[Daygloworange]

Recently there was a thread that got into the debate over speaker cables, IC's, and power cords again. Of course the outcome is becoming all too predictable......But, it got me thinking about another topic, so I'm going to ask you Danny, I know that you and a number of other manufacturers feel that Sonicaps capacitors are superior than other brands available.

I'm interested in knowing if the performance differences are measurable, and if so, what are they? In your speakers, are there improvements in phase?, frequency response?, does it have any effect on impedance?,.....if you had 2 or 3 crossovers with all similar parts values, but different brand caps, resistors, inductors.....how do they differ?  Are there concrete emperical differences, or are they subjective? Is it a clearly subjective thing that we just haven't found an appropriate method to quantify in scientific terms, as some have suggested might be the case?

After having built your AV/3 kit, I wrote you the next day. My initial observation was that they sounded warm, if not a little dark.....my feeling was that I would probably want to tip the tweeter up a bit. After a couple of weeks of 24/7 break in, my observations had changed. While I was definitely sceptical about burn-it, or break in, they did not perform the same. They are not dark at all. They sound neutral to me. I would have regretted if I had tipped up the tweeter as you said I could with a resistor change. It would have been a mistake.

As you obviously would have access to similar speakers with many hours on them, if you were to measure a pair of well burned in AV/ 3's and put them up against a fresh pair, ( allowing for the drivers to break in a bit) what might the measurement differences be?

Sorry, I'm not trying to stir up a hornet's nest here, just really curious.

BTW, your driver break in facts article on your website was a great read.

Cheers

[Blaine_M]

I would imagine the break in differences between a 'broken in' pair and not broken in pair of AV/3 would be very similar to the differences as he found in that article.  Same woofer/tweeter. 

[BobM]

Break-in is a known, if not measurable, fact to many of us who have experienced it over the years. It is refreshing when someone who doesn't believe in it, in principal, joins the rest of us in the real world and experiences it, in fact.

Welcome to the club. 

Bob

[Daygloworange]

Bob,

Yes, I had been sceptical about "break in", that why I was careful to call them observations. I'm still a little unsure, kinda 50/50 on the topic. Did I perceive a difference? Yes. But what was I actually perceiving?......So, essentially, I'm just on a fact finding quest.

I wanted to ask someone who would qualify as a professional listener. Someone who is beyond just an enthusiast, but rather someone who has to be very critical and realistic about what it is they hear. It's in Danny's best interest to be just that. If he notices and is able to recreate positive improvements, his products will benefit, and so will he. Just being pragmatic about the whole thing.

[Steve Eddy]

Break-in is a known, if not measurable, fact to many of us who have experienced it over the years. It is refreshing when someone who doesn't believe in it, in principal, joins the rest of us in the real world and experiences it, in fact.

But what you're experiencing in fact, doesn't necessarily tell you what in fact you're experiencing.

By that I mean that while it is indeed an established fact that people experience a phenomenon which has been called "break-in," it has yet to be established as fact that what's breaking in is the cable. That is still in the realm of faith, not fact.

se

[Steve Eddy]

Yes, I had been sceptical about "break in", that why I was careful to call them observations. I'm still a little unsure, kinda 50/50 on the topic. Did I perceive a difference? Yes. But what was I actually perceiving?......So, essentially, I'm just on a fact finding quest.

In that department you'll find that facts are quite thin on the ground.

I wanted to ask someone who would qualify as a professional listener. Someone who is beyond just an enthusiast, but rather someone who has to be very critical and realistic about what it is they hear.

But how exactly does one qualify as a "professional listener"? And how exactly would you be able to distinguish such a person from a non-professional listener?

All listeners, whether professional or amateur, are human beings and as such are susceptible to those limitations of human perception which make subjective perception alone limited in terms of establishing objective facts.

