Actually burn in is present on Audeze headphones. Like for example when I first started using LCD-X I got that burning sensation in my neck, but after 100 hours or so passed my neck muscles got used to weight and the burn doesn't ruin the listening experience anymore. So take that DMS!
Audiophiles often fail to appreciate just how much our brains impact the sound of our headphones. It's funny watching people in this hobby stubbornly insist that the differences they're hearing have to actually be there, it can't possibly be in their head - for a hobby that's literally ALL about finding audio gear that most effectively fools our brains (the concept of soundstage and imaging, for example - the reality is and always was that we're strapping two small speakers to our ears, so any ability to hear sounds outside of that and localize them anywhere other than to the immediate left and right of our ear is an audio illusion!)
@@dgevert If this is all fact, you had to get your information from somewhere. Can you reference any type of test or evaluation that was done using real science, to support your claims, done on any piece of audio equipment ever made? I'd like to see the real science for myself. I'm not trying to insult you, but too many people just make stuff up because they think they're right. To be honest, I'm not an electrical engineer, but I do have a masters degree in psychology. "It's funny watching people in this hobby stubbornly insist that the differences they're hearing have to actually be there, it can't possibly be in their head - for a hobby that's literally ALL about finding audio gear that most effectively fools our brains (the concept of soundstage and imaging" For the last 30+ years, or so, I haven't been able to find a single piece of science to back such a statement up. If you don't have anything, that's fine. I'm not interested in having a long argument that goes in circles because someone is trying to win. But if you do have something that's based on real science, I'd love to see it.
One thing you'll always notice about when audiophile mystics talk about burn in, the change they admit to is alway, under all circumstances, positive. As in, it just conveniently resolves the peaks and dips at exactly the right places and exactly in the direction that is preferable with their head. Even if burn in genuinely did exist, the chance it would "fix" the issues you had with it is next to zero. Burn in is not sentient.
Yep. It almost sounds like getting used to the new sound by psychological adaptation, which is a very well-known and understood phenomenon. But naaah, it must be the magical "improvement" that happens on the hardware level, while staying completely undetectable through measuremenets - that makes waaay more sense (obviously, I'm being sarcastic). Some of the most ignorant and gullible people I have ever met were audiophiles.
Devil's advocate to that is= Not really? How manufacturer tune and design the sound of a gear it's always on a well worn model, there's little reason to tune on an always fresh out of the box sample.
@@MuhammadKharismawan please stop posting here. Everytime I see you, you are spouting unsubstantiated claims. This on isn't even relevant to the OPs comment.
@tednicholson9225 I don't even comment on DMS channel that often 😅 who the heck are you to kick me out 😗 I've been around since this channel is still named dms3tv
Burn in is a wild concept. Sometimes I feel like its just a way for the manufacturer to force a user to live with the headphone for at least a few days. You got to let your brain adjust to the new sound signature. I could put a headphone on one day and hate it. Then I go to sleep and wake up the next day and the headphone sounds amazing. My opinions on a headphone can change day to day just based on if I woke up on the right side of the bed or how my mood is.
@@anthonybertram1168 Nah, I have multiple headphones that I've had for years and sometimes I prefer the sound signature of one over the other. Seems to depend on how fatigued my ears are at that point. If I just woke up, I can handle something very bright, but in the evening I just want strong mids to vibe with.
Burning in headphones or speakers is something that salesmen at HiFi stereo shops claimed would help the speakers sound better in the 1970's. It was pushed because taking speakers back meant they had to give a full refund and could only sell the pair as used. So salesmen came up with, "They just need a little time to burn in and they will be fine." Of course none of it was true. They hoped that if you continued to listen to them, you would just get used to that sound.
Famed speaker designer Andrew Jones is mates with audiophile Steve Guttenberg and has done several interviews on Steve's Audiophiliac channell (note the spelling). Maybe four years ago Steve asked him about burn-in in loudspeakers. According to Andrew it is real but hugely overstated. In a nutshell, most speaker cones are made from a fibrous material covered in a resin, and there's no way to repeatedly stretch and compress that fibrous material without changing the material's condition over the years. However, when talking about woofers or mid-range sized speakers, the heat generated by the voice coil after only an hour's use can change the speakers acoustic properties by as much as 10dB. Of course, when the speaker cools afterwards it mostly goes back to what it was before but it's never 100%. So, the speaker's properties are far more affected by the change from going cold > warm > cold than anything else. It's a fascinating interview, people should check it out just to hear an actual expert explain what's really happening.
Finally some honesty and some actual evidence is presented by a well known youtuber. Brain burn in is real as well as pad wear, everything is nonsense in general but there might be fringe cases where its more noticeble. There's really no reason to discuss those.
