Definitely pays to perform a "burn in" on any electronic component. It is necessary at all equipment installed at our facility. It also remedies return issues due to "infant mortality" concerns. Stopping returns and bad consumer confidence pays off.
I bought a new amp and when I first fired it up, it sounded perfect to my ears. So I packed it back up and never played it ever again, fearing that burn-in would ruin the sound :)
I was disappointed with the sound of my new Cambridge transport and Dac magic plus when I first got it up and running. Now 7 months later I'm a happy camper with the sound. So I have to agree 100% with Paul.
Whatever you do, don't change your transport and Dac again, or you'll have to go through another cycle of accommodating your hearing to the new equipment.
I just got a Cambridge CXA 81 and I was first taken aback by the sound so it's in a burn-in period for now and let's see where this takes me. Thanks for your comment and thanks Paul for your videos.
Paul just wanted to say Thank You ! You have a great way of conveying your vast knowledge and presenting yourself in a light and non-threatening way. Audiophiles are a special needs group and are vastly different in the way they take and accept information, you seem to have that knowledge firmly in hand over years of experience with us ! .......Thank You !
I'm going to invent a time machine. I'll go back in time to around 10,000bc. I'll give them all the science books they need to be able to create audio products by 7,000bc. I'll tell a few of them to leave the units on and bequethe them to me when the time is right. I'll then come back to present day. After 9,020 years of being left on, I'll bet my system sounds the best. :)
I think you're on to something there. My valve amp is certainly more revealing when it's been on a while. Running in class A, it doesn't take long either.
@Steely Dan 5000 it was a joke pointing out how this topic can reach absurd levels. A 30 minute warm up is probably legit. But I think burn-in is mostly a way to make poorly engineered products stable. By and large it's mostly bull shit but some products require it. Ok, maybe they're not poorly engineered per se, but the circuit board and components are reacting in such a way where they're not completely stable from the get go.
Thanks Paul! From a reliability standpoint - the burn-in is very essential, every engineer worth their two cents should be intimately familiar with the term ‘bathtub curve’. As far as how burn-ins affect the signal path sonic quality - that will always be a subjective topic I think (difficult to measure). From a purely physics point of view, a component’s material characteristics can change if exposed to heat over time. For me, I’ve noticed burn-in sonic differences with many capacitors (usually PIO or PWIO), inductors, and tubes. Keep up the great work!
I agree, but beyond 100 hours points to something that truly needs addressing. If it takes longer, something is very unstable and it's unacceptable. Using long amounts of time is not a suitable replacement for meticulous engineering.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. My new Marantz amp with Klipsch speakers sounded horrendous when I started it up the first time playing one of my favorite songs. I felt so disappointed! I’m not an audiophile by any means but I did come across a previous video on this topic and decided to let the system “burn in” for a few days and then listen to the song again. I cried when I heard how beautiful the music was and I couldn’t believe it was the same system that disappointed me so much just a few days earlier. If all manufacturers could burn the hardware in before sale, or if PS Audio could ship to South Africa (hint hint, nudge nudge), it would be awesome! Thanks for the video!
I doubt there is any argument you could make, which would convince me that a Marantz amp driving Klipsch speakers could possibly sound horrendous out of the box.
Paul you just agreed with Bill and totally supported his statement. Electronic "burn in" is an end of final production process to heat the components so they either fail or reach their final operating conditions. The components don't know they are in an audio device vs a radar in the military or a nuclear sciences device like an MRI. Once the initial burn-in has been completed by the manufacturer which btw it always should be, there no such thing as further burn in when it gets to the end user or audio consumer. The idea that every time you turn off a device it than needs hours or weeks to get back to point where is sounds or operates as intended is complete rubbish. Any manufacturer that doesn't do burn-in as part of finished goods quality assurance needs their head read and certainly are cutting corners.
I will not debate the importance of burn in. But if burn in is that vital, all the manufacturers should do it in their facility before sending the audio gear out.
I've always ran pink noise then a white noise signal through all my sound systems for 48 hours before listening to any music. When I studied electronics in college back in the late 80's, we were taught that it allows the electrons time to aline themselves. I recently had my current system in storage for 10 months and when I set it up recently it sounded awful. But after playing a white noise CD for 48 hours at a low volume it came to life and sounded awesome again.
Absolutely real. Recapped an old Marantz (and another) and it was my 'warm' amp, but with 45+ year old parts it needed renewing. Clarity and dynamics improved, but on day 1 it was harsh, now its a bit too treble heavy. Whole new power and main section, whole new tone section and coupling caps. Things need to settle.
I never believed in speaker burn in, but I bought some big Klipsch speakers three years ago to replace my old DCM Time Windows and I thought they sounded distorted. I ran them for 2 days straight on FM and they sounded way better.
I dont know why I watch these viedos all this stuff is out of my league I will never be able to afford anything from PS Audio but the question is if I could would i....dam right I would in a heart beat....also love the knowledge that this company possesses.
You don't need high dollar eqpt. It's the theories behind the engineering that you pay attention to. Quality wire, quality circuit feeding your system, what different things do. That's why I watch. I'm no audiophile, but this help me get the best out of my eqpt. I have a pretty nice av receiver with big 15" fronts powered by a seperate amp, 2 subs two towers for surrounds and a center channel. It's an all in one system in my living room. I have excellent stereo sound and movies are on another level. I listen to mostly metal and rock, it sounds great. I have about three grand into it. If your into chasing the perfect sound, and getting perfect readings on test equipment, than ya, you may have too spend some more money, but I think a person can get great sound without breaking the bank. The most important thing is the source
NO 1U NO It is truly a double-edged sword, watching these videos and reading audiophile reviews. The positive is they can give you the knowledge to recognize quality when you see it (which only a small percentage of people really care about), so you can pick up good used deals other people just bypass. On the other hand, these videos/reviews can condition you to the thought that you should/need to spend gobs of money to have acceptable sound. “Oh, that phono preamp costs 4 grand? That’s not bad”, or you see manufacturers leaning on 10’s of thousands of dollars of equipment like it’s a regular thing. There are plenty of reviewers here that show relatively affordable gear that sounds great.
I posted the following in a FB group (Magnepan) and someone linked to this video. Paul is either an engineer or certainly has engineers at his disposal, it would be great if he would address my questions, both implied and direct. A work colleague (our work is technical in nature, most people would consider us engineers, but neither have a degree in engineering) of mine asked me what I thought about the break in of amplifiers and other audio electronics except speakers. My response was, "I am quite skeptical." He asked why, I said, "It would be almost impossible for an engineer to design a product comprised of dozens if not hundreds of individual components where the engineer must account for the values/actions of each of those components during and after break in." I went on "Consider the design/testing regime, where any time you change any component in your test product you must let it burn in for hours or days before you can measure it." I posed a question, "If products change during the break in period, why do they always (at least that I have ever heard of) sound better after the break in period?" "Wouldn't some portion of them sound worse?"
If burn-in is real why does it ALWAYS change the said component/speaker/headphone for the better? I think the term as most people experience it is purely psychological. I've experienced it myself numerous times with new headphone purchases. Including used ones, which throws the break-in argument out the window. They rarely sound pleasing at first, especially if the signature is wildly different than the headphone I'm most used to at the moment.
I experienced this myself. I had a pair of Sennheiser HD600 headphones for nearly 15 years, and listened to no other headphone in that time. Late last year I bought a used pair of very old Audeze LCD2 headphones (5 years old). They sounded like utter garbage in comparison to the 600s because I was used to their specific sonic signature and listened to the 600s exclusively for a decade and a half. After some time listening to the LCD2s, they of course "seemed" to have much improved sound. This is not due to break-in, as these headphones were purchased used and already had thousands of hours of listening time on them. A few dozen more hours have literally done nothing to them; I have simply gotten used to the way they sound. Going back to the HD600s, and now they sound like shrill, bassless shit and it feels like someone is stabbing me in the ears with a knife any time there's an appreciable amount of treble in the music, most notably the beginning of Colour To The Moon by Allan Taylor.
Burn-in was always for the purpose of screening out infant-mortality failures, not for any kind of performance "settling in." It might be fun to put one of your products through the burn-in (we call it ESS, Environmental Stress Screening) that we use for flight controls. A few cycles of -40C to +55C, plus vibration, could produce interesting results. The primary item that "settles in" with a new audio component, is the listener's ears. Provided there are no actual faults, any new solid-state component should sound just as good at initial build, as it does hundreds of hours later. If it doesn't, I would call it a poor design. Tube equipment may change audibly over time, and some designs might be optimized for the tubes at mid-life (splits the difference between new and aged tubes).
@Pete is never wrong Sure, go with the same people who claim they hear a difference in reproduction quality by changing a power cord or fuse. If it's that hard to get hifi electronics right, then there is no hope.
Yes, you are the third person here with their head in reality and understands and accepts factual scientific data and real world experience. Thank you.
The actual purpose for "burn-in" is to detect early component failures. This prevents many unnecessary warranty claims. The burn in has no effect on the audio performance. If there were any audible differences, you should be able to provide specifications taken before and after the burn-in and mark the differences in performance before and after.
@blackened 1 Yup, same here when I was in the computer industry! If a component failed or showed signs of weakness in the first 100 hours, not only was it chucked, but the rest of the batch was checked and used with suspicion.
Paul, what you didn't comment in detail about (but have in another video) is that after a prescribed burn-in, your gear goes back to be aligned and tested for peak performance.
This is great information. I can totally stand by what you're doing here. I'm an engineer at Audio Research Corp-- we try to have some of our components pre-burned-in (capacitors especially) at at least 100 hours before they're shipped to us. Once the amps are assembled and mostly and mostly complete, we burn them in for 48 hours with audio noise (sweeps and noise) before they are listened to and signed of to ship. With tube amps and pre-amps in development, we run them with music for at least 100 hours to exercise and burn them in. Often during the burn in, sonics can get worse! It's crucial to work burn in with any amplifier in development.
Bang on! I've just overhauled my valve amp and my Audiolab 8000C pre amp. It took about two weeks for me to burn in the power amplifier. I then overhauled the pre amplifier. I left it turned on for three days. It took about five days in total to complete the burn in. Early on I thought I'd ruined it but now everything is settled and sounding amazing. The more I use it the better it's getting.
@@roryjones6483Hi Rory. I built my valve amp 22 years ago this Easter! It's served me very well over the years. It's had a couple of tweaks here and there, but this most recent was a full on overhaul including replacing all the carbon resistors with metal film rated 1% tolerance. It was well worth it. Of course I've also replaced the electrolytics. Although I do need to re tube it, but for now that can wait.
I'm with Paul on this one. I've just rebuilt my power valve amp. It sounded dreadful, two weeks later it is beautiful. So last Tuesday I rebuilt my Audiolab 8000C preamp. To be honest I thought I'd ruined it. So I left it "burning in" for four days. Last night it all came together. I now have an audio system to be proud of. It's a pleasure to just sit here and hear music how it was intended to be heard.
