Your not imagining it, some conponents in the circuitry like capacitors don't perform at their best until they've gone through the forming process, this also affects the sound, it should carry on to improve for a little while longer
Your not imagining it, some conponents in the circuitry like capacitors don't perform at their best until they've gone through the forming process, this also affects the sound, it should carry on to improve for a little while longer
Cheers,
Leo
The burn in period of my DACs is legendary in its own right, and one of the few cases where the burn in process can be demonstrated in action.
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I'm David.
I don't think a burning in process exists. I think it's you appreciating it more as you become acclimatised to the sound.
The burn in effect is quite easy to demonstrate, and does not require any special piece of equipment. Just take two brand new pieces of equipment, like two Caimans. Test them both for a very short period to confirm that they are sounding the same. THen put one of them away, whilst continuing to use the other one for say 50 hours. Dig out the other DAC and compare them. The differences will start to show up. Pack away the one DAC again and continue burning in the other for another 50 hours. Compare the two again, etc. After about 200 hours the differences are so obviously clear as night and day.
If the non-believers in burn in would take the time to carry out this simple test on any two pieces of audio, or even video, equipment, they'll soon have egg all over their faces.
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I'm Dave.
Stanley
Very interesting. Of course most of us aren't in the privileged position of having several new versions of lots of kit to test out, and even affording just one might be a challenge in some cases. :-)
Once burnt in, there are possibly other changes which may eventually lead to failure. I hope these take a lot longer than 200 hours, and are fixable in the case of the Caiman.
bws
Dave
Location: Lancaster(-ish), UK
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I'm ChrisB.
You only have to trust your ears to know that that isn't true. All of my components have taken some time to burn-in, some more than others. The most extreme example was my old Sony SCD-1 SACD player, which took an age to settle and became much worse after new before it surpassed that sound quality to become very much better. It was all (painfully) audible and verified by several other SCD-1 owners.
The process in speakers and electronic components is well documented, that in cables very much less so. It's all audible, though.
Davey is right, imho, in one thing: if you don't pay extreme attention, burn-in is not very noticeable for most solid-state electronics. There may be patent exceptions (like the SCD-1) which can be exacerbated (to the better or the worse) by the rest of the setup, but, as a whole, differences remain small.
This is how I understand it.
Dimitri.
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
Location: Moved to frozen north, beyond Inverness
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I'm Dave.
Leo
Re capacitors, what type of capacitors are used in the sort of equipment we are talking about? Presumably electrolytics are used for power applications, but smaller capacitors may use other technologies. Which are the ones which make a difference in your opinion? Electrolytics do change with the polarising voltages, and apparently modern ones don't change too much and are at least usable after the initial period of use if the circuits lie dormant for quite a while, though whether they need to go through another burn in period after a while of being unused I don't know. I think however that these aren't the type which are being considered here. This page - http://tinyurl.com/a327e4 - has some very interesting details, with some being more accurate and temperature stable than others.
Regarding one of my amps, which I thought was going off, one guy in a hi-fi shop suggested that some of the electrolytic capacitors were going out of spec or failing, but with my recently revised knowledge, that seems unlikely to me as a cause of the problems I thought it had - which were mainly a slightly rougher sound suggesting some imbalance somewhere in the circuitry.
Dave