My favorite type of burn-in? Cable burn-in, hands down. I take it very seriously, starting with Ethernet cables. These need a minimum of 18,000 hours to truly shine. The best part? It doesn’t even need to be music! I burn in my Ethernet cables with security cameras-yes, security cameras. After about two years of constant use, they’re spot on: perfect soundstage, gloriously warm tones, and pinpoint-accurate sound separation. Absolute perfection. Speaker cables, on the other hand, are a bit more peculiar. The ideal burn-in time is 2,000 hours, but here’s the catch: once you hit 20,000 hours, the cables start to degrade. At that point, you must run the signal backwards for another 20,000 hours to reset them before they’re usable again. It’s a delicate science. USB cables? A breeze compared to Ethernet. Just 600 hours of burn-in will do. And trust me, an unburned USB cable feeding a DAC is unlistenable-so harsh it’s like audio nails on a chalkboard. Then there’s Toslink. For optical cables, it’s a bit unconventional: just 400 hours of direct sunlight does the trick. The effect is similar to 600 hours of USB burn-in. Without this, a fresh Toslink cable isn’t even worth plugging in. And of course, none of this can be measured. This is the beauty of the audiophile hobby, you just have to trust me. It makes a difference and measurements mean nothing. PS: On a serious note, I like your content. Thanks for taking a scientific and pragmatic approach.
Pro audio tech with 47 years experience here. I'm going to let you all in on the grand secret of "burning in" audio gear. You're not burning in the equipment; you're giving yourself time to get used to what the stuff sounds like. You're burning in your own personal hearing apparatus, not the headphones, or speakers, or amplifier, or whatever.
Thanks for this! Way better than someone proclaiming the sound has changed after not listening to it for several days. If burn in was a real thing they would have burned it in before they shipped it.
Sound comparisons between different digital cables is one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen in any community. Almost as hilarious as "demagnetizing" CDs or painting their rims black to "improve" the sound. People don't understand (or don't want to) how digital audio works, and they just choose to believe whatever makes them feel better. "But I hear the difference" is the same kind of argument as "but horoscope works for me". Yes, it does, because you want it to and so you fool yourself into believing it does. Literally a religion.
@@samulhardif8331 I would not be surprised to see such a product, and we know that we will be told that the $20k cable burner is better than the $2000 too.
@@samulhardif8331 Oh god that Nordost cable burning machine actually exists which just makes me sad. I suppose making money from the stupid and ill-informed is big business.
Add Dacs/amps to the list. This "hobby" is not about people who love music but placebo driven consumerists. JDS Labs explained it very well about how dac amps chips are designed to sound the same while brands like Topping is trying their best to fool people and convince them how the more expensive one is better or the other one is warmer and whatnot. Hence why JDS only offer 1 dac/amp instead of entire line in 10 price ranges. One of the very few companies with morals, an actual hobbyist.
I'm sure the sound of the headphones changes after the first few hours of using them. 1. You just get used to the signature, and things that stood out, become easier to ignore, and things that were masked, you learn to discern more. 2. The pads become slightly compressed and start conforming to your head a little differently, they might reach their design shape. 3. A little bit of human slime penetrates into the cover cloth and provides a little bit of acoustic impedance, damping the peaks. I wonder whether effects 2 and 3 are significant and to what extent, could one rank them? By the way maybe impedance curve should be measured as well? It doesn't really make sense for headphones not having any crossover. On speaker drivers, this is actually a thing, and is the reason every speaker designer will burn in the driver playing a low frequency for just a couple hours to break it in, the changes are actually quite quick by the time the driver has stabilised into its long term behaviour. Interestingly, while TSP changes are numerically significant and quite consistently present, it doesn't actually result in a substantially different optimal tuning or a substantial ultimate response difference, like, you also have temperature to contend with which change the crossover tuning much more substantially, but still generally not audibly. But it's just done as a matter of good diligence. If the speakers are individually pair matched, they should also be burned in prior, else you're just doing something that takes effort and you don't want to make the system worse by doing that even if by a tiny amount, but in my opinion pair matching is a fairly unnecessary luxury, like you use vaguely quality parts, things come out fine and you just don't need to worry about it.
There are still people who buy expensive cables for the sound and people arguing about what the best SD card is for sound quality, this will never be put down... But we can just ignore these people I guess
No. Subjectivists who believe this sort of thing will never accept any kind of evidence-based argument that conflicts with their subjective experiences. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
The pad changes and wear are really important. I got the Sony MDR7506 based on your recommendation, and as acutely aware of the complaints folks had with the headphone (mainly the brightness). I bought the yaxi earpads you recommended swapping in, and while the frequency response shifted in a more pleasing direction at first, it was only after I had physically worn them in (in much less time than "burn in" or mentally getting used to them is expected to take") that their response matched your description of leaning more neutral. I'm a very happy owner of those headphones now, and plan on buying another with the new pads as a replacement whenever these kick the can.
So the burn-in effect on FR is negligible. Ok, what about other measurements? Transient, impedance, other more studies, that manufacturers are doing? May be some mechanical characteristics (suspension firmness, change of the resonance point of membrane)? I mean, yeah, what this study is telling us - it's great data point. Is it enough to convince die-hard burn-iners? Not so sure.
Dynamic Range, Transient Response, Distortion, Frequency Decay TEST? Idk about burnin but sound is not just frequency response as all the audiophiles claims.
The reason why I think burn-in is incorrect is that although there are people who say burn-in improves the sound, I rarely hear of anyone who says it makes the sound worse.
I mean, there are people who did the math on how many times a DD moves in just few seconds. If that's not enough for a "burn-in", i don't know what is. Even if it was real, it happens so fast the most wouldn't even realize. The few companies that recommend that is A) to appeal to the placebo driven idiots and B) 4:45 they just want people to let their ears get used to the sound. If you're coming from some hardcore V-shape, very exciting bass and treble and switch to something neutral, you're very likely to "hate it" out of the box because it's boring.