You said you perceive a difference, but aren't entirely sure what it is you're actually perceiving. So let me ask you, at the end of the day, does it really matter? Let's for the sake of argument say that you buy some new cables and subjectively experience an improvement over the cables you were using. And let's say that it can be established without any doubt that what you experienced had nothing to do with the cables.

What do you do?

Do you go back to using the old cables because it's been proved that the new cables didn't produce any actual audible difference?

Or do you keep the new cables and continue enjoying the subjective improvement you perceive?

se

[BobM]

By that I mean that while it is indeed an established fact that people experience a phenomenon which has been called "break-in," it has yet to be established as fact that what's breaking in is the cable. That is still in the realm of faith, not fact.

Steve, I agree that there's no scientific proof that something is changing, but the sound definitely changes. It's not in my head or just me "getting used to it" over time. I've heard it too many times to say it's imaginary. Then again, this topic has been beaten to death everywhere, so I doubt that we'll solve it here.

Perhaps the following is occurring (from countless suggestions on threads), none of it confirmed or even measurable:
- the listener is breaking in, or just getting used to it
- the dielectric is becoming more uniform, and "forming" to perform its job
- the crystaline structure in the wire is aligning
- the eddy (not Steve Eddy  ) currents, RMI, EFI, capacitance and inductance are balancing out
- the components at either end of the cable are somehow reacting, or perhaps "burning in" to the connection, given the electrical qualities of the new conductor, and it's not the cable itself
- it's none of the above and just has to do with the electrical interferance in the environment from time "A" to time "B" (like the system sounds better at night phenomenon due to better AC power delivery)
- the listener can't possibly remember the original sounds in comparisn with the new sounds because that was x-days ago
- and so on ...

Enjoy,
Bob

[dado5]

Did I perceive a difference? Yes. But what was I actually perceiving?......So, essentially, I'm just on a fact finding quest.

Don't worry about it.  Science can never (and I mean NEVER) find a cause for your internal experience. You can attempt to find correlation between what you perceived and any number of physical phenomena, but there is no way to move beyond this to the realm of proof.  One side of the cause-effect relationship is not independently verifiable as you can never fully control, isolate or even know the  internal aspects of your experience.

If the change is for the better enjoy it and if not buy something else.

[Steve Eddy]

Steve, I agree that there's no scientific proof that something is changing, but the sound definitely changes. It's not in my head or just me "getting used to it" over time. I've heard it too many times to say it's imaginary. Then again, this topic has been beaten to death everywhere, so I doubt that we'll solve it here.

Well, I don't know that "I've heard it too many times to say it's imaginary" is really saying much. I mean, no matter how many times you've perceived it, you were still a human being each time. And if our subjective perceptions can cause us to perceive differences even in the absence of actual, audible differences, I don't see that the number of times one perceives a difference lessens the chances of that happening. In fact, I would think that if anything, it would tend to reinforce itself on subsequent occasions rather than the opposite.

I do believe you're right though that we'll not solve it here.

Perhaps the following is occurring (from countless suggestions on threads), none of it confirmed or even measurable:

Yes, perhaps. But until someone is actually serious enough to put forth the not insignificant effort to establish an actual, objective audible difference to begin with, then all these perhapses are ultimately meaningless.

se

[woodsyi]

Here we go again -- an epistemological objectivist falling into the well of nihilism.   

[Daygloworange]

Hey Steve Eddy,

All semantics aside, what I meant by professional listener is someone whose day to day job description is to scrutinize and objectively quantify qualities, improvements, and has over the course of time honed the ability to zoom in on things. Not to say nobody else other than a pro could. But when it's something you do day in and day out, chances are you might get good at it. It's his job to scrutinize how well something sounds, how well the transducer he is listening to, conveys.

 I think Danny qualifies, and I've spoken enough times with him about stuff, and found our "ears" to be more similar than dissimilar. I own a pair of his speakers and when I communicated back and forth with him prior to ordering them, I discussed aspects of what I was looking for, what I did like, didn't like about other speakers, etc.....