Try that with a piece of used gear, I bet you will get the same result. It is already "burned-in" so it should already sound its best but it will still end up sounding better to you overtime same as new gear, this is because it is your ears getting used to the sound not the gear getting used to your ears. lol
Speakers need some flexing to soften spider and surround materials to perform well. That’s the good burnin we need to do as consumers. If electronics need burnin to sound good, I would be concerned that it also burnout quickly. That’s the case with vacuum tubes. Which other electronic component type needs burnin to sound good? I really would like to know.
ThinkingBetter I agree with you about speakers and the fact that tubes eventually burn out, but I’d like to know too about other parts. I actually deleted my comment, as not to get caught up in this type of hornets nest of a topic. Too many conflicting views, and everyone has an opinion. I want facts.
tHE BASS GUY FROM kiss Gene simmonds stoppen using tube ampe, I think it ws Ampegs,now he uses TRANSISTORES ampes from tech21. his tech said the tubes get really hot and by the endof the shoe they dont sound good. THANKE YOUE AND THUMBS UPS.
Fat Rat Yes, and speaker cables need about a year of burnin for the electrons in the metal to grow their muscles to move swiftly under heavy load. Well, an actual more real thing I see is that the more I stay at home for flattening the curve the more the curve in my view is rising.
@Fat Rat Yes, some humor is good and we actually need more of it in depressing times. Unfortunately, humor isn't all that well appreciated by some portion of Americans. Those without humor share some personal traits here btw. I can ask a person 3 questions that have nothing to do with humor and I can tell if the person has a sense of humor.
It's well known fact, heat has an effect on the nominal value of resistors (even the slightest change in operating temperature). After several days of operation the values (of resistors) stabilize and the circuit reaches its final functional values. This also explains why many systems (usually) sound _better_ after an hour or so of initial warm up. Some setups require even longer warm up periods..
@@BetterISupposeYeah Yes they are two different things, however.. the paralel was made only as an example to indicate the changing values of components (mainly resistors) when current flows through them altering their ambient temperature. The warming up effect works on the same principle i.e. the component in question reaches its operating temperature as against the ambient temperature when switched off.
You're "barking up the wrong tree" by citing resistors. They do not need operating time to stabilize in any audible way. Circuit operating points are strictly a function of temperature and they go through the same change every time the equipment is turned on from cold. There is no permanent change achieved over the first few dozen operating hours in modern solid-state electronics. Some components could conceivably sound worse after warm up.
@@marianneoelund2940 Well, if this is your experience I wouldn't argue against it but,.... Any elementary electronics book will tell you that the nominal value of a resistor can change with variation in temperature. Whether this is audible or not (and we are talking about many resistors in a circuit) is debatable. I say it is, you maintain is not. Some will agree with you but also, some might think otherwise. A matter of perception methinks..
I'm an electrician in a factory. We like to do a burn in/debug whenever we commission a new machine, they are all automated and have many electronic components. It definitely helps for "breaking in" relays, switches, etc. Whether the electronic performance changes idk, but I trust my engineers (on paper anyway 😁) and they seem to think it helps with performance. Once we debug we usually run for 3 shifts with no product, then turn it over to production.
Burn in absolutely matters. Burn in matters on speakers 🔊 and hardware as well. Even on lower brands. I’ve gotten my hands on some high end pieces for dirt cheap only because the original owner didn’t bother with burn time and didn’t even break the speakers in.
Real burn in is operating new components at elevated temperatures to identify "infant mortality" failures. The physics of failure is a broad and fascinating discipline. However, what Paul is calling burn in does not qualify as such.
Endless debate regarding this topic. Some are believers, some are not. Some say when you do burn in, it is the brain adapting to what you hear and overtime, whatever gear it is, it sounds good after a good amount of listening. My personal standpoint, i do burn in. And it has impact on audio. My mindset, just like a car, it takes time for all the components to settle in. Hence the term “break in” for cars or any vehicle.
I bought a Intergraded amp a year ago, Here in Reykjavik Iceland we dont get to audition all stereo equipment. Anyway I read the reviews and they were promising, but one stood out as it being horrible, I still bought it and first weeks i was very unhappy with it. now a year later its so much better. I guess either im going mad or burn in matters.
@@captainwin6333 yes I have thought about that. But my brother heard the amp when new and then again a few months later and he asked me what did you change? He noticed a big diffrence in sound when nothing had changed, we were listening to the same music.
My Maggies sounded awful at first - sound levels at different frequencies came and went. It took 40 hours at normal listening volume before they settled down, and another 20 before they really shined...
@Steely Dan 5000 - Ah a troll - lovely to find now and then. Why on earth would you bash Maggies - they are praised by every serious audiophile - virtually anyone making a living by writing about hi end audio. I guess your Realistic 4ft. stacks that weigh 3 pounds are still rocking your world, but I suggest getting out more... Too bad your name is also my favorite band - 'cause I have to dislike you just a bit less.
I was one of them that used to believe burn in didn't mean anything until I had a dac upgraded with a bunch of pricey black gate capacitors. I remember not being overly impressed after the upgrade. It just took some time 😀
It's fact that caps form and sound different afterwards. Many have experienced this first hand but there will always be those that claim placebo, mass hysteria or alien abduction for the perceived changes.
Are u guys burning them in or "testing" them? I'm curious about something else. Should you(or the consumer)play music through a pre amp, power amp &/or Dac for burn in or is just having them plugged in and turned on ok? Is that what he means by "with signal"? And if playing music through them is the correct way... does volume level matter?
Burn-in is also critical for new grand acoustic pianos. Even the elite (i.e., pricey) models. But it's a frustrating process to deal with. You want it to sound broken in from the get-go. But there's an upside to the lengthy process. Assuming you have the instrument tuned and voiced regularly, you will slowly hear the improvement. "Hey, " you might say--"is that my piano?" "But it didn't sound like that last week."
I understand the sound may change after burn in (components and electronic chips take time to settle down), what I cannot understand why it is always sound better after that.
I have a record that is so dynamic that you can hear the sound change as capacitors break in. I have it on CD and LP but only the LP lets you hear the change that fast. If you come to vist Paul I'll give you a copy.
Questions, a) if its burned in at the factory, does it not need to be burned in at home at all? How long? and b) Does home burn in signal AND output, or just signal?
There seems to be both fact and a bit of snake oil going on at the same time here. With any electronic product there is, in reliability terms, the ‘inverse bathtub’ curve where the most susceptible points of failure over time are at the beginning and end of life and you would expect consistent reliability in the middle of that curve. Burning in will trap those early failures so the consumer doesn’t have to worry to much about early life failure. With a high end product you would expect the manufacturer to do a degree of soak testing to avoid early failures - it goes with the territory. With modern electronic components, burning in just to make a product sound better is a dubious claim. The exception is a loudspeaker where after a certain number of hours the cone suspension loses a little of its freshly manufactured stiffness and that does affect the way it sounds quite considerably.
@@JerryRutten I don't buy the 'capacitor burn-in for optimum sound' theory. During manufacture, the chemistry of an electrolytic capacitor is optimised and has to achieve a given spec within the specified tolerance goal. Yes, they certainly degrade with age but if a capacitor needs to be run in-circuit for a day or two before it's usable then it's not fit for purpose. Can you imagine the avionics industry or military being happy with that? Valves (tubes) used to get a rigorous burn-in by the manufacturer before they left the factory. I'm not certain if that is still the case; if not, there's a good case for burning-in tube based products in case there's some initial drift in spec.
Larry Niles I use the term for the lack of another more succinct description. I’m certainly not biased and have spent a lifetime career in electronics always listening and learning. I consider a closed mind a dangerous thing!
I have just got a new microwave oven, it has taken about 100 hours of burn in for the food to taste nice. Even my wife in the other room can taste the difference. Who would have thought.😂😂😂
@@marianneoelund2940 yes, we just put water in a bowl and kept repeating the process for 100 hours and it's definitely worth the effort. My soup now tastes more dynamic and the colour is a lot deeper, you just get more of everything. I am in the process of burning in my toaster . I also upgraded the power lead on my kettle, and I think the fuse is next change. Maybe I will get a directional one from Hifi tuning.😊
The engineers have one perspective, and it is irrefutable. First, it is QC to find weak connections and parts that will either fail within a short time, or settle into specs over a longer time. Capacitors 'form' and then change over time. An amp that has sat for years may need careful restart in order to reform the caps. Speakers need burn in time; and musicians know this well.
With speakers, and I don't disagree with you on burn in, you need to "break" them in in my opinion. They are stiff out of the box, like shoes. They need a little work to get them moving right. 💯% my opinion, and I have been called a dumbass before. 🤪
On the one hand, what you're saying sounds like QA/QC, not burn-in. Letting equipment warm-up is definitely also good, electronics don't work at their best until they get up to proper operating temperature. Similarly, running too hot can affect the sound as well. Now for the "burn-in", what exactly happening to the amp components at 200 hrs that they all of a sudden decide to sound good? I think if you can answer that you might be able to convince people, conversely, it might mean there's something wrong with some of the components used in the amp if it takes 200 hrs for them to start working properly.
New electronic components especially in new equipment need to be 'run in' to get the best out of them. This process is crucial in certain applications, for example audio & medical electronics. There's nothing wrong buying used & much to gain. However, how old it is, what's its history and has it been competently serviced are questions one should always consider when buying used. Components age and degrade over time, which is why equipment fails.
@Fat Rat Ah, now I understand. I think in future I will refrain from imparting my knowledge and experience. I shall sit back with a wry smile on my face. 🤗
@Larry Niles Apparently you're not aware that what PS Audio is doing, is nothing more than warm up. It doesn't qualify as burn in, and that's what Janina was alluding to. Burn in is for the purpose of shaking out infant-mortality part failures, and it's far more effective with temperature cycling, or at least elevated-temperature operation - thus the name.
There's another channel where someone is claiming the PS Audio direct streaming DAC required 800+ hours of burn in. WTF?!?!? There's even people in the comments agreeing. I told them the product isn't designed quite right if it takes 800 hours of heat and current flow to fix the poor sound.
Just more mythology. Actually, I think what trips people up is the fact, that this myth (as with many) is based some thread of truth. The problem is that the important explaining info is left out. "Burn in" is often used interchangeably with the term "break in". They are technically two different things. "Burn in" has very little to do with fact. When talking electronics you are talking about molecular physics (atoms, electrons.....). When current is sent down a wire, cable, what have you, you are exciting the electrons around a nucleus inside an atom. When you shut off the current, the electrons basically float freely. It is instant on and instant off. In solid state electronics there is no "burn in" and no warming up (unless you are talking about a purposed heating element. In solid state heat is the enemy. If you are talking about tubes, those are actually mechanical and a different story. "Burn in" and "Break in" are sometimes used interchangeably to describe something that has nothing to do with the gear, but more to do with your ears and brain. In other words, what often happens is that our ears and brain get used to that different item, be it speakers, amp or whatever and that takes time, anywhere from a couple of hours to 36 or 48 hours or whatever. "Break in" is more prescribed to mechanical gear such as phono cartridges, speakers and even tubes. All those things change in sound as they go. For example: Phono cartridges have a cantilever which the stylus is attached to and the cantilever connects to the mechanics in the cartridge body to translate the vibrations from the record grooves to sound in a sense. (I'm going for simplified explaining). The cantilever on a new cartridge is kind of like new shocks on your car. They start out very stiff, but after so many miles they settle down to where they should be. Same thing with speakers, the surrounds the keep the driver from extending too far start out very stiff on new speakers and settle in after about 36 hours or so of play. Both these time moments will result in different sound characteristics from when they were new. Tubes need to be warmed up for a short time before play to get them to optimum level. From a technical view though "burn in" replaced what is really going on, which is Quality Control. So when a manufacture says they "burn in" an amp or what ever for 36 hours before shipping or something, what they are really doing and should be doing is testing the piece to make sure nothing shorts out or whatever in case there is a manufacturing flaw someplace. Why they don't just call it what it is "Quality Control" or "final check quality control" instead of trying to be fancy wordsmiths and failing is beyond me. What is it they are trying to hide? It makes no sense.