Very few companies mention "burn-in" at least in Chi-Fi IEM's. In anything, i've only seen it on couple of Penon sets (IEM's) and mostly applies to DD's. The only people who believe in that are the ones who think dacs/amps (except tube/r2r) sound different and cables alter the sound too - im with JDS Labs on that topic, match them and they all sound the same on the same track with the same head/earphones. I'd stick with the folks who did the math of how many times the driver moves just to produce 20k hz let alone play a whole song or god forbid 100h of playtime. 4:50 pretty much sums up how most of us feel about that. The only "burn-in" i believe in is brain burn-in aka getting used to the tuning as you said. Even if driver burn-in was a thing, it happens during the first few seconds of use anything past that is you trying to justify your purchase somehow.
Hmm, very interesting, great video (again!). My personal, subjective experience is, however, that it heavily depends on the device if burn changes anything or not. I own half a dozen of headphones from various brands, and with different price points, and I have listened to many others of the last two decades or so. The sound of almost all of them was the same on day 1 as on day 200. There is one exception, though, which is my beloved AKG K701. This headphone sounded great at the dealer, so that I bought it. Boy, was I disappointed when I had unboxed my own K701! The same music from the same sources sounded harsh, unbalanced and kind of weird. Totally different than in the shop. After about 40 hours things started to get better, and stabilised after about 120 hours. The sound I get from this headphone didn't change ever since, but during the first 120 hours of listening the sound changed remarkably. The K701 was, is and will be a relatively bright sounding, analytical headphone, but the intital harshness is completely gone, and I doubt that it was more me getting used to the K701 sound signature than the headphone going through some sort of transition known as burn in, although I acknowledge that psychology and getting used to a sound might play a role here. But given my positive impressions from trying a bunch of headphones at the dealer including the K701, and the totally different impressions I got from my brand new sample at home, and the fact that I did not experience anthing like that with any other headphone makes me think, that the effect of burn in may depend on the construction of the headphone to a degree.
My assumption has always been that "burn-in" is requested by companies more for reviewers to not do what Crin does and judge a headphone after 15 minutes of use (recall Crin's famous spoiled milk example). As you pointed out, you can sort of get used to most sound signatures after a while of listening to them and so a reviewer would be more likely to eventually come around to and favorably review more headphones after giving them more listening time. Reviewers who believe in burn-in I always just assumed stopped listening to the music that was giving them issues after the first few days and found some other tracks that sound more correct and attribute that to the drivers changing without realizing it. However, I can already foresee the responses to this "well you can't measure soundstage/detail etc on a graph so this proves nothing..." and the debate rages on.
Looking forward to the pad wear video. I used the pads my HD6xx came with for years and then finally decided to replace the pads. It's crazy how much of difference new vs worn pads can be. Way more of a difference than "burn in" lol
I am going to play devils advocate here. Frequency response alone does not tell the whole story. It would be interesting to see if you see any changes in a spectral decay after burn in. Also it may be worth checking dynamic range to see if the linearity changes at different volumes and if the behavior changes with burn in. My gut says that the changes may be inconsequential, but it would be more thorough and educational.
Next experiment, please add a control group - in this case, you should have taken one of the drivers and test and retested it without the 110 hours of breaking it.
I had mdr-m1 for 2 weeks before I was finally able to return them. I placed them and took them out of their packaging 5 times in total. I liked the sound so much but they were uncomfortable after like 30 minutes because of the small cups
my understanding of burn in, is entirely down to the cone/spider/etc materials (and not the voice coil/coils). some need it, some don't (way less these days). some how this carried over through the years to mean all drivers, regardless. most of the plastics used in 40-50mm headphone drivers is the same type, and thickness, on average. it's going to move the same way from start to nearly the fail point. most modern materials don't need it. older materials (way back) _did_ need it. however, we're at a point its irrelevant for the vast majority of people.
The burn-in happens in your brain. After 100 hours people become accustomed to the sound, so returns go way down if people wait until after the burn-in period.
I didn't realise people felt the frequencies changed volume with burn-in. I thought it was more of a slew-rate thing, at least that's how it is in guitar amp world. Either way it's probably just money isn't it.
If you want a real answer, then you really need to ask a manufacturer that recommends the product will sound different after a certain amount of use. And the vast majority of them do. For myself, I never understood why people make such a big deal over it. In the end, it means absolutely nothing. After 100 hours of use, the issue is resolved. Its only a few days of continuous use, so if you have a return policy, and most are for 2 to 4 weeks, you still have plenty of time to return the product if you don't like it.
i want to see, how well does EQing an IEM with a target signature, actually match the target signature? Say, make Chu 2 sound like Elyssian Annihalator. Does it actually?
Very interesting. I bet that you could get this published. You'd probably need a larger sample size to get sufficient statistical power and calculate the total variance and use that as a dependent variable in an analysis of variance, but I'm sure there are people out there like (Sean Olive or Durand Begault) who could advise you on that.