The speakers I got from him perform exactly as I hoped, and just like he desribed. So to sum it all up, it's also basically that he's earned my respect already, and I value HIS opinion based on those merits. You kind of have to establish a benchmark/baseline somewhere in order to launch from.


Also, I did perceive a difference and could describe it. Actually, what I said was that I originally thought they might need to be brightened up......In the interest of trying to make it brief I didn't go into all the details.....Yes, I knew exactly what the differences were. I'm sure of my perceptions. I'm just trying to determine the origins, is it in my mind? ( possible) is it electronical ( and if so, is it measurable?) That basically the gist of it.

As far as, does it really matter? Kinda, sorta. Am I gonna lose my mind over it? Am I gonna lose sleep over it? Nope!

Just got a curious nature. By the way, my speaker cables are just simple 14 or 12 guage OFC. No big deal. I don't even know if getting empirical data would make me want to go out and buy more esoteric cables, cause then I'd be wondering " will they be too bright? what'll happen to my imaging? Blah, blah, blah......Just trying to satisfy a curiosity is all!

Rock n' roll!

[Daygloworange]

Hey dado5,

Missed your post. Science can "never, ever" explain? That doesn't leave any room does it? Any empirical data to support that?

I'll have to disagree with you on that one.

[Danny Richie]

I'll start with your questions regarding the Sonicaps.

I'm interested in knowing if the performance differences are measurable, and if so, what are they?

There are a lot of ways that caps are measured beyond capacitance, and many of these are easily and rotinely measured. Off the top of my head I recall dielectric absorption, dielectric constant, ESR, DF, self inductance, temperature ratings etc. Less tested but other known differences might include the thickness of the dielectric, the thickness of the conductive film, composition of the material used as the dielectric and the film, termination methods and materials used, etc.

It the standard measured areas, the Sonicaps perform quite well, but this is not where the main audible differences lie.

Two caps might measure very much the same in many ways, but one might use Tin foil while the other uses Aluminum foil as the conductive material, and they might have a considerable different character to their sound.

In your speakers, are there improvements in phase?, frequency response?, does it have any effect on impedance?,.....if you had 2 or 3 crossovers with all similar parts values, but different brand caps, resistors, inductors.....how do they differ?

You will not see differences in those areas from different types of components. In a since you would be measuring the wrong thing. The right thing to measure to quantify the audible differences are not that easy.

Think of a cap as an energy storage device. As a signal passes through it, it is temporarily stored and then discharged. Low storage time (fast discharge) equals minimal signal disruption and coloration. Longer storage time (slower discharge) will tend to smear the signal a little. It will drag it out over time slightly and run more together.

Are there concrete emperical differences, or are they subjective?

How about yes, and yes. Some differences are easy to measure and some are not.

I can remember spending a considerable amount of time A/B comparing three caps. All three caps were .1uF by-pass caps. They were all three made by the same company and were identical in every way accept for the way they were covered. One was wrapped in what looked like tissue paper and the ends were exposed. The second one was wrapped in a thin poly jacket and it too left the ends exposed. The third one was wrapped in a poly jacket and the ends were sealed. They all three sounded different, and the manufacturer knew it. The manufacturer called the one wrapped in tissue paper the "hot rod" version. It did indeed sound the best.

Your observations of the changes regarding speaker burn in were very typical.

As you obviously would have access to similar speakers with many hours on them, if you were to measure a pair of well burned in AV/ 3's and put them up against a fresh pair, ( allowing for the drivers to break in a bit) what might the measurement differences be?

You won't see changes that will show up in frequency response other than a possible change in the bottom end of its range, but not much. This is just due to a loosening of the woofers compliance.

Steve, You are welcome here as long as you remain civil. An exchange that I had with you on another forum several years ago prompted this response from the moderator to you...

Be aware that if you start calling names yet again, with yet another inmate, such posts will be deleted, and I will be forced to submit your name for consideration to be permanently banned.