So true! I believe most of this nonsense like I believe the guy in the mental institution who thinks he's Jesus Christ! Heck he sure believes he is so it must be true!🤪🤯🤯🤔🤔🤭🤭
@@bigjay1970 And the scary thing is that we see a live example of "That Guy" everyday from a place in Washington. Anyway, like I said, I think some of the jargon is intentional and some of it conditioned. The unfortunate thing is that a lot of folks end up misinformed and sometimes making large financial mistakes for nothing but placebo or self-trickery. The audio world is tricky to navigate. I spent 4 years as a journalist trying to help folks do that. There are good makers out there amongst the sharks and there are good ethical reviewers (very few, but I know them all, you can count them on one hand though). Of course, now with this virus, the playing field may end up a bit more equalized in a sense. We already know that people are really hurting financially, (I'm feeling some myself) and many of these "high-end" makes, including PS Audio are not going to fair too well unless there are enough rich gullible people to support them. Of course, a few of them only have to sell one cable per year or something. Still, things are going to get real rough in the industry, it has already started. More diverse and ethical companies, (such as Schiit, Elac, Vantoo, Parasound, etc.) will fair better at the end of the day.
And all it took was getting 20% of his calories from booze, lol. Paul's words, not mine. Since he's old and still enjoys a glass of wine, he is forced to get a lot of his daily caloric intake from alcohol. Geezer metabolisms can be quite slow. 400 to 1,000 calories a day is quite common to maintain a healthy geezer weight.
Hey Paul! Not really connected to the topic but could you please allow subtitle making and translation for the channel? I think there's a setting for it in the YT creator studio. I would really like to translate some of your vids to my father who's a huge audiophile but he doesn't really speaks English well. Thanks!
Burn in is real and can be heard, despite of the "science" behind it is yet to be fomalized. Though whether to use proper burn in tracks like those found in Chesky Records and XLO test discs or ordinary music tracks still needs to be investigated thoroughly, in my existing system, a mid 1990s era CD from an Australian alt-rock band called Deadstar seems to work wonders in burning in line level interconnects. Must be due to Caroline Kennedy's voice perhaps? 🤔
No question burn in matters. Different capacitors have very different need for burnin time before they open up. I recently fired up some speakers that had been dormant for a few years. At first I could not believe how closed in the sound stage was. Then after a couple of sessions it occurred to me the sound stage was wide, dynamic and engaging (to tapping). I dawned on me that they needed burn in. This despite the fact the crossover components were quite well burned in. Even a fresh solder joint needs a little time to shake off that tight, compressed and repressed sound. Then it opens up, becomes dynamic, flowing and easy.
Sorry...calling BS on discernible audio quality improving after burn-in! Burn-in determines reliability and that's it! If that could be measured with a scope I MIGHT believe it!
It's all sticks and bones, guys. Does burn-in matter in audio? The definitive answer is... *it depends* But thanks for the commercial message. And it worries me that some PS Audio stuff starts out sounding *like crap* (your words). Infant mortality vs. warranty cost is why most burn-ins are done. If your circuits are such delicate flowers, some redesign may be in order. What happens after 200 hours of use? Do the transformer windings reach the bottom of the hill? Do the capacitors out-gas all their parasitic fluids? Do the resistors take on the texture of toast, starting from white bread? Do the power cable's atoms align with the poles of Earth's magnetic field? *And what happens after another 200?*
Hey Paul, I firmly believe in brun in having recapped vintage receivers and when they burn in (which some dont believe) makes a marked difference. I did run into one problem I DONT KNOW how to fix. I am getting audio bleed through in a Marantz amp where if I am playing in AUX, I get a very low continuance of the music is I switch to aux 2, phono. It doesnt increase with volume, sounds like tha amp board had a tiny speaker. Any thoughts on how to stop bleed through ?
I had my integrated serviced, caps replaced. It sounded better when I got it back but it took 4-6 weeks in a powered up state before it settled in to it's best sound performance. I have a suspicion that high temperature caps take longer to burn in. Maybe someone can comment on this?
@@marianneoelund2940 everything degrades. Capacitors degrade just sitting in storage. Capacitors 'form' when exposed to the duty of the circuit they are installed in.
Gotta burn in those Audioquest cables for optimal synergy with your equipment. It makes for even better dance time ;) Why would anyone buy electronics that need a magic burn in # to perform optimally? Good God this is why high-end audio is dying.
@@rimixda Yea, just enjoying my isolation and causing trouble. Once an amplifier reaches nominal operating temperature nothing else should change. With modern Class D that's pretty instantaneous. IMO, Burn-in is a good sales tactic to get people to keep components beyond their return period. Take that and cable synergy claims with a grain of salt. We are living in an era were #fakenews thrives.
Yes I try not to fall into that trap wish hi end audio was like pro audio in most regards. I’ve never heard anything about burn in from the pro world and how speaker cable’s makes a difference
@@Audioholics Ever smell those chemical smells after turning on a new device with new parts. Some of those parts might take awhile to reach optimal specs including the formation of electrolytic caps. Large caps may not sound good until their formed. What about the skin effect of anything carrying the audio signal with the jacket material. It's not just one thing it's all the parts in the component chain that have to come into spec. Are we just going to sit around with a watch and determine after how long the amp starts to sound better. What about warm up time for AB amps after they have been used for awhile. Turning on from cold usually takes at least a half hour to sound good enough. Whys that? For the most part the break in period does two things. A) To make sure there are no defective parts before shipping out B) To make sure that whatever you've created actually sounds as intended and designed as spec. I will tell you that some woofers most definitely require at least 100 hours of break in before they sound remotely good and that"s from personal experience. It doesn't take a genius to know what sounds good and what sound like doo doo.
@@Audioholics Well those that understand physics can figure out what and how fast something burns in and measure it. The problem is what it actually means. Yes burn in is required but only for select parts(especially moving parts) and there's nothing the end user has to do extra to complete the process. Just play music you like when you want and after a while it will sound different. That said when someone is designing a component there is no way they would go through some rigorous burn in process each time they make an alteration to a prototype for tweaking purposes. How it sounds out of the box is pretty much 99,9% exactly what the designer intended. Also fake news is as old as human beings have been on the planet. Its just called differently through out the ages. If you were referring to hashtags then ya you're right that's a thing for this era.
Want a tip? Do all the physical chores/tasks, and have her do all the tedious tasks. Men are not designed to do tedious jobs (which many of us do to make a living) and then come home to do even more tedious bull crap on top of all the physical chores we do. Women are much more capable of not losing their shit when it comes to fine detail tasks or activities which require a lot of sitting: book keeping, typing, knitting, paying bills, going through the mail, planning trips you hate, lol, etc. The men go out and run after a moose while the women sit at the camp fire basket weaving and knitting clothing. At home act like an idiotic beast of burden incapable of rational thought. Your stress will clear right up! You lift things and move them, beyond that it's her job to solve.
@@charlottejet4338 I assure you, you're no prize. You're also the gender that sits in knitting circles. Just a thought as to why I don't worship women. Married? No Single? No I think both women and men have great aspects but we're also pretty pathetic and shaped by blind evolutionary forces.
@@thunderpooch WOW touchy! 1) I don't nor will I ever knit. 2) I have an engineering background, the clue is in the name. 3) Now you've judged me and made this personal, I can guess the reason why "I am no prize" might have something to do with me being the wrong gender? Each to their own. How's your boyfriend? 😄
@@charlottejet4338 Lol, you're pretty touchy yourself. Nothing you say will sway me. Not the city of Charlotte, not a jet company located there, and not that picture of a jet. Your first name is Charlotte. ;) Look buddy, I find the comments regarding women on these audio channels to be borderline autistic and desperate. The hobby is cool, but the people are freaking weird AF, imho. No man I hang with talks about their woman in such a pathetic way as self described audiophiles do. On and on about the wife acceptance factor, Paul McGowan says "women are just better" at blah blah blah, and then the tendency for every dork on here to proclaim that anybody who expresses an idea which falls short of absolute women worship is either gay, single, or an incel. Yawn. Want a secret. You and others nerds can still be men and still get laid. You don't have to be a little bitch all the time ready to lick a high heel, and calling out other men expressing ideas found in every book on anthropological evolution.
It is called testing, quality control. DUH! Burn-in is not a requirement for the end-user because vacuum tues are not much of a thing anymore, Transistors don't require burn-in. It is mostly psychoacoustical. You did this question already, a while ago. Burn-in, schmurnin. Can you also hear pixies dancing on the head of a pin?
Transistors have a burn in effect too. My friend had a power amp that he blew up, had a couple of small signal transistors replaced in one channel, that was all. Needed burn-in time for the L-R channel balance to match again. I'm not talking loudness, I mean the sound quality was noticeably skewed from one channel to the other until the replaced transistors settled in. It's a strange thing, you wouldn't think a semiconductor would behave like this but they do.
@@rayhunter7371 Transistors do NOT settle in, i.e., they do not make any permanent alteration in their parameters over the first hours of operation. They will go through exactly the same thermal changes every time you turn the equipment on from cold. And if there was a channel balance issue, it wasn't due to the transistor change.
@@marianneoelund2940 yes transistors DO settle in. HiFi audio is an application where a transistor's effect on a circuit can be perceived - with our ears.
@@rayhunter7371 You're trying to argue with the wrong person, Ray. I've designed, developed, tested and troubleshot too many circuits using various types of transistors, to be interested in your opinion. Example: Many amplifiers with BJT output stages will require some manual adjustment of quiescent current. If the transistors were doing any "settling in" then this adjustment would need to be redone after some hours of operation. But that doesn't happen; it's set immediately and it doesn't drift. Transistors don't change their parameters (for a given temperature) unless they are damaged or overstressed.
@@marianneoelund2940 is that supposed to impress me? Don't attempt to school me on electronics theory, I already know. How rude and patronising is that? Once again you smart-ass keyboard warriors come out of the woodwork and miss the point.
What parts change parameters during burn in? I'm sure tubes (valves) do. Capacitors? Yes, I can see the dielectric properties of large capacitors getting settled in 'forming'. Transistors? Actually I hope NOT, I would expect semiconductors to NOT age in if they are any good. Phono cartridges? Shure (pun intended), anything with moving parts needs to limber up, and that would include speakers.