In order for it to be considered science, you have to follow the scientific method. In this case, its not even close. The first step is you need to have some type of observation that can't be explained with what we already know. We don't have that. Having an owners manual telling you 100 hours burn in is recommended, is not an observation. Without that, you can't have a test, and there's nothing to publish. That said, I'd love to see someone do a real test, but in this case, is it necessary? I say no. Regardless of what your position is, the issue resolves itself automatically. Its only 100 hours, and most return policies are a minimum of 2 weeks, so you'll still have plenty of time to return the product either way. After the 100 hours, it makes no difference. If you are going to take the time to test something, I would rather invest the time and money testing for something that remains constant, not something that goes away after a short period of time.
awesome video 👍👍👍in addition to my wallet being burned. my phone, keyboard, mouse, computer fan, usb, hdmi, eyeglasses, shoes lace all needs to be burn in as well. dont forget the tidal mqa that needs 1000 hour of burning in
Should do the test with some planars also. Never believed in burn-in, until i got my Audeze iSine 10s. The famous treble harshness was there when i first got them. ~1 hour on a table on the other side of the room, pink noise at moderate volume, the treble spike was completely gone after. They are now perfectly usable with a standard cable, and no EQ. Cannot remember who did it, but there was an article years ago in regards to subwoofers, where they did measure a fairly significant change in Q-factor after burn-in.
But, but, but... muh subjective experience!?!??!😱 Seriously though, I need to test this for piece of mind with M50x which I felt twice to go from unlistenable to M50x over night without any brain or pad wear in between.
So frequency response doesn't change. How about dYnAmIc response? I'd imaging if anything changes with the possible increase in compliance with use, it would be transient dynamic response.
Please consider to talk about sennheiser hd 800(silver) pads. After microfiber pads get old and start to flake, their sound change dramaticly. (in a good way) Also if i remember correct, hd 600 get similar warm sound to hd 650 with long used pads. Thanks, you do great!
Can you find a way to test this on loudspeakers? I used to work in a hifi store and we always found that speakers out of the box sounded off but only took about 10 minutes to come right. It makes some sense that they would be affected a non zero amount from having been dead still for months / years since manufacture but it didn't take 100 hours to fix.
My main hobby is mechanical keyboards and there's a similar fallacy of switches "breaking in" over thousands of key presses. Unlike headphone drivers keyboard switches actually will subtly change over time due to friction between the plastics, loss of lubricant, etc... and yet it's something a lot of enthusiasts still present as something desirable, despite objectively being degradation. This burn-in nonsense is a cross-hobby meme that somehow people will continue to fall for no matter how often they're proven wrong.
Is burn in real? Yes it's measurable with objective scientific data. Can you hear a difference? Debatable One thing so few audiophiles like to admit is we all have different hearing. I have extremely discerning hearing between about 52hz and 7.4Khz. but on either side of that pass-band I'm not deaf at all but my ears just aren't as sensitive to change. It's also why I'm still waiting for ANY audio reviewer to have a hearing test done and post the results because that information plays a huge part in their reviews.
I had hearing test done a few years ago. The setup was some crappy looking semi-open headphones you sit in a seemingly normal room and they play you beep sounds that get gradually louder at each frequency, you hear a beep, you press the button. Two problems, the first signal is at the level very similar to that of room noise, and the other that the test starts at 100Hz and ends at 10KHz. So the test graph comes out with 0dB at the top and then minus dB values further down for every bit of hearing loss compared to reference. Mine was completely on the 0dB line throughout. I wasn't guessing, i haven't cheated the test, i actually heard each signal. I know my hearing is substantially better than that of my peers, and the audiologist made the eyes the size of a small planet when printing out the test, but i still don't feel like this test is capable of discerning so-called "audiophile" hearing since i'm not one of them and most of the time, when checking minute differences between complex sounds, i don't know whether i'm really hearing things or imagining things. Like that 0dB line has to be what, 30dBish in absolute terms, that's bloody pathetic. Still you would hope that reviewers would pass a hearing test even as crude as this. With some of the gear they recommend, i have a feeling many would fail.
So I wonder how this works with planar drivers. I thought burn in was all bs, my hd560s sounded wider out of the box than my edition XS did and it disappointed me. But after about a year of using the edition XS pretty much exclusively, the sound stage was much wider on the hifiman than it was on the 560s. I bought some Aryas also, and the edition XS is just about as wide as that, maybe a little narrower. Way wider than I remember them being at the start especially compared to other ones
How about tip wear on IEMs? Of course foam is going to degrade, but how about silicon tips? Would stock tips wear faster than say TRI Clarion tips due to density or quality of silicon?
I don't think burn in is necessary for headphones as the materials in the driver are already pretty light and thin... but I don't think it is fair to test only the frequency response. I still don't understand why the FR is the be-all end-all when it comes to tests when we know other factors are important, like how quickly can the driver start moving and stop moving (which again, is not as bad in a headphone as it is in a speaker, but there is still mass in this tiny drivers). At least an impulse response would have been nice to see, even if just to show that there is barely any change (if that is the case)
“how quickly can the driver start moving and stop moving” is represented by the frequency response. if FR says it can produce 20khz, that means it can move at 20khz.
my kz zs10 pro were terrible when i got them, sounded like a tin garbage can being banged with massive treble. now they sound much softer and warmer and much closer to my beyerdynamic tygrs when it comes to overall sound quality.
i remember u made similar video a year or more ago about burn in for planar headphones. and there burn in was somewhat visible. maybe im messing smth up i dont know.
