As I was getting more into this hobby, and doing research on the net, I kept reading about burn in, break in and was very sceptical. I thought along the lines of it being more psychological than anything else.
Since I've built a number of speakers now, I can hear burn in. I think the hard part is describing exactly what the burn in is actually doing. And it's not always in the same areas.
I recently had some more experience in this area. I loaned out a pair of my speakers, and plugged in another pair of commercially made speakers. Very well known, raved about speakers. I put them in and noticed the tilted up high end response, there was also a bump in the mid range, and a loose and not well defined bass response. The imaging and soundstage were not well defined.
So, I also thought that perhaps I was just so used to the sound of the other speakers that perhaps things would change over time. I listened to these other speakers for 6weeks on a daily basis. (They were well broken in to begin with BTW) My perception of them didn't change one bit over that period of time. My impression of them was the same 6 weeks later as it was when I first plugged them in.
Not to confuse the issue, but last weekend I had the opportunity to listen to some Visaton B200 open baffles next to some other speakers. I have read quite a bit about this driver in an open baffle configuration. I'll tell you what I personally found that is quite interesting. When we first put them in the system, I found that aside from it not being a flat frequency response, that they beamed in the midrange. But interestingly, though at first it was a little prominent and a little troublesome, once you listened to it a while, it's almost like your ears compensate for it. It becomes less of an issue. It's almost like you start listening to the overall aspect of the speaker rather than focus on the little idiosyncrasy in it's character.
I could probably describe it better verbally than typing at the keyboard. But it was an interesting experience.
Over the course of then next year I will be totally changing my system and will probably add to this as I put new things in my system. I will be getting a Bolder modded Squeezebox which apparently changes quite a bit over a period of 1000hrs. I'll be auditioning some new IC's in the next few days. And at some point new amps in my system. I'll only change components one at a time, and only when I feel I have a stable impression of the sound before making the swap.
I have other examples of A/B tests, that should shed some light, and perhaps aid sceptics in understanding that it's entirely possible that the phenomenon could exist.
I still have more questions than I have answers regarding burn in. But, I do hear changes.
As far as flame wars, I really don't get why people take it so personally as to whether it is real or not. I mean, how many times in your life have you said " Hmm, you know, I never noticed that before! " . Sometimes I find it has to do with your frame of mind more than anything. How preoccupied you might be, your mood, and perhaps not being able to see the forest for all the trees .
Cheers
