway to do so. In a boxed speaker i highly doubt there is anything that would need that and even so its probably not even beyond an error range of measurements.

 

[MZKM]

I compared the M16 to my Revel Salon 2 which have played hundreds or thousands of hours of music.

Obviously to need to buy a new pair of Salon2’s and measure them against yours.

 

[Fluffy]

I tried to burn-in a couple of headphones when I got into the hobby. Never recall it making any difference. One thing that can make a difference is deterioration and softening over time of pads, that can lead to small changes in sound. I think this is caused mainly because either the pad gets softer and thus the driver is getting a little bit closer to the ear, or the seal around the ear changes so some low frequencies respond differently. That thing can happen over very long time of casual use. No reason to assume it makes the sound better, just a tiny bit different. If someone were to measure this, they would need to compare the same headphone when it was new to how it is at least a year of regular use later.

As people commented, the most important thing is brain break-in (or brain-in). Your brain gets used to the new micro-changes in frequency response and learns to accommodate for them.

 

[TimVG]

I noticed my old Peerless XLS-10 woofer that is from around 2004, and has been in use for many, many hours has a suspension that has become much softer compared to two new B-stock ones I purchased last year. Never did measure the differences as it all gets EQ'd down there anyhow.

 

[Duckeenie]

Break in time: The amount of time it takes for confirmation bias to convince you that you didn't spend all that money on something you don't even like.

 

[wwenze]

New speakers always sound weird compared to the old. 100 hours later your ears would have gotten used to it.

 

[lszomb]

No...break in does help....your ears....

 

[Francis Vaughan]

Just to reiterate the point, made many times before.
Why does break-in of audio components always make them sound better - never worse?

One would give more credence to break-in being meaningful if there were common cases of components sounding worse after extended use. But every single one of the processes involved seems to only make things sound better.

In addition, the actual parameters that are claimed to change are never spelled out. The fact that suspension compliance can change with temperature is trotted out as evidence. But the effects are claimed to be much more wide reaching than just that. And generally not measurable. The article linked to earlier by @Juhazi https://www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/speaker-break-in-fact-or-fiction really must be read. Take note of the limits of frequency response possible.

 

[Dimitri]

do it again after a number of hours exercising the bass driver with moderate excursion.

The magic number seems to be greater than 20 but less than 101.