Now it's like changing a color. You're really good at changing it, but he says that the human eye can't see the difference. It's there, but you can't notice it. There's no point in this. The same thing applies to gold wire, and even if you make a difference, your ears will get used to it and it will disappear. There are things that are not there. Only in this hobby, but in every field Just habits and things that have become famous and doing them is a habit, even if it is proven that they are not real on paper or even in numbers. People will continue to do them or advise them, or even to do them. Even if you tell them that your headphones are bad, they will tell you to just burn them.
I think one thing that can’t really be measured and I’m going to use a horrible analogy. Is your ears adjusting. If you have been daily driving let’s say Apple Air Pods pros and you buy your first headphones. Your ears are accustomed to the Air Pods Pro and it might take some time to get used to your pair of headphones. Here comes the horrible analogy. Let’s say you out a horrible fart. Stinks to all hell. Within a few minutes or less you don’t smell it anymore. But your (roommate, significant other, co worker etc) walks in the room they are going to be like “what is that horrible smell) Granted our ears and nose are two different things but I do fine my ears get used to hearing something a certain way and it does take some time to adjust. And I know you briefly mentioned this but to me that phenomenon of getting comfortable with a headphone is “burn in”
the cable does change the sound but mostly not in its structure but in its length, a 1.5m iem cable vs 0.5m iem cable will have the detail change significantly and very easy to recognize
sick burn-in
ol mate senny
🎉
LITERALLY!
Lol
Senny is a dms fangirl
I see the problem: You didn't burn-in the coupler first.
Ah! That must be it!
I like the cut of your jib! I really enjoy your closing song on your reviews.
Are you sure your 4.4mm connector is burned it. Those new plating requires at least 20 hours of pink and 10 hours of white noise
HAHAHAHAH 🥲
Actually burn in is present on Audeze headphones. Like for example when I first started using LCD-X I got that burning sensation in my neck, but after 100 hours or so passed my neck muscles got used to weight and the burn doesn't ruin the listening experience anymore. So take that DMS!
KEK
Mental burn in is a real concept.
Audiophiles often fail to appreciate just how much our brains impact the sound of our headphones. It's funny watching people in this hobby stubbornly insist that the differences they're hearing have to actually be there, it can't possibly be in their head - for a hobby that's literally ALL about finding audio gear that most effectively fools our brains (the concept of soundstage and imaging, for example - the reality is and always was that we're strapping two small speakers to our ears, so any ability to hear sounds outside of that and localize them anywhere other than to the immediate left and right of our ear is an audio illusion!)
@@dgevertamazing comment
@@hyper_92 fully agree, too!
Real concept, but medically incorrect. There is no brain burn in, just convincing yourself.
@@dgevert If this is all fact, you had to get your information from somewhere. Can you reference any type of test or evaluation that was done using real science, to support your claims, done on any piece of audio equipment ever made? I'd like to see the real science for myself. I'm not trying to insult you, but too many people just make stuff up because they think they're right. To be honest, I'm not an electrical engineer, but I do have a masters degree in psychology.
"It's funny watching people in this hobby stubbornly insist that the differences they're hearing have to actually be there, it can't possibly be in their head - for a hobby that's literally ALL about finding audio gear that most effectively fools our brains (the concept of soundstage and imaging"
For the last 30+ years, or so, I haven't been able to find a single piece of science to back such a statement up. If you don't have anything, that's fine. I'm not interested in having a long argument that goes in circles because someone is trying to win. But if you do have something that's based on real science, I'd love to see it.
One thing you'll always notice about when audiophile mystics talk about burn in, the change they admit to is alway, under all circumstances, positive. As in, it just conveniently resolves the peaks and dips at exactly the right places and exactly in the direction that is preferable with their head. Even if burn in genuinely did exist, the chance it would "fix" the issues you had with it is next to zero. Burn in is not sentient.
Yep. It almost sounds like getting used to the new sound by psychological adaptation, which is a very well-known and understood phenomenon. But naaah, it must be the magical "improvement" that happens on the hardware level, while staying completely undetectable through measuremenets - that makes waaay more sense (obviously, I'm being sarcastic). Some of the most ignorant and gullible people I have ever met were audiophiles.
Devil's advocate to that is= Not really? How manufacturer tune and design the sound of a gear it's always on a well worn model, there's little reason to tune on an always fresh out of the box sample.
What is this? The audiophile version of gaslighting? Those ice-picky highs you were hearing aren't there or you just got used to them.
@@MuhammadKharismawan please stop posting here. Everytime I see you, you are spouting unsubstantiated claims. This on isn't even relevant to the OPs comment.
@tednicholson9225 I don't even comment on DMS channel that often 😅 who the heck are you to kick me out 😗 I've been around since this channel is still named dms3tv
Burn in is a wild concept. Sometimes I feel like its just a way for the manufacturer to force a user to live with the headphone for at least a few days. You got to let your brain adjust to the new sound signature. I could put a headphone on one day and hate it. Then I go to sleep and wake up the next day and the headphone sounds amazing. My opinions on a headphone can change day to day just based on if I woke up on the right side of the bed or how my mood is.
My hearing is way more sensitive in the morning. How about yours?
