[Freo-1]

You are as much of the problem here as anyone else pal less you forgot your prior jabs.

Really? 

See, I'm not sure I get that.  I said "To me, that's not a very useful way to think about things"; my personal opinion in response to a very specific statement.  I gave an example that shows that just because lots of people believe something it's not necessarily true (although it could be), and I later apologized in case I had offended anyone.

He said "The guys who always seem to dimiss the sound of good components built with premium parts are always listening to very average equipment at best", which is a blanket statement that tries to disparage and dismiss everyone that disagrees with him (her?).  It's also manifestly false.

My position is that burn-in could well be a real physical effect... but it could also be psychological.  If it's real, I'd like it to be understood and quantified so we can have better quality audio gear.  If not, I'd like to see that proven, so we can stop obsessing over it.  To me, that's reasonable.

I've rarely seen someone on your side of this divide admit that anything they hear could be psychological, or agree that any of the methods scientists use to test these things are even useful, let alone that the results of their research are valid.  To me, that's unreasonable. 

Do you agree?

If what I said is "Manifestly False", then please find me one room at CES this year that is using Radio Shack cables.

Don't you think that if all of this was in our heads, one of the guys making the best gear the world has to offer
would have the nerve and/or brains to stand up and use their stuff with el cheapo cables, etc?  They all seem to
take great pains to set their gear up and they all seem to have an opinion on which cables to use or not use (along
with a bunch of other stuff), but none of them seem to ignore this altogether.

And if you pop the lid on the world's finest audio equipment, none of it has cheap parts or wire inside.

Are they all just making this up?

That's why this discussion is so uninteresting.

If you don't believe it or can't hear it, don't buy it and don't obsess about it.  It's that easy.

As Mel Brooks says in "Spaceballs", "It's all about marketing, bubie!    aa

We are getting off topic getting into cables.  However, since the subject was raised, here is a link on speaker wire from a real engineer (as opposed to self appointed "golden ear" or some guy with with an angle).

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

[opaqueice]

opaqueice,a designer I know of deals with break in while prototyping circuits in a very clever way. He has established to his satisfaction that much of the changes he hears when break in occurs are due to the power supply capacitors forming up. He therefore uses a fully broken in power supply when listening to prototype circuits. He also has enough experience to have a good idea of what a circuit may sound like after the parts break in. It is entirely unnecessary to fully understand the physical basis for the break in phenomenon in order to design excellent sounding equipment.

That would certainly work, and it sounds like a reasonable approach given what you said.  But I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that understanding the physical basis is "entirely unnecessary".  What if break-in were important also in something else he hadn't yet encountered?  Or only important for certain kinds of caps?  If he knew what the physical basis was, he might be able to answer those questions without having to test every conceivable combination, which would be pretty handy.

  Scientific inquiry starts with an open mind and observing the world around you in an organized manor and not denying the existence of something when it occurs regardless of how irreconcilable it may be with ones current world view.

Fully agreed.  Those who deny that psychological effects are important in audio perception are doing just that, whereas no physicist would ever tell you that physical break-in is impossible - quite the contrary.  Unlikely to rise to the level of audibility, maybe, but certainly not impossible, and solid evidence one way or the other could settle it.

[opaqueice]

If what I said is "Manifestly False", then please find me one room at CES this year that is using Radio Shack cables.

How about RMAF?

Don't you think that if all of this was in our heads, one of the guys making the best gear the world has to offer
would have the nerve and/or brains to stand up and use their stuff with el cheapo cables, etc? 

I just gave you an example.

If you don't believe it or can't hear it, don't buy it and don't obsess about it.

I don't. 

But the OP asked for opinions on this topic, so I'm giving mine.  I also happen to have a mild professional interest in the topic, being a physicist. 

What's the source of your interest in it?

[jon_010101]

We are getting off topic getting into cables.  However, since the subject was raised, here is a link on speaker wire from a real engineer (as opposed to self appointed "golden ear" or some guy with with an angle).

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

While resistive losses are easy to appreciate, something we forget about speaker cables is the reactive effect of capacitance and inductance.  A flatter transfer function can often be obtained with a higher capacitance, lower inductance speaker cable - hence there is some merit to the braided designs of Kimber et al.  The trade-off, of course, is amplifier stability - some will not perform well at all into a capacitive load.  Audible differences between a braided cable and a standard zip cord can be remarkable - and whether this is to the benefit or detriment of the sound depends on the amplifier and speakers in question.  Differences of frequency response can be on the order of 1dB, which can be heard by most people - but if your amplifier is oscillating on high frequency transients, it will also be very easy to hear. 