Once a week on Friday afternoon a few girls would come over, a couple of my dudes as well. We would then commence a "burn-in" and let me tell ya it helped our perceived quality of life for the next several hours. 👍🏼 -✌🏼
@@marianneoelund2940 allow me to clarify. I was ten years old at the time. I had drugs thrust upon me. I didn't know and better. My early life is a case study in "don't do that" and so I have three stable adult children and nine grandchildren. None of which I am raising or living with. For me that is total victory over making my childrens' life better than mine was.
Any ABX, double-blind, or other similar tests concerning burn-in of components and sound performance? I think the myth of speaker cable 'burn-in' has been put to rest. I understand burn-in for production reasons, a weak solder connection reacting to a load and heat then revealing a failure. But sound performance improvement via burn-in? Not convinced.
As a licensed ham radio guy, and someone who has spent time around many other ham radio guys, they're mostly full of shit and believe a lot of voodoo BS that doesn't make a lick of difference. Many of them don't even have a firm grasp of Ohm's law. It's a wonder how they got their license in the first place... Many of them are also conspiracy theorists as well... Not sure if that's relevant, but there you have it.
My M700’s did change after 2 months. I like them much better than when they came out of the box. And I know it’s not just me adjusting to how they sound 😁
What parts of the electronics gets burned-in? Is it the chemical capasitors that needs to get burned-in? Transistors, resistors, coils and wires wouldn’t seem that it can be burned-in at all.
@@marianneoelund2940 Yeah. I am have literally no idea because i have no clue to how it works when it comes to these components. I can understand why >some< speakers and headphones >may< need to get burned in. But electronical components? That is very interesting to me, and i would like to know more about it :)
@@larsandersen9134 Unfortunately, the "experts" such as Paul McGowan, do not know what causes the supposed burn in effect. Yet they insist that they can hear it. Others such as myself insist that what they are hearing is due to the hardware downstream of their ear drums. So perhaps we should be asking medical researchers for answers, instead of audio equipment designers.
@@larsandersen9134 I think what many people overlook, is the way that our brains learn, and the importance of repetition or extended exposure to a stimulus, before it can be fully analyzed and interpreted. Hearing involves a great deal of learning. One will only pick up so much detail on the first pass listening to a musical track. More detail is detected on subsequent passes. But the characteristics of a particular hifi system (and listening environment) must also be accommodated by the brain before it can fully register all of the detail content. It simply takes time - and some attentive effort as well.
Paul, have you ever done a double blind test comparing your products that were burned in vs. not burned in? It should be pretty easy to do especially if you feel that it makes a big difference. A simple way to setup and compare A vs. B is to have a given device with one difference, burn-in in this case, be used in one side of a stereo setup and the other side with the other difference inserted. After doing level matching between sides, a simple pan between left and right sides is all you need to do the comparison. Doing this multiple times with different devices in the path can help build confidence in the result. PS - I forgot to mention that the two speakers should be setup adjacent to each other to minimize the differences from position and room acoustics. Also, this method can be used to compare other components in the chain.
Almost every component I bought in the past sounded like crap out of the box and it took houndreds of hours till it finally open up and sound at its best so a blind test is not necessary it's a fact that every hi-fi component needs burn-in period, As Paul said he is not doing it because he is bored but because he wants his customers to enjoy good sound out of the box.
Itzhak Az Then it should result in an obvious outcome, but there is much skepticism about it. I personally don’t think that there is any perceptible change with electronics but with speakers I think it may well be audible, due to the driver suspensions loosening up which would increase the compliance and lower the low end cutoff a bit.
@@itzhakazoulay1271 No, it is not a fact that every hi-fi component needs the kind of burn in that Paul was describing. Paul's customers will never enjoy good sound out of the box, because they need acclimation time for their hearing.
Marianne Oelund Exactly Marianne! You hit it on the head. Burn-in is really to uncover infant mortality of electronic components. Break-in is really about loosening up some tension in mechanical components. I doubt PS Audio or any other manufacturers break-in their speakers before shipment. So while we listen to new speakers we are not only doing break-in but also getting used to the sound of the new speakers and how they interact with the room. It is this part that I think that audiophiles and manufacturers relate to when they call it burn-in.
Absolutely !!! why people think it doesn't matter is beyond me. Or they simply have been listening to the wrong people giving you bad advice. AND its not just electronic components, its all speakers, cables, phono cartridges, basically anything connected to a high quality music system. If you dont believe it then you dont understand that everything in a high quality music system matters. And when your system is well designed and of reasonable quality then it will allow you to hear subtle changes in a system. With break in everything improves in tonality, detail, and of course musicality.
"why people think it doesn't matter is beyond me. Or they simply have been listening to the wrong people giving you bad advice". Would you listen to a politician give you medical advice for your own healthcare? I rest my case.
Hi Paul, great video and it makes absolutely sense in my opinion. Funny enough Andrew Robinson just came out with a video on this subject and he calls it BS, which I find surprising for an Audio reviewer. Your video came up as did your name in the comments of that video of Andrew. I even felt compelled to reply that I have a lot of confidence in your technical knowledge, not that I am trying to score brownie points or so :D I can imagine you are busy but considering all this, it would be great to see your comment as well on that video. Have a nice day and I am looking forward to your next video.
Hugo Bloemers I’ve been reading various comments on both videos as well, and the differences between the two audiences are startling. Not to be divisive, but I’ll have to side with Paul here, as I’ve clearly heard the benefits of break-in on my Sennheiser HD-800s headphones. Andrew produces good content as well, and I’m surprised to hear him tell his experience as fact rather than a strong belief/opinion. I’d be fantastic if Andrew were to visit PS Audio (after Covid-19 of course) to listen to the IRS V with both a broken in pair of M1200s and a pair that came completely unused from the production team. I’d be very curious to know if he’ll stick to his stance, or indeed whether Paul’s demo might make him reconsider. Either way: when I get my Stellar M700 or M1200 set, I’ll be sure to enjoy it from the first minute in the comfortable knowledge that it will get even better with a good amount of playing.
What about burning for microphones? I’ve heard that you need to run the for a couple of days straight otherwise it won’t get burned in. Different sources were saying that if you interrupt the process you need to start all over. Any input on that?
when people burn in audio equipment to test the equipment after the equipment has become hot then the sound quality is good! but when equipment gets cold they suddenly have not so good sound! I have one class-a amplifier that doesn't have good sound when it's cold! so it's not just constant sound improvement we're talking about! If you put the amplifier away for 2 weeks then i think some of the sound quality after burn in is gone! Burn in is good for testing the amplifier properly
Do you mean it could sound worse once it has burned in? You could consider that if a HiFi manufacturer spends a long time designing a product and many listening hours and circuit tweaks the burn in will occur on that prototype during that time. Then the manufacturer produces the product with the same spec as that final burned-in prototype and it should sound the same once burned in too.
We should be able to measure burn in then. Take a brand new amp, run some measurements then one that has been "burned in". If the input/output looks identical, then it's a bunch of BS.
Great Paul thank you! My experience with the beautiful Ps Audio Stellar Phono preamplifier: At least 5 hours before you listen to it, at least 30 hours or more audio burn in until it sounds best! And don’t forget: also the cables need burning in!
I know this is not about cables but when I bought some AudioQuest interconnects the first week they sounded real harsh. Was about to return them but they settled down. My ears getting acclimated or burn in?
Electronics either work or fail. Transistors are a like valves and do not change unless overheated. Capacitors and resistors do change over time but usually for the bad side of their values. Does your network router get faster after a week of burnin, how about that hard drive or ram? If you turn electronics on and it works then it will be the same until it fails.
Put it this way .... Ever brought a pair of shoe's that feel like a nice fit and you buy them .... After wearing them for a while they feel better ... are more supple and easier on ya feet ..... That's what happens with audio electronics .... A bit of time to settle in
You can't compare shoes to electronics. The materials involved are very different. It's like saying a building performs better once you lived in it for a year.
If you think that's an apt comparison then maybe you should think about not playing your audio system too long because when someone walks for a long time his feet get tired.
![Eminem - Fuel (Shady Edition) feat. Westside Boogie & GRIP [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/k1OquBida9s/mqdefault.jpg)
Definitely pays to perform a "burn in" on any electronic component. It is necessary at all equipment installed at our facility. It also remedies return issues due to "infant mortality" concerns. Stopping returns and bad consumer confidence pays off.
I bought a new amp and when I first fired it up, it sounded perfect to my ears. So I packed it back up and never played it ever again, fearing that burn-in would ruin the sound :)
I was disappointed with the sound of my new Cambridge transport and Dac magic plus when I first got it up and running. Now 7 months later I'm a happy camper with the sound. So I have to agree 100% with Paul.
Whatever you do, don't change your transport and Dac again, or you'll have to go through another cycle of accommodating your hearing to the new equipment.
I just got a Cambridge CXA 81 and I was first taken aback by the sound so it's in a burn-in period for now and let's see where this takes me. Thanks for your comment and thanks Paul for your videos.
Did you get used to the burn in, or did your stuff get used to your idiocy?
Paul just wanted to say Thank You ! You have a great way of conveying your vast knowledge and presenting yourself in a light and non-threatening way. Audiophiles are a special needs group and are vastly different in the way they take and accept information, you seem to have that knowledge firmly in hand over years of experience with us ! .......Thank You !
Even after full burn-in of equipment it still needs at least half hour after you turn it on to sounds at its best.
I'm going to invent a time machine. I'll go back in time to around 10,000bc. I'll give them all the science books they need to be able to create audio products by 7,000bc.
I'll tell a few of them to leave the units on and bequethe them to me when the time is right.
I'll then come back to present day. After 9,020 years of being left on, I'll bet my system sounds the best. :)
@M Pi Get bent on a hot poker. Ya dig, mmm pie?
I think you're on to something there. My valve amp is certainly more revealing when it's been on a while. Running in class A, it doesn't take long either.
Thats called warm up. Every audio playback device does it
@Steely Dan 5000 it was a joke pointing out how this topic can reach absurd levels. A 30 minute warm up is probably legit. But I think burn-in is mostly a way to make poorly engineered products stable. By and large it's mostly bull shit but some products require it.
Ok, maybe they're not poorly engineered per se, but the circuit board and components are reacting in such a way where they're not completely stable from the get go.
Thanks Paul! From a reliability standpoint - the burn-in is very essential, every engineer worth their two cents should be intimately familiar with the term ‘bathtub curve’. As far as how burn-ins affect the signal path sonic quality - that will always be a subjective topic I think (difficult to measure). From a purely physics point of view, a component’s material characteristics can change if exposed to heat over time. For me, I’ve noticed burn-in sonic differences with many capacitors (usually PIO or PWIO), inductors, and tubes. Keep up the great work!
I agree, but beyond 100 hours points to something that truly needs addressing.
If it takes longer, something is very unstable and it's unacceptable. Using long amounts of time is not a suitable replacement for meticulous engineering.
I agree wholeheartedly with this. My new Marantz amp with Klipsch speakers sounded horrendous when I started it up the first time playing one of my favorite songs. I felt so disappointed! I’m not an audiophile by any means but I did come across a previous video on this topic and decided to let the system “burn in” for a few days and then listen to the song again. I cried when I heard how beautiful the music was and I couldn’t believe it was the same system that disappointed me so much just a few days earlier. If all manufacturers could burn the hardware in before sale, or if PS Audio could ship to South Africa (hint hint, nudge nudge), it would be awesome! Thanks for the video!