@@patrickrkruger Yup, almost like ear fatigue happens during the course of the day.
Placebo is a hell of a drug
@@anthonybertram1168 Nah, I have multiple headphones that I've had for years and sometimes I prefer the sound signature of one over the other. Seems to depend on how fatigued my ears are at that point. If I just woke up, I can handle something very bright, but in the evening I just want strong mids to vibe with.
Burning in headphones or speakers is something that salesmen at HiFi stereo shops claimed would help the speakers sound better in the 1970's. It was pushed because taking speakers back meant they had to give a full refund and could only sell the pair as used. So salesmen came up with, "They just need a little time to burn in and they will be fine." Of course none of it was true. They hoped that if you continued to listen to them, you would just get used to that sound.
Famed speaker designer Andrew Jones is mates with audiophile Steve Guttenberg and has done several interviews on Steve's Audiophiliac channell (note the spelling). Maybe four years ago Steve asked him about burn-in in loudspeakers. According to Andrew it is real but hugely overstated. In a nutshell, most speaker cones are made from a fibrous material covered in a resin, and there's no way to repeatedly stretch and compress that fibrous material without changing the material's condition over the years. However, when talking about woofers or mid-range sized speakers, the heat generated by the voice coil after only an hour's use can change the speakers acoustic properties by as much as 10dB. Of course, when the speaker cools afterwards it mostly goes back to what it was before but it's never 100%. So, the speaker's properties are far more affected by the change from going cold > warm > cold than anything else. It's a fascinating interview, people should check it out just to hear an actual expert explain what's really happening.
Audio Snake Oil Law #4: obligatory burn in period = return period + 1 hour
Finally some honesty and some actual evidence is presented by a well known youtuber.
Brain burn in is real as well as pad wear, everything is nonsense in general but there might be fringe cases where its more noticeble. There's really no reason to discuss those.
My favorite type of burn-in? Cable burn-in, hands down. I take it very seriously, starting with Ethernet cables. These need a minimum of 18,000 hours to truly shine. The best part? It doesn’t even need to be music! I burn in my Ethernet cables with security cameras-yes, security cameras. After about two years of constant use, they’re spot on: perfect soundstage, gloriously warm tones, and pinpoint-accurate sound separation. Absolute perfection.
Speaker cables, on the other hand, are a bit more peculiar. The ideal burn-in time is 2,000 hours, but here’s the catch: once you hit 20,000 hours, the cables start to degrade. At that point, you must run the signal backwards for another 20,000 hours to reset them before they’re usable again. It’s a delicate science.
USB cables? A breeze compared to Ethernet. Just 600 hours of burn-in will do. And trust me, an unburned USB cable feeding a DAC is unlistenable-so harsh it’s like audio nails on a chalkboard.
Then there’s Toslink. For optical cables, it’s a bit unconventional: just 400 hours of direct sunlight does the trick. The effect is similar to 600 hours of USB burn-in. Without this, a fresh Toslink cable isn’t even worth plugging in.
And of course, none of this can be measured. This is the beauty of the audiophile hobby, you just have to trust me. It makes a difference and measurements mean nothing.
PS: On a serious note, I like your content. Thanks for taking a scientific and pragmatic approach.
Do I have to burn in my wifi and bluetooth adapters too?
@@timid_noob sometimes you have to burn in the air inside a room.
BURN IN THE COSMOS. THE UNIVERSE. THE FABRIC OF TIME AND SPACE. BURN IT ALL (in).
@@maxcardif9879 good plan, imagine how amazing Bluetooth could sound then? How do we get started?
You nailed another hi-fi fallacy!
The Omega box is a nice touch.
I remember Tyll's Q701 burn-in test showing a bigger difference from the temperature changes through the day, than any actual burn-in
Pro audio tech with 47 years experience here. I'm going to let you all in on the grand secret of "burning in" audio gear. You're not burning in the equipment; you're giving yourself time to get used to what the stuff sounds like. You're burning in your own personal hearing apparatus, not the headphones, or speakers, or amplifier, or whatever.
Thanks for this! Way better than someone proclaiming the sound has changed after not listening to it for several days. If burn in was a real thing they would have burned it in before they shipped it.
Burn-in, 600+ USB cables, network filters, … this community is so unreliable!
Thank you for bringing some sanity here
BRING IN THE CABLE BURNER
Sound comparisons between different digital cables is one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen in any community. Almost as hilarious as "demagnetizing" CDs or painting their rims black to "improve" the sound. People don't understand (or don't want to) how digital audio works, and they just choose to believe whatever makes them feel better. "But I hear the difference" is the same kind of argument as "but horoscope works for me". Yes, it does, because you want it to and so you fool yourself into believing it does. Literally a religion.
@@samulhardif8331 I would not be surprised to see such a product, and we know that we will be told that the $20k cable burner is better than the $2000 too.
@@samulhardif8331 Oh god that Nordost cable burning machine actually exists which just makes me sad. I suppose making money from the stupid and ill-informed is big business.
Add Dacs/amps to the list. This "hobby" is not about people who love music but placebo driven consumerists.