Since you have been argumentative with me in the past, my tolerance level for such interactions will be quite low. Positive and constructive posts are welcome and could be a refreshing new start.

Also, I don't want to get into an analysis or debate of human behavior and perception (or anything along those lines) in this forum. You are however welcome to share your own experiences just don't attack any others for their experiences.

Cool?

[jqp]

Some random thoughts on the aesthetics and epistemology of audio phenonmena...

Almost everyone agrees that gear with moving parts "breaks-in" - one example in the audio realm is the surrounds in your new woofers. They have to stretch and become flexible to reach their "optimum" performance.

Many kinds of gear surely go through a break-in period, but often performance of said gear may not be significantly changed by the break-in or burn-in process. When a fan runs for the first time, lubricant spreads to a point of equilibrium around the shaft and sockets. But is that a significant factor in the fans performance? It happens once and it is over. Until maybe the next season when some form of lubricant redistribution occurs, a different starting point and probably less lubriant now...

Or my new glass-ceramic cooktop. I am sure there was some kind of burn-in that occured - expansion and contraction of element and ceramic to some range of equilibrium, but is it significant to the performance of the product?

When you get a new PC you want to burn it in to test it for a period of time because electrical components typically fail in the beginning of their average life or make it to the average life. Things definitely change when you first run power through electronics. But can you tell if the cpu or hard drive or video card performs differently after 24 hours?

And auto engines break-in, some require less or almost no break-in period before you can race them on the highway without damage.

To me it is a question of our ability to truly perceive changes in performance that may result from initially running power to activate the gear.


Does changing the path that electrons take in a wire affect the audio signal in a way that changes how the voice-coil works? If so, how significantly?

Are capacitors consumable components like the tires on a dragster? DO they really have to be warmed up before the race and how long will it take to wear them out?

The output tubes in my CD player have to warm up for several seconds before the circuit even comes on. The sound does not stabilize for a period of time. The wires in tubes are physically changing during this time.

[Daygloworange]

Danny,

That's the kind of info and data I was looking for. So the answer is YES, people hear it, and YES there are measurable differences. Thanks. That satisfies my curiosity.

Curious thing I've noticed on the topic of the "perception" of break in is that it's always for the better. I've never read on a thread anywhere where someone said that after "break in" that the changes were negative....Hmmm

In any event,

Thanks again Danny   

[brj]

Curious thing I've noticed on the topic of the "perception" of break in is that it's always for the better. I've never read on a thread anywhere where someone said that after "break in" that the changes were negative....Hmmm

Presumably, the component designs that break in and sound worse never leave the designer's workbench, or if they do, they suffer a quick demise in the marketplace and thus don't garner much discussion.

[Daygloworange]

On the topic of perceptions, I forgot to mention....In Ottawa (Canada), at The National Research Council's anechoic chamber, they conducted listening tests and if I remember correctly, the findings were something along the lines that, in a group ranging from audiophiles right down to people who barely even enjoy listening to music, that 90% or so picked the same speaker in a blind test as being the favorite.

I'll try to find the link and post it when I do. It was a while ago since I read it.

Cheers

[Steve Eddy]

Steve, You are welcome here as long as you remain civil.

I'm always civil. At least until such time as the other person becomes uncivil, at which point they're no longer deserving if being treated civilly.

An exchange that I had with you on another forum several years ago prompted this response from the moderator to you...

Be aware that if you start calling names yet again, with yet another inmate, such posts will be deleted, and I will be forced to submit your name for consideration to be permanently banned.

And it should be noted that the moderator's response was both unwarranted and unfounded as I've never started calling anyone names.

Since you have been argumentative with me in the past, my tolerance level for such interactions will be quite low.

I don't believe I was being argumentative with you. You had made some claims that I believed (and still believe) were factually incorrect and I presented arguments to support my assertion. Just because you didn't agree with those arguments doesn't mean I was being argumentative. Argumentative in my book means to argue, often disingenuously, purely for the sake of argument, which was never the case on my part during that exchange.