I doubt there is any argument you could make, which would convince me that a Marantz amp driving Klipsch speakers could possibly sound horrendous out of the box.
Marianne Oelund Expectation vs Reality "horrendous" - but it is a great set up even just out the box 😁
Paul you just agreed with Bill and totally supported his statement. Electronic "burn in" is an end of final production process to heat the components so they either fail or reach their final operating conditions. The components don't know they are in an audio device vs a radar in the military or a nuclear sciences device like an MRI.
Once the initial burn-in has been completed by the manufacturer which btw it always should be, there no such thing as further burn in when it gets to the end user or audio consumer. The idea that every time you turn off a device it than needs hours or weeks to get back to point where is sounds or operates as intended is complete rubbish.
Any manufacturer that doesn't do burn-in as part of finished goods quality assurance needs their head read and certainly are cutting corners.
I would suggest the burn in as part of Quality Control from the factory.
I will not debate the importance of burn in.
But if burn in is that vital, all the manufacturers should do it in their facility before sending the audio gear out.
@@gregmax Well they do, this is not exclusive to PS audio
I've always ran pink noise then a white noise signal through all my sound systems for 48 hours before listening to any music. When I studied electronics in college back in the late 80's, we were taught that it allows the electrons time to aline themselves. I recently had my current system in storage for 10 months and when I set it up recently it sounded awful. But after playing a white noise CD for 48 hours at a low volume it came to life and sounded awesome again.
Electrons only need femtoseconds to align themselves.
Absolutely real. Recapped an old Marantz (and another) and it was my 'warm' amp, but with 45+ year old parts it needed renewing. Clarity and dynamics improved, but on day 1 it was harsh, now its a bit too treble heavy. Whole new power and main section, whole new tone section and coupling caps. Things need to settle.
I never believed in speaker burn in, but I bought some big Klipsch speakers three years ago to replace my old DCM Time Windows and I thought they sounded distorted. I ran them for 2 days straight on FM and they sounded way better.
I dont know why I watch these viedos all this stuff is out of my league I will never be able to afford anything from PS Audio but the question is if I could would i....dam right I would in a heart beat....also love the knowledge that this company possesses.
You don't need high dollar eqpt. It's the theories behind the engineering that you pay attention to. Quality wire, quality circuit feeding your system, what different things do. That's why I watch. I'm no audiophile, but this help me get the best out of my eqpt. I have a pretty nice av receiver with big 15" fronts powered by a seperate amp, 2 subs two towers for surrounds and a center channel. It's an all in one system in my living room. I have excellent stereo sound and movies are on another level. I listen to mostly metal and rock, it sounds great. I have about three grand into it. If your into chasing the perfect sound, and getting perfect readings on test equipment, than ya, you may have too spend some more money, but I think a person can get great sound without breaking the bank. The most important thing is the source
NO 1U NO It is truly a double-edged sword, watching these videos and reading audiophile reviews. The positive is they can give you the knowledge to recognize quality when you see it (which only a small percentage of people really care about), so you can pick up good used deals other people just bypass. On the other hand, these videos/reviews can condition you to the thought that you should/need to spend gobs of money to have acceptable sound. “Oh, that phono preamp costs 4 grand? That’s not bad”, or you see manufacturers leaning on 10’s of thousands of dollars of equipment like it’s a regular thing. There are plenty of reviewers here that show relatively affordable gear that sounds great.
I posted the following in a FB group (Magnepan) and someone linked to this video. Paul is either an engineer or certainly has engineers at his disposal, it would be great if he would address my questions, both implied and direct.
A work colleague (our work is technical in nature, most people would consider us engineers, but neither have a degree in engineering) of mine asked me what I thought about the break in of amplifiers and other audio electronics except speakers.
My response was, "I am quite skeptical." He asked why, I said, "It would be almost impossible for an engineer to design a product comprised of dozens if not hundreds of individual components where the engineer must account for the values/actions of each of those components during and after break in." I went on "Consider the design/testing regime, where any time you change any component in your test product you must let it burn in for hours or days before you can measure it."
I posed a question, "If products change during the break in period, why do they always (at least that I have ever heard of) sound better after the break in period?" "Wouldn't some portion of them sound worse?"
If burn-in is real why does it ALWAYS change the said component/speaker/headphone for the better? I think the term as most people experience it is purely psychological. I've experienced it myself numerous times with new headphone purchases. Including used ones, which throws the break-in argument out the window. They rarely sound pleasing at first, especially if the signature is wildly different than the headphone I'm most used to at the moment.
I experienced this myself. I had a pair of Sennheiser HD600 headphones for nearly 15 years, and listened to no other headphone in that time. Late last year I bought a used pair of very old Audeze LCD2 headphones (5 years old). They sounded like utter garbage in comparison to the 600s because I was used to their specific sonic signature and listened to the 600s exclusively for a decade and a half. After some time listening to the LCD2s, they of course "seemed" to have much improved sound. This is not due to break-in, as these headphones were purchased used and already had thousands of hours of listening time on them. A few dozen more hours have literally done nothing to them; I have simply gotten used to the way they sound. Going back to the HD600s, and now they sound like shrill, bassless shit and it feels like someone is stabbing me in the ears with a knife any time there's an appreciable amount of treble in the music, most notably the beginning of Colour To The Moon by Allan Taylor.
Careful with that. Logical thinking isn't appreciated in audiophile circles.
Exactly...burn-in for audio quality actually means "I'm getting used to the sound of these"
Both are correct, Your ears gets used to the sound after a while and burned equipments does sounds much better
@@greggsidwell8307morons😂😂
Burn-in was always for the purpose of screening out infant-mortality failures, not for any kind of performance "settling in." It might be fun to put one of your products through the burn-in (we call it ESS, Environmental Stress Screening) that we use for flight controls. A few cycles of -40C to +55C, plus vibration, could produce interesting results.
The primary item that "settles in" with a new audio component, is the listener's ears. Provided there are no actual faults, any new solid-state component should sound just as good at initial build, as it does hundreds of hours later. If it doesn't, I would call it a poor design.
Tube equipment may change audibly over time, and some designs might be optimized for the tubes at mid-life (splits the difference between new and aged tubes).
@Pete is never wrong
Sure, go with the same people who claim they hear a difference in reproduction quality by changing a power cord or fuse.
If it's that hard to get hifi electronics right, then there is no hope.
Yes, you are the third person here with their head in reality and understands and accepts factual scientific data and real world experience. Thank you.
The actual purpose for "burn-in" is to detect early component failures. This prevents many unnecessary warranty claims. The burn in has no effect on the audio performance.
If there were any audible differences, you should be able to provide specifications taken before and after the burn-in and mark the differences in performance before and after.
@blackened 1 Yup, same here when I was in the computer industry! If a component failed or showed signs of weakness in the first 100 hours, not only was it chucked, but the rest of the batch was checked and used with suspicion.
Paul, what you didn't comment in detail about (but have in another video) is that after a prescribed burn-in, your gear goes back to be aligned and tested for peak performance.
This is great information. I can totally stand by what you're doing here. I'm an engineer at Audio Research Corp-- we try to have some of our components pre-burned-in (capacitors especially) at at least 100 hours before they're shipped to us. Once the amps are assembled and mostly and mostly complete, we burn them in for 48 hours with audio noise (sweeps and noise) before they are listened to and signed of to ship. With tube amps and pre-amps in development, we run them with music for at least 100 hours to exercise and burn them in. Often during the burn in, sonics can get worse! It's crucial to work burn in with any amplifier in development.
Bang on! I've just overhauled my valve amp and my Audiolab 8000C pre amp. It took about two weeks for me to burn in the power amplifier. I then overhauled the pre amplifier. I left it turned on for three days. It took about five days in total to complete the burn in. Early on I thought I'd ruined it but now everything is settled and sounding amazing. The more I use it the better it's getting.
Charlotte Jet Burn in on a valve amp is crucial. Exercising the valves should always be part of the developing the recipe.
@@roryjones6483Hi Rory. I built my valve amp 22 years ago this Easter! It's served me very well over the years. It's had a couple of tweaks here and there, but this most recent was a full on overhaul including replacing all the carbon resistors with metal film rated 1% tolerance. It was well worth it. Of course I've also replaced the electrolytics. Although I do need to re tube it, but for now that can wait.
I'm with Paul on this one. I've just rebuilt my power valve amp. It sounded dreadful, two weeks later it is beautiful. So last Tuesday I rebuilt my Audiolab 8000C preamp. To be honest I thought I'd ruined it. So I left it "burning in" for four days. Last night it all came together. I now have an audio system to be proud of. It's a pleasure to just sit here and hear music how it was intended to be heard.
Try that with a piece of used gear, I bet you will get the same result. It is already "burned-in" so it should already sound its best but it will still end up sounding better to you overtime same as new gear, this is because it is your ears getting used to the sound not the gear getting used to your ears. lol
@@randysalsman6992 your ignorance has no bounds.
Speakers need some flexing to soften spider and surround materials to perform well. That’s the good burnin we need to do as consumers. If electronics need burnin to sound good, I would be concerned that it also burnout quickly. That’s the case with vacuum tubes. Which other electronic component type needs burnin to sound good? I really would like to know.
ThinkingBetter
I agree with you about speakers and the fact that tubes eventually burn out, but I’d like to know too about other parts. I actually deleted my comment, as not to get caught up in this type of hornets nest of a topic. Too many conflicting views, and everyone has an opinion. I want facts.
tHE BASS GUY FROM kiss Gene simmonds stoppen using tube ampe, I think it ws Ampegs,now he uses TRANSISTORES ampes from tech21. his tech said the tubes get really hot and by the endof the shoe they dont sound good. THANKE YOUE AND THUMBS UPS.
Fat Rat Yes, and speaker cables need about a year of burnin for the electrons in the metal to grow their muscles to move swiftly under heavy load. Well, an actual more real thing I see is that the more I stay at home for flattening the curve the more the curve in my view is rising.
souds like a theory i could suscribe to @@ThinkingBetter
@Fat Rat Yes, some humor is good and we actually need more of it in depressing times. Unfortunately, humor isn't all that well appreciated by some portion of Americans. Those without humor share some personal traits here btw. I can ask a person 3 questions that have nothing to do with humor and I can tell if the person has a sense of humor.
initial burn-in at the factory can also catch any issues that QC didn't see before it goes to the customer.
It's well known fact, heat has an effect on the nominal value of resistors (even the slightest change in operating temperature).
After several days of operation the values (of resistors) stabilize and the circuit reaches its final functional values.
This also explains why many systems (usually) sound _better_ after an hour or so of initial warm up.
Some setups require even longer warm up periods..
burn in and warm up are two different things I imagine. the two should not be referred to as being the same which is what you have done here.
@@BetterISupposeYeah
Yes they are two different things, however.. the paralel was made only as an example to indicate the changing values of components (mainly resistors) when current flows through them altering their ambient temperature.
The warming up effect works on the same principle i.e. the component in question reaches its operating temperature as against the ambient temperature when switched off.