JDS Labs explained it very well about how dac amps chips are designed to sound the same while brands like Topping is trying their best to fool people and convince them how the more expensive one is better or the other one is warmer and whatnot. Hence why JDS only offer 1 dac/amp instead of entire line in 10 price ranges. One of the very few companies with morals, an actual hobbyist.
Maybe the burn in was the friends we made along the way
I want to see brain burn-in next, thanks
Nice. Pull a headphone/iems you don't like and listen to them for a week - done.
Thank you for confirming what science has been saying for years. People may get upset but I applaud your courage and honesty. 👋👋 Great Video!!
I'm sure the sound of the headphones changes after the first few hours of using them.
1. You just get used to the signature, and things that stood out, become easier to ignore, and things that were masked, you learn to discern more.
2. The pads become slightly compressed and start conforming to your head a little differently, they might reach their design shape.
3. A little bit of human slime penetrates into the cover cloth and provides a little bit of acoustic impedance, damping the peaks.
I wonder whether effects 2 and 3 are significant and to what extent, could one rank them?
By the way maybe impedance curve should be measured as well? It doesn't really make sense for headphones not having any crossover. On speaker drivers, this is actually a thing, and is the reason every speaker designer will burn in the driver playing a low frequency for just a couple hours to break it in, the changes are actually quite quick by the time the driver has stabilised into its long term behaviour. Interestingly, while TSP changes are numerically significant and quite consistently present, it doesn't actually result in a substantially different optimal tuning or a substantial ultimate response difference, like, you also have temperature to contend with which change the crossover tuning much more substantially, but still generally not audibly. But it's just done as a matter of good diligence. If the speakers are individually pair matched, they should also be burned in prior, else you're just doing something that takes effort and you don't want to make the system worse by doing that even if by a tiny amount, but in my opinion pair matching is a fairly unnecessary luxury, like you use vaguely quality parts, things come out fine and you just don't need to worry about it.
I love this. Thank you for finally providing a conclusion to this “argument” that is basically as objective possible.
Can we put this to rest now?
There are still people who buy expensive cables for the sound and people arguing about what the best SD card is for sound quality, this will never be put down... But we can just ignore these people I guess
No. Subjectivists who believe this sort of thing will never accept any kind of evidence-based argument that conflicts with their subjective experiences. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
@@miki890098 on head-fi there are people that insist that changing the device language on a DAP changes the sound.
Hopefully with this video /r/headphones will like you now. Next do "cables don't matter" and they'll make you a mod.
The pad changes and wear are really important. I got the Sony MDR7506 based on your recommendation, and as acutely aware of the complaints folks had with the headphone (mainly the brightness). I bought the yaxi earpads you recommended swapping in, and while the frequency response shifted in a more pleasing direction at first, it was only after I had physically worn them in (in much less time than "burn in" or mentally getting used to them is expected to take") that their response matched your description of leaning more neutral. I'm a very happy owner of those headphones now, and plan on buying another with the new pads as a replacement whenever these kick the can.
So the burn-in effect on FR is negligible. Ok, what about other measurements? Transient, impedance, other more studies, that manufacturers are doing? May be some mechanical characteristics (suspension firmness, change of the resonance point of membrane)?
I mean, yeah, what this study is telling us - it's great data point. Is it enough to convince die-hard burn-iners? Not so sure.
They are all products of amplitude response in a minumum phase device like headphones inherently are.
Watch resolves video on what audio quilty is on the headphone show channel. That will explain it better.
Dynamic Range, Transient Response, Distortion, Frequency Decay TEST? Idk about burnin but sound is not just frequency response as all the audiophiles claims.
THD zero change from ambient. Other than that it's minimum phase so the rest isn't applicable.
The reason why I think burn-in is incorrect is that although there are people who say burn-in improves the sound, I rarely hear of anyone who says it makes the sound worse.
Expectation bias at it's finest
@@CammyFi Based
If burn in made a significnt difference, the driver manufacturer would do it themselves at the factory.
Some do.
I mean, there are people who did the math on how many times a DD moves in just few seconds. If that's not enough for a "burn-in", i don't know what is. Even if it was real, it happens so fast the most wouldn't even realize. The few companies that recommend that is A) to appeal to the placebo driven idiots and B) 4:45 they just want people to let their ears get used to the sound. If you're coming from some hardcore V-shape, very exciting bass and treble and switch to something neutral, you're very likely to "hate it" out of the box because it's boring.
This is great! I was always skeptical about the claims manufacturers and RUclipsrs made about burn-in so it's good to see actual real results.
Peerless, Ole Wolff and B&K all from DK - makes me proud to be an audio engineer from there
Very few companies mention "burn-in" at least in Chi-Fi IEM's. In anything, i've only seen it on couple of Penon sets (IEM's) and mostly applies to DD's. The only people who believe in that are the ones who think dacs/amps (except tube/r2r) sound different and cables alter the sound too - im with JDS Labs on that topic, match them and they all sound the same on the same track with the same head/earphones.
I'd stick with the folks who did the math of how many times the driver moves just to produce 20k hz let alone play a whole song or god forbid 100h of playtime. 4:50 pretty much sums up how most of us feel about that. The only "burn-in" i believe in is brain burn-in aka getting used to the tuning as you said. Even if driver burn-in was a thing, it happens during the first few seconds of use anything past that is you trying to justify your purchase somehow.