That exchange was a matter of public record, and instead of letting you cast aspersions here, I'd prefer that people read the exchange for themselves and reach their own conclusions.

That exchange can be found here: Levitator Answers

Positive and constructive posts are welcome and could be a refreshing new start.

That's fine as long as "positive and constructive" isn't just code for "never disagree or question anything" which is anathema to positive and constructive.

Also, I don't want to get into an analysis or debate of human behavior and perception (or anything along those lines) in this forum.

That's fine. Though it should be pointed out that the original poster seemed to be wanting to get at some objective truths vis a vis what we hear, and I'm afraid you're not going to be able to get to those truths without bringing human behavior and subjective perception into the matter.

You are however welcome to share your own experiences just don't attack any others for their experiences.

I've never attacked anyone for their experiences.

se

[Daygloworange]

Here's an excerpt:



The rise and recognition of Canadian manufacturers was not mere luck, nor was it due solely to the expense that went into building such facilities. A lot of personal effort went into the tests conducted at the NRC, and they were done with such precision that the results are still considered groundbreaking. At the center of it all is Floyd E. Toole, a former NRC employee. Toole now works for Harman International, parent company of Infinity, JBL, Madrigal, Revel, among others. Toole holds a B.S., Ph.D. and D.I.C., each in electrical engineering, and his name still comes up when speaking with Barton, or Rene St. Denis, who works for the NRC and performs the testing in the chamber.

Toole took on the arduous task of attempting to correlate loudspeaker measurements with listening impressions -- a topic that still sparks hot debate today. Using the NRC's vast resources, including the anechoic chamber, precision measurement devices and standardized listening room (listening chairs with calibration microphone shown in photo above right), Toole performed measurements not only on loudspeakers but on the listeners themselves and documented his findings in three important papers. Today those three papers are bound in one booklet titled Subjective and Objective Measurements of Loudspeaker Performance, which is available from the NRC. The booklet is far too complex to go into any great detail here, but it is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in this topic. Barton points out three of Toole's main findings that he believes are critical:

"Most of the people, most of the time, agree on the qualities of loudspeakers."
"Musical taste and musical experience are no prerequisites for judgment of good sound, although they may take inexperienced listeners longer to come up with the same answers." (Barton describes this "learning" period as one involving days, not months or even weeks.)
"A properly interpreted set of loudspeaker measurements correlates very strongly with subjective listening impressions." (The key to this is "properly interpreted.")
These papers yielded such substantial results that designers used the criteria and could actually design their speakers accordingly. Some of these criteria for loudspeaker designs included: wide bandwidth, low distortion, and wide and even dispersion characteristics. Besides Barton, Ian Paisely of Mirage and Kevin Voecks now of Revel worked closely with the NRC at that time.

Barton explained that at the time there were no criteria for manufacturers, sales people, and most importantly, consumers, to make informed buying decisions. Now they had some through Toole's rigorously executed research. Today, almost all major players in the Canadian industry adhere to Toole’s findings.

Here's the link: http://www.soundstagelive.com/factorytours/psbnrc/

Enjoy

[Daygloworange]

Hey Steve Eddy,

Danny's response was to me, what I was looking for. I think it's up to the individual at this point to determine if there is a correlation between the scientific data that's been accumulated on the testing of components and what we perceive as " break in".

This topic all too often becomes paradoxical....

Personally speaking, I'm satisfied. To me, this is the possible/probably explanation as to ONE of the reasons why it probably is REAL.

I'd like to point out that I say probably....It's really not something I angonize over. I'll even go as far as saying, I was seeking the opinion of Danny on the topic, as I respect his OPINIONS.

Again, personally speaking, I'm not on an endless quest for the holy grail of 2 channel audio, just curious, I spend exponentially more time on the musical side than on the technical side of electronics.

We're all going to be different in these areas.

" Is this the real life, is this just fantasy"

Cheers