You're "barking up the wrong tree" by citing resistors. They do not need operating time to stabilize in any audible way. Circuit operating points are strictly a function of temperature and they go through the same change every time the equipment is turned on from cold. There is no permanent change achieved over the first few dozen operating hours in modern solid-state electronics.
Some components could conceivably sound worse after warm up.
@@marianneoelund2940
Well, if this is your experience I wouldn't argue against it but,....
Any elementary electronics book will tell you that the nominal value of a resistor can change with variation in temperature.
Whether this is audible or not (and we are talking about many resistors in a circuit) is debatable.
I say it is, you maintain is not. Some will agree with you but also, some might think otherwise. A matter of perception methinks..
@@m.9243 I'm an electrician and agree heat will change the value. Whether it's audible to the ear, or even test eqpt is where the debate begins
I'm an electrician in a factory. We like to do a burn in/debug whenever we commission a new machine, they are all automated and have many electronic components. It definitely helps for "breaking in" relays, switches, etc. Whether the electronic performance changes idk, but I trust my engineers (on paper anyway 😁) and they seem to think it helps with performance. Once we debug we usually run for 3 shifts with no product, then turn it over to production.
Burn in absolutely matters. Burn in matters on speakers 🔊 and hardware as well. Even on lower brands. I’ve gotten my hands on some high end pieces for dirt cheap only because the original owner didn’t bother with burn time and didn’t even break the speakers in.
I knew of one company that burned them in overnight and the ones that weren't blown up the next morning got shipped.
I'm sure you can think of more than one company.
Would love to know the physics behind burn in :-)
Dave Middleton - New Zealand
Real burn in is operating new components at elevated temperatures to identify "infant mortality" failures. The physics of failure is a broad and fascinating discipline.
However, what Paul is calling burn in does not qualify as such.
Endless debate regarding this topic. Some are believers, some are not. Some say when you do burn in, it is the brain adapting to what you hear and overtime, whatever gear it is, it sounds good after a good amount of listening. My personal standpoint, i do burn in. And it has impact on audio. My mindset, just like a car, it takes time for all the components to settle in. Hence the term “break in” for cars or any vehicle.
Right, as my own experience as well.
if you have an old amplifier and its not playing for maybe 2months,does it need to burn in again or just when you just bought it new? thank you
36 hours burn in? Should be sold as slightly used:-)
I bought a Intergraded amp a year ago, Here in Reykjavik Iceland we dont get to audition all stereo equipment. Anyway I read the reviews and they were promising, but one stood out as it being horrible, I still bought it and first weeks i was very unhappy with it. now a year later its so much better. I guess either im going mad or burn in matters.
Perhaps what was 'burning in' was your brain to the new sound. It just took you time to adapt to it.
@@captainwin6333 yes I have thought about that. But my brother heard the amp when new and then again a few months later and he asked me what did you change? He noticed a big diffrence in sound when nothing had changed, we were listening to the same music.
Integrated?
just bought your DirectStream DAC and have it turned on 24/7 for a while, to see if it sounds better due to "Burn in"
Does volume matter when burning in an integrated amp for example? I mean the volume has to be on obviously but does volume level matter?
My dinky little 20w integrated Vista Audio Spark needed 24h burn in before it was listenable. Burn in is real!
My Maggies sounded awful at first - sound levels at different frequencies came and went. It took 40 hours at normal listening volume before they settled down, and another 20 before they really shined...
@Steely Dan 5000 - Ah a troll - lovely to find now and then. Why on earth would you bash Maggies - they are praised by every serious audiophile - virtually anyone making a living by writing about hi end audio. I guess your Realistic 4ft. stacks that weigh 3 pounds are still rocking your world, but I suggest getting out more...
Too bad your name is also my favorite band - 'cause I have to dislike you just a bit less.
Love that power strip in the back !! :)
I was one of them that used to believe burn in didn't mean anything until I had a dac upgraded with a bunch of pricey black gate capacitors. I remember not being overly impressed after the upgrade. It just took some time 😀
It's fact that caps form and sound different afterwards. Many have experienced this first hand but there will always be those that claim placebo, mass hysteria or alien abduction for the perceived changes.
Are u guys burning them in or "testing" them? I'm curious about something else. Should you(or the consumer)play music through a pre amp, power amp &/or Dac for burn in or is just having them plugged in and turned on ok? Is that what he means by "with signal"? And if playing music through them is the correct way... does volume level matter?
Burn-in is also critical for new grand acoustic pianos. Even the elite (i.e., pricey) models. But it's a frustrating process to deal with. You want it to sound broken in from the get-go. But there's an upside to the lengthy process. Assuming you have the instrument tuned and voiced regularly, you will slowly hear the improvement. "Hey, " you might say--"is that my piano?" "But it didn't sound like that last week."
I’ve been burning in my gear for 6 years. It seems to be getting better.
Very good info Paul!
Most electronics benefits from burn in not just speakers.
As a hobbyist that builds amps kits some discrete and integrated they all sound smoother after burn in.
Great video, great information, thanks!
Very Informative. Thank you Mr Paul.
I understand the sound may change after burn in (components and electronic chips take time to settle down), what I cannot understand why it is always sound better after that.
It doesn't, so there is nothing wrong with your understanding. Very few electronic components need any kind of "settling in."
I have a record that is so dynamic that you can hear the sound change as capacitors break in. I have it on CD and LP but only the LP lets you hear the change that fast. If you come to vist Paul I'll give you a copy.
Questions, a) if its burned in at the factory, does it not need to be burned in at home at all? How long? and b) Does home burn in signal AND output, or just signal?
I have burned my speakers in and out. Now I am looking for a new pair to burn in :D
There seems to be both fact and a bit of snake oil going on at the same time here. With any electronic product there is, in reliability terms, the ‘inverse bathtub’ curve where the most susceptible points of failure over time are at the beginning and end of life and you would expect consistent reliability in the middle of that curve. Burning in will trap those early failures so the consumer doesn’t have to worry to much about early life failure. With a high end product you would expect the manufacturer to do a degree of soak testing to avoid early failures - it goes with the territory. With modern electronic components, burning in just to make a product sound better is a dubious claim. The exception is a loudspeaker where after a certain number of hours the cone suspension loses a little of its freshly manufactured stiffness and that does affect the way it sounds quite considerably.
AnalogueGround
Good and sensible answer. Thank you.
The other exception is a capacitor. And thus every electronic device.
@@JerryRutten I don't buy the 'capacitor burn-in for optimum sound' theory. During manufacture, the chemistry of an electrolytic capacitor is optimised and has to achieve a given spec within the specified tolerance goal. Yes, they certainly degrade with age but if a capacitor needs to be run in-circuit for a day or two before it's usable then it's not fit for purpose. Can you imagine the avionics industry or military being happy with that? Valves (tubes) used to get a rigorous burn-in by the manufacturer before they left the factory. I'm not certain if that is still the case; if not, there's a good case for burning-in tube based products in case there's some initial drift in spec.
Larry Niles I use the term for the lack of another more succinct description. I’m certainly not biased and have spent a lifetime career in electronics always listening and learning. I consider a closed mind a dangerous thing!
You're being very polite by calling it a "dubious claim."
I have a tiny dac amp. Incredible. Wonder if that requires burn in to sing best. It's only 250mw
I have just got a new microwave oven, it has taken about 100 hours of burn in for the food to taste nice. Even my wife in the other room can taste the difference. Who would have thought.😂😂😂
Hmmm . . . 100 hours . . . you must enjoy crispy foods.
@@marianneoelund2940 yes, we just put water in a bowl and kept repeating the process for 100 hours and it's definitely worth the effort. My soup now tastes more dynamic and the colour is a lot deeper, you just get more of everything. I am in the process of burning in my toaster . I also upgraded the power lead on my kettle, and I think the fuse is next change. Maybe I will get a directional one from Hifi tuning.😊
The engineers have one perspective, and it is irrefutable. First, it is QC to find weak connections and parts that will either fail within a short time, or settle into specs over a longer time. Capacitors 'form' and then change over time. An amp that has sat for years may need careful restart in order to reform the caps. Speakers need burn in time; and musicians know this well.
With speakers, and I don't disagree with you on burn in, you need to "break" them in in my opinion. They are stiff out of the box, like shoes. They need a little work to get them moving right. 💯% my opinion, and I have been called a dumbass before.
🤪
What about the Noise Harvester? Do those get any burn in before they are packaged and shipped?
I remember the days, when we all loved Hifi without the Voodoo idiocy. Those were the days my friend, thought they never end, but for some they did!
Definitely some idiocy here, but it’s not coming from Paul.
On the one hand, what you're saying sounds like QA/QC, not burn-in. Letting equipment warm-up is definitely also good, electronics don't work at their best until they get up to proper operating temperature. Similarly, running too hot can affect the sound as well. Now for the "burn-in", what exactly happening to the amp components at 200 hrs that they all of a sudden decide to sound good? I think if you can answer that you might be able to convince people, conversely, it might mean there's something wrong with some of the components used in the amp if it takes 200 hrs for them to start working properly.
Also, when you are designing and voicing products, are you waiting for 200 hrs before you decide that every change you make sounds good?
I buy used. What is this 'burn in' of which you speak? :¬D
New electronic components especially in new equipment need to be 'run in' to get the best out of them. This process is crucial in certain applications, for example audio & medical electronics.
There's nothing wrong buying used & much to gain. However, how old it is, what's its history and has it been competently serviced are questions one should always consider when buying used. Components age and degrade over time, which is why equipment fails.
@Fat Rat Ah, now I understand. I think in future I will refrain from imparting my knowledge and experience. I shall sit back with a wry smile on my face. 🤗
if you have an old amplifier and its not playing for maybe 2months,does it need to burn in again or just when you just bought it new? thank you
There's a difference between warm up and burn in ....
@Fat Rat LMAO
@Larry Niles
Apparently you're not aware that what PS Audio is doing, is nothing more than warm up. It doesn't qualify as burn in, and that's what Janina was alluding to.
Burn in is for the purpose of shaking out infant-mortality part failures, and it's far more effective with temperature cycling, or at least elevated-temperature operation - thus the name.
@Fat Rat Speaking of burn in, trimming is recommended or brush fires could break out. :)
There's another channel where someone is claiming the PS Audio direct streaming DAC required 800+ hours of burn in. WTF?!?!? There's even people in the comments agreeing.
I told them the product isn't designed quite right if it takes 800 hours of heat and current flow to fix the poor sound.
Just more mythology. Actually, I think what trips people up is the fact, that this myth (as with many) is based some thread of truth. The problem is that the important explaining info is left out.
"Burn in" is often used interchangeably with the term "break in". They are technically two different things.