[TONEPUB]

Interestingly enough, our technical editor has a PhD in physics and
a masters in electrical engineering.

And has designed about 90% of the world's best audio capacitors.

Perhaps the two of you should talk, because he tells me that he could
give me all of the physics as to why this stuff actually does sound different
but it would be over my head....

If you are at RMAF, he'll be in the Audio Unlimited room.  Ask for
Dan Babineau and tell him I sent you.

[Geardaddy]

But somehow a lot of folks get all up in arms whenever anyone suggests that, or points out that psychoacoustics play a really big role in what we perceive (even though it's very well known and established).  That's the part I really don't get - what is there to be afraid of?  Let's just settle down and get to the bottom of it.  There's a lot of progress to be made improving sound, and getting distracted by irrelevancies isn't going to help.

Whenever a speculative but technical question like this is posed, the spectre of "psychoacoustics" is resurrected.  I discovered the same phenomenon in a thread I spawned a few months ago regarding jitter.  In reality, I don't think people get stirred up by the thought that their beloved hobby is tainted by a psychoacoustic or placebo effect.  We get stirred up because we are prone to being stirred up by neurotic and potentially irrelevant issues.  The real question is why we ruminate on such things?  Would these threads vaporize if we were all probably medicated for our obvious OC tendencies?  Whenever my wife spies on me when I am perusing one of these threads, she either groans or laughs at how pathetic it all is....like it was an online star trek convention.  A former boss of mine caught me reading an equipment review at work (tube equipment) and managed to read a few paragaphs over my shoulder.  He would later quote back to me the various adjectives used to describe the wonders of this tube amp.  It did sound a little goofy second hand...like something out of Fantasia.  I guess a larger and more serious question to ask is:  "are audiophiles weird?" 

Humor aside, I personally think break-in is real.  I have heard it but not "measured" it with cables, speakers, amps, and pre-amps.  I own equipment employing nanotube technology (a whole other discussion), and that is supposed to have a particular lengthy break-in period.  We need to have Jack Bybee or some biomaterials jock set us straight here.  DU's video points to the fact that there is indeed something real going on....it just may be part specific.       

[chadh]

Regardless of whether break-in truly occurs, it certainly sounds like the product of an unethical manufacturer's devious mind.

"Of course the component you recently purchased from us makes everything sound like the kid down the road practicing on his bagpipes.  It needs a full 500 hours of break-in using unusually bass-heavy material!"

We should keep the phenomenon quiet, or Microsoft will start claiming a "break-in" period for their operating systems.

Chad

[satfrat]

Regardless of whether break-in truly occurs, it certainly sounds like the product of an unethical manufacturer's devious mind.

"Of course the component you recently purchased from us makes everything sound like the kid down the road practicing on his bagpipes.  It needs a full 500 hours of break-in using unusually bass-heavy material!"

We should keep the phenomenon quiet, or Microsoft will start claiming a "break-in" period for their operating systems.

Chad

Would you like to share with us where you found this quote? Thanks.

Cheers,
Robin

[PSP]

Whenever a speculative but technical question like this is posed, the spectre of "psychoacoustics" is resurrected.  I discovered the same phenomenon in a thread I spawned a few months ago regarding jitter.  In reality, I don't think people get stirred up by the thought that their beloved hobby is tainted by a psychoacoustic or placebo effect.

I'm the guy who first mentioned "psychoaccoustics" in this thread, and I did not mean to suggest that break-in is some kind of placebo effect.  I merely meant to say that this whole system (from the musical instrument all the way through to what your brain tells you it heard) is extraordinarily complex and the scientific story is far from complete.  We are all familiar with optical illusions... these are based on simplifying "rules of thumb" that the brain uses to rapidly process complicated visual information so that our ancestors could avoid the sabre tooth tiger.  Why would you not expect "aural illusions" as well? 

The reason I posted on this subject in the first place is to argue that simple theories really can't help us much (just about any theory that one of us could describe in a few paragraphs has to be too simple to capture a problem as rich as this one is).  So, rather than arguing that one electron is pretty much the same as the next one and "parts is parts", so therefore "break-in is impossible"... maybe a productive way forward would be to minimize discussion of mechanisms and describe what we ourselves have experienced.

I've directly experienced break-in numerous times.  Sometimes it has been commercial equipment, more often I have soldered in a new cap in my DIY amp or pre-amp.  It can be a long, surprising, painful, wandering path until the part finally "gets there".  I do biophysics for a living..  I can't explain break-in, but I've heard it many times.  I've heard it when I've been too busy to think about the new component (and therefore didn't expect to hear break-in but heard it nonetheless, so then how can you make a "placebo" argument?).

