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Do Audio Speakers Break-in?

milosz said:
Our brain has a break-in period too. But I think it entirely possible that woofer surrounds and spiders might change characteristics over time with use. Midrange drivers & Tweeters? I don't see it but I would like to see studies on this topic- maybe they too "wear in." Surely speaker system or raw driver manufacturers have this data.
Click to expand...

There could be some slight break in of woofers but mostly it's your brain getting use to the sound.
I can tell you after twenty years when the woofer surrounds start to crack and break that will definitely sound different. :D
 
a4eaudio said:
I would have thought it would be obvious, the KEF paper linked above touches on it. The soft parts of the speaker break-in, which appears to be accepted as fact in this thread. Anyone who has ever measured TS parameters knows that if you burn in the speaker the TS parameters measure differently - why would anyone expect this to NEVER make an audible difference?. Speakers are measured and designed with broken-in drivers.
  • It shouldn't be surprising if a speaker doesn't sound audibly different after break-in, as the break-in just wasn't signficant
  • It shouldn't be surprising if a speaker DOES sound audibly BETTER after break-in, as it sounds the way it was designed to sound after break-in
  • It would be surprising if the speaker sounded WORSE after break-in.
Click to expand...
That breakin process happens in seconds. And likely already happened when they test the speakers in factory.
Speaker manufacturers do not want people simply return their new speakers because they sound different (to their old ones), simply as that
 
I wrote it before, the smallest summary possible: I bought new ATC SCM19’s, it took some time before I liked them, discovered that the painting was not flawless, it took months before the replacements came, then suddenly the months-old were replaced by new ones, the decrease in sound quality was shocking and I had to wait again before the sound recovered.

Note: ATC states that their speakers do not need breaking in. My conclusion: rely on your own ears and surely don’t listen to people that draw conclusions based purely on measurements.
 
HuubFranssen said:
I wrote it before, the smallest summary possible: I bought new ATC SCM19’s, it took some time before I liked them, discovered that the painting was not flawless, it took months before the replacements came, then suddenly the months-old were replaced by new ones, the decrease in sound quality was shocking and I had to wait again before the sound recovered.

Note: ATC states that their speakers do not need breaking in. My conclusion: rely on your own ears and surely don’t listen to people that draw conclusions based purely on measurements.
Click to expand...
More likely that you just don't like the speakers but got used to them. Then when the replacements arrived you listened fresh and didn't like them again. Measurements are reliable, the brain isn't.
 
Mart68 said:
More likely that you just don't like the speakers but got used to them. Then when the replacements arrived you listened fresh and didn't like them again. Measurements are reliable, the brain isn't.
Click to expand...

The brain is extremely reliable. With some months in between the new speakers sounded exactly the same as the first set when I heard these first. A remarkable effort! My brain tricked me twice remembering and reproducing the thinny harsh sound perfectly.
 
HuubFranssen said:
The brain is extremely reliable. With some months in between the new speakers sounded exactly the same as the first set when I heard these first. A remarkable effort! My brain tricked me twice remembering and reproducing the thinny harsh sound perfectly.
Click to expand...
No it isn’t. It can’t even cope with the McGurk effect.
en.wikipedia.org

McGurk effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
HuubFranssen said:
The brain is extremely reliable. With some months in between the new speakers sounded exactly the same as the first set when I heard these first. A remarkable effort! My brain tricked me twice remembering and reproducing the thinny harsh sound perfectly.
Click to expand...
It's a tiny speaker with no bass. It will sound thin. It has one 6.5'' driver doing almost all the work. Probably the harshness was due to you initially over-driving them trying to get some bass out of them. We've all done that with minature speakers.

Bear in mind this is a monitoring speaker designed to be used near field i.e 4 feet or less from the listener, not to fill a room.

Then, over time you played them at lower levels to keep them listenable and consequently found them more amenable.

Now I'm not saying that's exactly what happened but it's massively more likely than the speaker's performance changed with use from harsh and thin to full and smooth. That level of transformation would require massive changes in the driver's working parameters, and we know that just doesn't happen.
 
a4eaudio said:
I would have thought it would be obvious, the KEF paper linked above touches on it. The soft parts of the speaker break-in, which appears to be accepted as fact in this thread. Anyone who has ever measured TS parameters knows that if you burn in the speaker the TS parameters measure differently - why would anyone expect this to NEVER make an audible difference?. Speakers are measured and designed with broken-in drivers.
  • It shouldn't be surprising if a speaker doesn't sound audibly different after break-in, as the break-in just wasn't signficant
  • It shouldn't be surprising if a speaker DOES sound audibly BETTER after break-in, as it sounds the way it was designed to sound after break-in
  • It would be surprising if the speaker sounded WORSE after break-in.
Click to expand...
The problem is that audiophiles often say break-in times are hundreds of hours or more long. I recall years back someone ran tests and found the measurable mechanical changes for speaker suspension break-in, if any, took a few hours at most. Even then, when one is spending tens of thousands of dollars or more on high-end speakers, why isn't the manufacturer or dealer doing this for you? It's a luxury product, for God's sake! Finally, you'll note that when people have owned speakers for years or decades, they never complain about the suspension having become too compliant and thus deteriorating the sound. They claim break-in only ever makes things better, never worse. But, if suspensions can be too tight, they can also be too loose. (The one audiophile exception for admitted deterioration was for foam surrounds, but they were simply falling apart completely.)
 