"Burn in" has very little to do with fact. When talking electronics you are talking about molecular physics (atoms, electrons.....). When current is sent down a wire, cable, what have you, you are exciting the electrons around a nucleus inside an atom. When you shut off the current, the electrons basically float freely. It is instant on and instant off. In solid state electronics there is no "burn in" and no warming up (unless you are talking about a purposed heating element. In solid state heat is the enemy. If you are talking about tubes, those are actually mechanical and a different story. "Burn in" and "Break in" are sometimes used interchangeably to describe something that has nothing to do with the gear, but more to do with your ears and brain. In other words, what often happens is that our ears and brain get used to that different item, be it speakers, amp or whatever and that takes time, anywhere from a couple of hours to 36 or 48 hours or whatever. "Break in" is more prescribed to mechanical gear such as phono cartridges, speakers and even tubes. All those things change in sound as they go. For example: Phono cartridges have a cantilever which the stylus is attached to and the cantilever connects to the mechanics in the cartridge body to translate the vibrations from the record grooves to sound in a sense. (I'm going for simplified explaining). The cantilever on a new cartridge is kind of like new shocks on your car. They start out very stiff, but after so many miles they settle down to where they should be. Same thing with speakers, the surrounds the keep the driver from extending too far start out very stiff on new speakers and settle in after about 36 hours or so of play. Both these time moments will result in different sound characteristics from when they were new. Tubes need to be warmed up for a short time before play to get them to optimum level.
From a technical view though "burn in" replaced what is really going on, which is Quality Control. So when a manufacture says they "burn in" an amp or what ever for 36 hours before shipping or something, what they are really doing and should be doing is testing the piece to make sure nothing shorts out or whatever in case there is a manufacturing flaw someplace. Why they don't just call it what it is "Quality Control" or "final check quality control" instead of trying to be fancy wordsmiths and failing is beyond me. What is it they are trying to hide? It makes no sense.
So true! I believe most of this nonsense like I believe the guy in the mental institution who thinks he's Jesus Christ! Heck he sure believes he is so it must be true!🤪🤯🤯🤔🤔🤭🤭
@@bigjay1970 And the scary thing is that we see a live example of "That Guy" everyday from a place in Washington.
Anyway, like I said, I think some of the jargon is intentional and some of it conditioned. The unfortunate thing is that a lot of folks end up misinformed and sometimes making large financial mistakes for nothing but placebo or self-trickery. The audio world is tricky to navigate. I spent 4 years as a journalist trying to help folks do that. There are good makers out there amongst the sharks and there are good ethical reviewers (very few, but I know them all, you can count them on one hand though).
Of course, now with this virus, the playing field may end up a bit more equalized in a sense. We already know that people are really hurting financially, (I'm feeling some myself) and many of these "high-end" makes, including PS Audio are not going to fair too well unless there are enough rich gullible people to support them. Of course, a few of them only have to sell one cable per year or something. Still, things are going to get real rough in the industry, it has already started. More diverse and ethical companies, (such as Schiit, Elac, Vantoo, Parasound, etc.) will fair better at the end of the day.
Paul, you are looking slim and fit. Bravo!
And all it took was getting 20% of his calories from booze, lol.
Paul's words, not mine. Since he's old and still enjoys a glass of wine, he is forced to get a lot of his daily caloric intake from alcohol.
Geezer metabolisms can be quite slow. 400 to 1,000 calories a day is quite common to maintain a healthy geezer weight.
Hey Paul! Not really connected to the topic but could you please allow subtitle making and translation for the channel? I think there's a setting for it in the YT creator studio. I would really like to translate some of your vids to my father who's a huge audiophile but he doesn't really speaks English well. Thanks!
@M Pi Oh thanks for the wonderfully ignorant answer! Would your father (or most people over 60) be so keen on learning a new language?
Burn in is real and can be heard, despite of the "science" behind it is yet to be fomalized. Though whether to use proper burn in tracks like those found in Chesky Records and XLO test discs or ordinary music tracks still needs to be investigated thoroughly, in my existing system, a mid 1990s era CD from an Australian alt-rock band called Deadstar seems to work wonders in burning in line level interconnects. Must be due to Caroline Kennedy's voice perhaps? 🤔
No question burn in matters. Different capacitors have very different need for burnin time before they open up. I recently fired up some speakers that had been dormant for a few years. At first I could not believe how closed in the sound stage was. Then after a couple of sessions it occurred to me the sound stage was wide, dynamic and engaging (to tapping). I dawned on me that they needed burn in. This despite the fact the crossover components were quite well burned in. Even a fresh solder joint needs a little time to shake off that tight, compressed and repressed sound. Then it opens up, becomes dynamic, flowing and easy.
Sorry...calling BS on discernible audio quality improving after burn-in! Burn-in determines reliability and that's it! If that could be measured with a scope I MIGHT believe it!
Of course you can't tell a difference on your close and play.
It's all sticks and bones, guys. Does burn-in matter in audio?
The definitive answer is...
*it depends*
But thanks for the commercial message. And it worries me that some PS Audio stuff starts out sounding *like crap* (your words).
Infant mortality vs. warranty cost is why most burn-ins are done. If your circuits are such delicate flowers, some redesign may be in order. What happens after 200 hours of use? Do the transformer windings reach the bottom of the hill? Do the capacitors out-gas all their parasitic fluids? Do the resistors take on the texture of toast, starting from white bread? Do the power cable's atoms align with the poles of Earth's magnetic field?
*And what happens after another 200?*
Yeah, some burn in is reasonable but if it requires burn in to alter the sound from crap to good, then the product requires more engineering.
@Steely Dan 5000 Smoking that stuff is also burn-in, I guess. ;)
Hey Paul, I firmly believe in brun in having recapped vintage receivers and when they burn in (which some dont believe) makes a marked difference. I did run into one problem I DONT KNOW how to fix. I am getting audio bleed through in a Marantz amp where if I am playing in AUX, I get a very low continuance of the music is I switch to aux 2, phono. It doesnt increase with volume, sounds like tha amp board had a tiny speaker. Any thoughts on how to stop bleed through ?
Thanks a bunch!! ❤️
I had my integrated serviced, caps replaced. It sounded better when I got it back but it took 4-6 weeks in a powered up state before it settled in to it's best sound performance. I have a suspicion that high temperature caps take longer to burn in. Maybe someone can comment on this?
Caps don't burn in. They just degrade.
@@marianneoelund2940 everything degrades. Capacitors degrade just sitting in storage. Capacitors 'form' when exposed to the duty of the circuit they are installed in.
Gotta burn in those Audioquest cables for optimal synergy with your equipment. It makes for even better dance time ;) Why would anyone buy electronics that need a magic burn in # to perform optimally? Good God this is why high-end audio is dying.
Audioholics you’re right I mean I never really understood burn in on electronics. Idk maybe I’m missing something. Btw is this Gene? Lol 😂
@@rimixda Yea, just enjoying my isolation and causing trouble. Once an amplifier reaches nominal operating temperature nothing else should change. With modern Class D that's pretty instantaneous. IMO, Burn-in is a good sales tactic to get people to keep components beyond their return period. Take that and cable synergy claims with a grain of salt. We are living in an era were #fakenews thrives.
Yes I try not to fall into that trap wish hi end audio was like pro audio in most regards. I’ve never heard anything about burn in from the pro world and how speaker cable’s makes a difference
@@Audioholics Ever smell those chemical smells after turning on a new device with new parts. Some of those parts might take awhile to reach optimal specs including the formation of electrolytic caps. Large caps may not sound good until their formed. What about the skin effect of anything carrying the audio signal with the jacket material. It's not just one thing it's all the parts in the component chain that have to come into spec. Are we just going to sit around with a watch and determine after how long the amp starts to sound better. What about warm up time for AB amps after they have been used for awhile. Turning on from cold usually takes at least a half hour to sound good enough. Whys that? For the most part the break in period does two things. A) To make sure there are no defective parts before shipping out B) To make sure that whatever you've created actually sounds as intended and designed as spec. I will tell you that some woofers most definitely require at least 100 hours of break in before they sound remotely good and that"s from personal experience. It doesn't take a genius to know what sounds good and what sound like doo doo.
@@Audioholics Well those that understand physics can figure out what and how fast something burns in and measure it. The problem is what it actually means. Yes burn in is required but only for select parts(especially moving parts) and there's nothing the end user has to do extra to complete the process. Just play music you like when you want and after a while it will sound different. That said when someone is designing a component there is no way they would go through some rigorous burn in process each time they make an alteration to a prototype for tweaking purposes. How it sounds out of the box is pretty much 99,9% exactly what the designer intended.
Also fake news is as old as human beings have been on the planet. Its just called differently through out the ages. If you were referring to hashtags then ya you're right that's a thing for this era.
My wife is causing me to burn out.
Acquire some new audio gear to burn in! :-)
Want a tip? Do all the physical chores/tasks, and have her do all the tedious tasks.
Men are not designed to do tedious jobs (which many of us do to make a living) and then come home to do even more tedious bull crap on top of all the physical chores we do. Women are much more capable of not losing their shit when it comes to fine detail tasks or activities which require a lot of sitting: book keeping, typing, knitting, paying bills, going through the mail, planning trips you hate, lol, etc.
The men go out and run after a moose while the women sit at the camp fire basket weaving and knitting clothing.
At home act like an idiotic beast of burden incapable of rational thought. Your stress will clear right up! You lift things and move them, beyond that it's her job to solve.
@@charlottejet4338 I assure you, you're no prize.
You're also the gender that sits in knitting circles. Just a thought as to why I don't worship women.
Married? No
Single? No
I think both women and men have great aspects but we're also pretty pathetic and shaped by blind evolutionary forces.
@@thunderpooch WOW touchy! 1) I don't nor will I ever knit. 2) I have an engineering background, the clue is in the name. 3) Now you've judged me and made this personal, I can guess the reason why "I am no prize" might have something to do with me being the wrong gender? Each to their own. How's your boyfriend? 😄
@@charlottejet4338 Lol, you're pretty touchy yourself.
Nothing you say will sway me. Not the city of Charlotte, not a jet company located there, and not that picture of a jet. Your first name is Charlotte. ;)
Look buddy, I find the comments regarding women on these audio channels to be borderline autistic and desperate. The hobby is cool, but the people are freaking weird AF, imho.
No man I hang with talks about their woman in such a pathetic way as self described audiophiles do.
On and on about the wife acceptance factor, Paul McGowan says "women are just better" at blah blah blah, and then the tendency for every dork on here to proclaim that anybody who expresses an idea which falls short of absolute women worship is either gay, single, or an incel. Yawn.
Want a secret. You and others nerds can still be men and still get laid. You don't have to be a little bitch all the time ready to lick a high heel, and calling out other men expressing ideas found in every book on anthropological evolution.
Thanks Sir for the info
It is called testing, quality control. DUH! Burn-in is not a requirement for the end-user because vacuum tues are not much of a thing anymore, Transistors don't require burn-in. It is mostly psychoacoustical. You did this question already, a while ago. Burn-in, schmurnin. Can you also hear pixies dancing on the head of a pin?
Transistors have a burn in effect too. My friend had a power amp that he blew up, had a couple of small signal transistors replaced in one channel, that was all. Needed burn-in time for the L-R channel balance to match again. I'm not talking loudness, I mean the sound quality was noticeably skewed from one channel to the other until the replaced transistors settled in. It's a strange thing, you wouldn't think a semiconductor would behave like this but they do.
@@rayhunter7371
Transistors do NOT settle in, i.e., they do not make any permanent alteration in their parameters over the first hours of operation. They will go through exactly the same thermal changes every time you turn the equipment on from cold.
And if there was a channel balance issue, it wasn't due to the transistor change.