The musical trajectory I experience during the break-in period varies widely (this makes arguments based on "expectation of change" difficult).  The break-in period eventually ends, but the timescale varies.  So, I can't explain the phenomenon, but I've heard it so many times under so many differing circumstances that in many cases I think it's more than likely a real phenomenon.

Peter

[Geardaddy]

Peter, I was not implying that you linked "pychoacoustics" with placebo.  I was just making an observation pertaining to the flow of the argument.  I also agree that this topic is complex due to the potential number of variables involved.  That being said, being too busy to really sit and listen during a component's early life and hearing changes does not extricate you from potential supratentorial contributions.

On the subject of break-in, can anyone pipe in on whether tubes have a natural break-in cycle?  I was told this recently but was also given different time spans for the actual duration by different sources....

[Niteshade]

To me, anyway, tubes sound the same from the first hour until they begin to wear out. At this point, either output is reduced, they get gassy or have thermal runaway problems. I have listened to tubes of all ages and as long as they remain within their specifications, they sound good. I guess with a tube, you could say the break-in period lasts indefeniately because they wear out gradually. Tubes can last hundreds of hours.

[Niteshade]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_(component)

A great rundown on capacitors as well as what can happen to them.

[opaqueice]

I've heard it when I've been too busy to think about the new component (and therefore didn't expect to hear break-in but heard it nonetheless, so then how can you make a "placebo" argument?).

The effect here is not really analogous to placebo.  What it boils down to is that we know for a fact that human perceptions - and even physical things like getting better from an illness - are strongly influenced by some bizarre and very complex combination of beliefs, circumstances, expectations, etc., often in highly unexpected and non-intuitive ways.  Therefore any time you try to base much of anything on people's anecdotal accounts you have to be aware that there's a good chance something psychological is affecting them one way or the other (read up on the unreliability of eye-witness reports, for example), but you can never have much confidence about how or why they've been affected.

Now when people report something which we're pretty sure is true, we don't need to worry much.  Like if everyone says the sky is blue on a clear day, that's probably because the sky really is blue.  But when some group of people make a claim that goes against the grain of what we know scientifically, particularly in an area as well-studied and quantified as electronics, we have to take it with a grain of salt.  That doesn't mean it's wrong, or that we should ignore it - just that we need to do some controlled tests to remove the effects of expectation etc.  And it's really easy to do so in this case - all you need to do is run a blind listening test.  Easy as pie. 

If that blind test shows no difference, well...  there probably wasn't one (if you don't agree, I recommend shaving with a new brand of razor, manufactured by Occam).  If it does, great - we just learned something important and possibly profound, and engineers and scientists will have to sit up and take notice. 

[miklorsmith]

Please please please let's not go there.

How to kill an audio topic 101.

[Geardaddy]

I think what opaqueice is suggesting is reasonable....blinded studies are a good source of information....not definitive but useful.

[opaqueice]

Please please please let's not go there.

How to kill an audio topic 101.

I think reports of the thread's death are greatly exaggerated  .

Don't forget that the topic is "'Break-in':  Real or imagined?".  It's a bit tough to address that if we can't talk about how to address it.

[miklorsmith]

Politics, religion, blind testing.  You'll never turn anybody's opinions on any of them.

[*Scotty*]

I think the people who are obsessed with whether or not the break in phenomena has an existence beyond that of a placebo effect should do the research. For myself, I will see the sunrise tomorrow and put up with the continuing changes associated the break in of my modded 740 C for about the next month.
Scotty

[Double Ugly]

Don't forget that the topic is "'Break-in':  Real or imagined?".  It's a bit tough to address that if we can't talk about how to address it.

Thing is, you've "address(ed) it" 12 times so far, double the number of posts by anyone else in the thread.

I get it.  We *ALL* get where you're coming from.  You can stop now.

You once told me you weren't interested in arguing, but to me (and I strongly suspect others), your behavior here suggests otherwise.  Beating others over the noggin with your beliefs is annoying at best, and though this may be specific to Audio Circle, it's easily interpreted as trolling for an argument.

Please stop.  I don't want to trash the thread, nor do I want to ask you to refrain from posting in Audio Central.  Know when enough is enough and stop.

Double Ugly
Facilitator/Audio Central & Computer Scientist

[nathanm]

I think it's important to want to know if what you perceive is real or not.   The desire to always attribute what you hear to the factors you want, regardless of evidence seems rather unfortunate.  It's useful to be able to prioritize what factors of sound reproduction have small effects and what have large effects.  Why waste time worrying about negligible factors when you could focus on something more dramatic?  Don't we all want to know what's real and what's imagined?