HuubFranssen said:
I wrote it before, the smallest summary possible: I bought new ATC SCM19’s, it took some time before I liked them, discovered that the painting was not flawless, it took months before the replacements came, then suddenly the months-old were replaced by new ones, the decrease in sound quality was shocking and I had to wait again before the sound recovered.

Note: ATC states that their speakers do not need breaking in. My conclusion: rely on your own ears and surely don’t listen to people that draw conclusions based purely on measurements.
Click to expand...
Is it plausible that the differences you heard we due to manufacturing tolerances in the drivers and/or the cross over components?

I’ve been measuring KEF drivers, for example for a while, and even though they are meant to be “identical” they are certainly not - they have at least 1dB differences, then on top of this if you have passive crossovers - the bipolar caps have a 20% variance, not to mention the tolerance of inductors/resistors too.

Is it possible you are hearing the effects of manufacturing tolerances?
 
HuubFranssen said:
I wrote it before, the smallest summary possible: I bought new ATC SCM19’s, it took some time before I liked them, discovered that the painting was not flawless, it took months before the replacements came, then suddenly the months-old were replaced by new ones, the decrease in sound quality was shocking and I had to wait again before the sound recovered.

Note: ATC states that their speakers do not need breaking in. My conclusion: rely on your own ears and surely don’t listen to people that draw conclusions based purely on measurements.
Click to expand...
How do you know the difference wasn’t caused by the now-flawless painting…
 
Waveform Fidelity said:
I’ve been measuring KEF drivers, for example for a while, and even though they are meant to be “identical” they are certainly not - they have at least 1dB differences, then on top of this if you have passive crossovers - the bipolar caps have a 20% variance, not to mention the tolerance of inductors/resistors too.
Click to expand...
Can you show those measurements which are very contradicting to the existing ones which show some of the lowest tolerances in the market and much lower than 1dB including crossovers where in my experience the typical tolerance of the components barely changes the response.

See black and red curves of below pairs:

KEF Q11 Meta floorstanding loudspeaker Lab Report

Measured on its Uni-Q axis, the Q11’s three 165mm ‘hybrid alloy’ bass units make their presence felt in what is a generally down-tilted, bass-rich response [see Graph 1], albeit with a peak at 14kHz and strong main dome resonance at 45.7kHz (+7dB re. 1kHz). The latter is also seen on the CSD...
hifinews.com hifinews.com

KEF LS50 Meta Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report To ensure the validity of our comparisons, new samples of both the LS50 and LS50 Meta were tested 'back-to-back' under identical lab conditions. So, while the LS50's pair matching is within 1.3dB and response uniformity good to ±2.9dB and ±4.0dB [grey/orange traces, Graph 1] the new...
www.hifinews.com www.hifinews.com

KEF LS60 Wireless Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report With its line/digital inputs and fully integrated Class AB and Class D amplifiers, KEF's LS60 Wireless has no meaningful 'sensitivity' that might be compared with a standard passive loudspeaker. Neither does it have any meaningful 'impedance' – the internal amplifiers are certainly...
www.hifinews.com www.hifinews.com

KEF R3 Meta Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report No 'fantasy specifications' here as the most compact of KEF's R Meta series delivers exactly what it says on the tin (ok, website). The 3.2ohm minimum/4ohm nominal impedance rating is met in practice with 3.17ohm at 142Hz although the load is
www.hifinews.com www.hifinews.com

KEF R11 Meta Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report Just as we saw with the R3 Meta [HFN Sep '23], this latest 'Meta' version of the original R11 [HFN May '19] has also witnessed a top-to-toe refinement. Sensitivity is essentially unchanged at 89.6dB/2.83V/1m while the forward response is slightly downtilted [see Graph 1] with errors...
www.hifinews.com www.hifinews.com

KEF Reference 5 Meta Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report In practice this 'Meta' version of the original Reference 5 [HFN Oct '14] has evolved from tip-to-toe. KEF's specs reflect this too – bass extension is unchanged, but sensitivity is down from 89.5dB to 88dB and the Uni-Q crossover adjusted from 2.8kHz to 2.1kHz, etc, in this latest...
www.hifinews.com www.hifinews.com

KEF Blade One Meta Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report While attention is inevitably focused on the efficacy of KEF's Meta disc in dissipating the Uni-Q driver's rear-radiation [see LS50 Meta, HFN Jun '21], the Blade One Meta's driver ensemble delivers a remarkably flat axial response [see Graph 1]. With response errors of just ±1.2dB and...
www.hifinews.com www.hifinews.com
 
voodooless said:
You can pretend all you like, but it really is not!
Click to expand...

I was going to argue with you that the brain is reliable, but I forgot what I was going to say.

(It's a joke, for the humour impaired)
 
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