@@marianneoelund2940 yes transistors DO settle in. HiFi audio is an application where a transistor's effect on a circuit can be perceived - with our ears.
@@rayhunter7371
You're trying to argue with the wrong person, Ray. I've designed, developed, tested and troubleshot too many circuits using various types of transistors, to be interested in your opinion.
Example: Many amplifiers with BJT output stages will require some manual adjustment of quiescent current. If the transistors were doing any "settling in" then this adjustment would need to be redone after some hours of operation. But that doesn't happen; it's set immediately and it doesn't drift. Transistors don't change their parameters (for a given temperature) unless they are damaged or overstressed.
@@marianneoelund2940 is that supposed to impress me? Don't attempt to school me on electronics theory, I already know. How rude and patronising is that? Once again you smart-ass keyboard warriors come out of the woodwork and miss the point.
Confirmation bias is a powerful drug.
What parts change parameters during burn in? I'm sure tubes (valves) do. Capacitors? Yes, I can see the dielectric properties of large capacitors getting settled in 'forming'. Transistors? Actually I hope NOT, I would expect semiconductors to NOT age in if they are any good. Phono cartridges? Shure (pun intended), anything with moving parts needs to limber up, and that would include speakers.
If the equipment has more solid state components does that decrease the burn in time? What kind of signal/amplitude do you use for burn in?
The bass in the ELAC Vela 407s increased after a week of use such that I had to lower the low pass frequency setting on the sub.
Once a week on Friday afternoon a few girls would come over, a couple of my dudes as well. We would then commence a "burn-in" and let me tell ya it helped our perceived quality of life for the next several hours. 👍🏼
-✌🏼
Crackhead! (Lol)
Let me explain: Paul's book "99% True" was not written as an example of how one should actually live.
@@marianneoelund2940 allow me to clarify. I was ten years old at the time. I had drugs thrust upon me. I didn't know and better. My early life is a case study in "don't do that" and so I have three stable adult children and nine grandchildren. None of which I am raising or living with. For me that is total victory over making my childrens' life better than mine was.
Any ABX, double-blind, or other similar tests concerning burn-in of components and sound performance? I think the myth of speaker cable 'burn-in' has been put to rest. I understand burn-in for production reasons, a weak solder connection reacting to a load and heat then revealing a failure. But sound performance improvement via burn-in? Not convinced.
I knew a old Ham radio guy back in the 90s that burned in his tubes. Every time he got an new set of tubes for a tube amp, headphone amp, etc.
As a licensed ham radio guy, and someone who has spent time around many other ham radio guys, they're mostly full of shit and believe a lot of voodoo BS that doesn't make a lick of difference. Many of them don't even have a firm grasp of Ohm's law. It's a wonder how they got their license in the first place... Many of them are also conspiracy theorists as well... Not sure if that's relevant, but there you have it.
@@Orcinus24x5 LOL
My M700’s did change after 2 months. I like them much better than when they came out of the box. And I know it’s not just me adjusting to how they sound 😁
Same here, good out of the box great 6 weeks later.
If all you're using is your ears, then you most certainly do not know that it involves any more than your hearing.
What parts of the electronics gets burned-in? Is it the chemical capasitors that needs to get burned-in? Transistors, resistors, coils and wires wouldn’t seem that it can be burned-in at all.
I would certainly hope that PS Audio and other $$$$ equipment makers are not using any capacitors that could change audibly after a few dozen hours.
@@marianneoelund2940 Yeah. I am have literally no idea because i have no clue to how it works when it comes to these components. I can understand why >some< speakers and headphones >may< need to get burned in. But electronical components? That is very interesting to me, and i would like to know more about it :)
@@larsandersen9134
Unfortunately, the "experts" such as Paul McGowan, do not know what causes the supposed burn in effect. Yet they insist that they can hear it.
Others such as myself insist that what they are hearing is due to the hardware downstream of their ear drums.
So perhaps we should be asking medical researchers for answers, instead of audio equipment designers.
@@marianneoelund2940 Yes. I am also thinking that it may be due to having your ears getting used to a new sound signature.
@@larsandersen9134
I think what many people overlook, is the way that our brains learn, and the importance of repetition or extended exposure to a stimulus, before it can be fully analyzed and interpreted.
Hearing involves a great deal of learning. One will only pick up so much detail on the first pass listening to a musical track. More detail is detected on subsequent passes.
But the characteristics of a particular hifi system (and listening environment) must also be accommodated by the brain before it can fully register all of the detail content. It simply takes time - and some attentive effort as well.
How many hours does a Stellar Strata require?
Paul, have you ever done a double blind test comparing your products that were burned in vs. not burned in? It should be pretty easy to do especially if you feel that it makes a big difference. A simple way to setup and compare A vs. B is to have a given device with one difference, burn-in in this case, be used in one side of a stereo setup and the other side with the other difference inserted. After doing level matching between sides, a simple pan between left and right sides is all you need to do the comparison. Doing this multiple times with different devices in the path can help build confidence in the result.
PS - I forgot to mention that the two speakers should be setup adjacent to each other to minimize the differences from position and room acoustics. Also, this method can be used to compare other components in the chain.
Almost every component I bought in the past sounded like crap out of the box and it took houndreds of hours till it finally open up and sound at its best so a blind test is not necessary it's a fact that every hi-fi component needs burn-in period, As Paul said he is not doing it because he is bored but because he wants his customers to enjoy good sound out of the box.
Itzhak Az Then it should result in an obvious outcome, but there is much skepticism about it. I personally don’t think that there is any perceptible change with electronics but with speakers I think it may well be audible, due to the driver suspensions loosening up which would increase the compliance and lower the low end cutoff a bit.
@@itzhakazoulay1271
No, it is not a fact that every hi-fi component needs the kind of burn in that Paul was describing.
Paul's customers will never enjoy good sound out of the box, because they need acclimation time for their hearing.
Marianne Oelund Exactly Marianne! You hit it on the head. Burn-in is really to uncover infant mortality of electronic components. Break-in is really about loosening up some tension in mechanical components. I doubt PS Audio or any other manufacturers break-in their speakers before shipment. So while we listen to new speakers we are not only doing break-in but also getting used to the sound of the new speakers and how they interact with the room. It is this part that I think that audiophiles and manufacturers relate to when they call it burn-in.
Absolutely !!! why people think it doesn't matter is beyond me. Or they simply have been listening to the wrong people giving you bad advice. AND its not just electronic components, its all speakers, cables, phono cartridges, basically anything connected to a high quality music system. If you dont believe it then you dont understand that everything in a high quality music system matters. And when your system is well designed and of reasonable quality then it will allow you to hear subtle changes in a system. With break in everything improves in tonality, detail, and of course musicality.
"why people think it doesn't matter is beyond me. Or they simply have been listening to the wrong people giving you bad advice". Would you listen to a politician give you medical advice for your own healthcare? I rest my case.
I totally agree. I replaced the screws holding the case to chassis on my amplifier. The sound improved substantially after two months of 24/7 burn-in.
@Steely Dan 5000 Are you sure you're not Mr. Zevon in disguise??
Hi Paul, great video and it makes absolutely sense in my opinion.
Funny enough Andrew Robinson just came out with a video on this subject and he calls it BS, which I find surprising for an Audio reviewer. Your video came up as did your name in the comments of that video of Andrew. I even felt compelled to reply that I have a lot of confidence in your technical knowledge, not that I am trying to score brownie points or so :D
I can imagine you are busy but considering all this, it would be great to see your comment as well on that video.
Have a nice day and I am looking forward to your next video.
Hugo Bloemers I’ve been reading various comments on both videos as well, and the differences between the two audiences are startling. Not to be divisive, but I’ll have to side with Paul here, as I’ve clearly heard the benefits of break-in on my Sennheiser HD-800s headphones. Andrew produces good content as well, and I’m surprised to hear him tell his experience as fact rather than a strong belief/opinion. I’d be fantastic if Andrew were to visit PS Audio (after Covid-19 of course) to listen to the IRS V with both a broken in pair of M1200s and a pair that came completely unused from the production team. I’d be very curious to know if he’ll stick to his stance, or indeed whether Paul’s demo might make him reconsider. Either way: when I get my Stellar M700 or M1200 set, I’ll be sure to enjoy it from the first minute in the comfortable knowledge that it will get even better with a good amount of playing.
What about burning for microphones? I’ve heard that you need to run the for a couple of days straight otherwise it won’t get burned in. Different sources were saying that if you interrupt the process you need to start all over. Any input on that?
How long for burson v5i opamp to burn in? Sounds grainy after 20 hours.
when people burn in audio equipment to test the equipment after the equipment has become hot then the sound quality is good! but when equipment gets cold they suddenly have not so good sound! I have one
class-a amplifier that doesn't have good sound when it's cold!
so it's not just constant sound improvement we're talking about! If you put the amplifier away for 2 weeks then i think some of the sound quality after burn in is gone!
Burn in is good for testing the amplifier properly
I always do a little "burn'in" before jamming.
I burnin' wasn't real, I probably wouldn't listen to the music I listen to
🤘💀🤘
@Steely Dan 5000
🤘😁🤘
Thanks
If you can burn in equipment to get better sound then according science you also need to consider the contrary!
Do you mean it could sound worse once it has burned in? You could consider that if a HiFi manufacturer spends a long time designing a product and many listening hours and circuit tweaks the burn in will occur on that prototype during that time. Then the manufacturer produces the product with the same spec as that final burned-in prototype and it should sound the same once burned in too.
We should be able to measure burn in then. Take a brand new amp, run some measurements then one that has been "burned in". If the input/output looks identical, then it's a bunch of BS.
Great Paul thank you! My experience with the beautiful Ps Audio Stellar Phono preamplifier: At least 5 hours before you listen to it, at least 30 hours or more audio burn in until it sounds best! And don’t forget: also the cables need burning in!
I know this is not about cables but when I bought some AudioQuest interconnects the first week they sounded real harsh. Was about to return them but they settled down. My ears getting acclimated or burn in?
Do you burn in Sprouts? If so, how long?
Electronics either work or fail. Transistors are a like valves and do not change unless overheated. Capacitors and resistors do change over time but usually for the bad side of their values. Does your network router get faster after a week of burnin, how about that hard drive or ram? If you turn electronics on and it works then it will be the same until it fails.
I use Justice - Phantom pt. I & II
to burn in my equipment. It's good
for the equipment and the soul.
What phono preamp would you all recommend for a 1200GR and AT VM740ML Cartridge?
Put it this way .... Ever brought a pair of shoe's that feel like a nice fit and you buy them .... After wearing them for a while they feel better ... are more supple and easier on ya feet ..... That's what happens with audio electronics .... A bit of time to settle in
You can't compare shoes to electronics. The materials involved are very different. It's like saying a building performs better once you lived in it for a year.
If you think that's an apt comparison then maybe you should think about not playing your audio system too long because when someone walks for a long time his feet get tired.
@Fat Rat He was talking about burn in in electronics so in my facetious example it would be about the electronics getting tired.
Plastic Dan 5000 , Couldn't really give a fuck what you think ... Now back to your average music system Banjo boy ... 😧😧😧
I wonder if Andrew Robinson will comment on this video LOL