Hmm, very interesting, great video (again!). My personal, subjective experience is, however, that it heavily depends on the device if burn changes anything or not. I own half a dozen of headphones from various brands, and with different price points, and I have listened to many others of the last two decades or so. The sound of almost all of them was the same on day 1 as on day 200. There is one exception, though, which is my beloved AKG K701. This headphone sounded great at the dealer, so that I bought it. Boy, was I disappointed when I had unboxed my own K701! The same music from the same sources sounded harsh, unbalanced and kind of weird. Totally different than in the shop. After about 40 hours things started to get better, and stabilised after about 120 hours. The sound I get from this headphone didn't change ever since, but during the first 120 hours of listening the sound changed remarkably. The K701 was, is and will be a relatively bright sounding, analytical headphone, but the intital harshness is completely gone, and I doubt that it was more me getting used to the K701 sound signature than the headphone going through some sort of transition known as burn in, although I acknowledge that psychology and getting used to a sound might play a role here. But given my positive impressions from trying a bunch of headphones at the dealer including the K701, and the totally different impressions I got from my brand new sample at home, and the fact that I did not experience anthing like that with any other headphone makes me think, that the effect of burn in may depend on the construction of the headphone to a degree.
A better test would be, sponsored content saying you should burn in vs non-sponsored content saying you should not
My assumption has always been that "burn-in" is requested by companies more for reviewers to not do what Crin does and judge a headphone after 15 minutes of use (recall Crin's famous spoiled milk example). As you pointed out, you can sort of get used to most sound signatures after a while of listening to them and so a reviewer would be more likely to eventually come around to and favorably review more headphones after giving them more listening time. Reviewers who believe in burn-in I always just assumed stopped listening to the music that was giving them issues after the first few days and found some other tracks that sound more correct and attribute that to the drivers changing without realizing it. However, I can already foresee the responses to this "well you can't measure soundstage/detail etc on a graph so this proves nothing..." and the debate rages on.
Looking forward to the pad wear video. I used the pads my HD6xx came with for years and then finally decided to replace the pads. It's crazy how much of difference new vs worn pads can be. Way more of a difference than "burn in" lol
The real burn in were friends we met along the way
I am going to play devils advocate here.
Frequency response alone does not tell the whole story. It would be interesting to see if you see any changes in a spectral decay after burn in. Also it may be worth checking dynamic range to see if the linearity changes at different volumes and if the behavior changes with burn in. My gut says that the changes may be inconsequential, but it would be more thorough and educational.
Next experiment, please add a control group - in this case, you should have taken one of the drivers and test and retested it without the 110 hours of breaking it.
I found someone burn-in cable.
I had mdr-m1 for 2 weeks before I was finally able to return them. I placed them and took them out of their packaging 5 times in total. I liked the sound so much but they were uncomfortable after like 30 minutes because of the small cups
my understanding of burn in, is entirely down to the cone/spider/etc materials (and not the voice coil/coils). some need it, some don't (way less these days). some how this carried over through the years to mean all drivers, regardless.
most of the plastics used in 40-50mm headphone drivers is the same type, and thickness, on average. it's going to move the same way from start to nearly the fail point. most modern materials don't need it. older materials (way back) _did_ need it. however, we're at a point its irrelevant for the vast majority of people.
The burn-in happens in your brain. After 100 hours people become accustomed to the sound, so returns go way down if people wait until after the burn-in period.
I didn't realise people felt the frequencies changed volume with burn-in. I thought it was more of a slew-rate thing, at least that's how it is in guitar amp world. Either way it's probably just money isn't it.
If you want a real answer, then you really need to ask a manufacturer that recommends the product will sound different after a certain amount of use. And the vast majority of them do. For myself, I never understood why people make such a big deal over it. In the end, it means absolutely nothing. After 100 hours of use, the issue is resolved. Its only a few days of continuous use, so if you have a return policy, and most are for 2 to 4 weeks, you still have plenty of time to return the product if you don't like it.
@052RC ah so you're just a consumerist d3gn. Got it
I was waiting for "peace" at the end and it never came
i want to see, how well does EQing an IEM with a target signature, actually match the target signature? Say, make Chu 2 sound like Elyssian Annihalator. Does it actually?
Very interesting. I bet that you could get this published. You'd probably need a larger sample size to get sufficient statistical power and calculate the total variance and use that as a dependent variable in an analysis of variance, but I'm sure there are people out there like (Sean Olive or Durand Begault) who could advise you on that.
In order for it to be considered science, you have to follow the scientific method. In this case, its not even close. The first step is you need to have some type of observation that can't be explained with what we already know. We don't have that. Having an owners manual telling you 100 hours burn in is recommended, is not an observation. Without that, you can't have a test, and there's nothing to publish. That said, I'd love to see someone do a real test, but in this case, is it necessary? I say no. Regardless of what your position is, the issue resolves itself automatically. Its only 100 hours, and most return policies are a minimum of 2 weeks, so you'll still have plenty of time to return the product either way. After the 100 hours, it makes no difference. If you are going to take the time to test something, I would rather invest the time and money testing for something that remains constant, not something that goes away after a short period of time.
I spy a CW Sealander! Nice watch. It’s so funny seeing how many hobbies overlap in the nerd space lol
I've always thought of the burn-in as something more for human ears. You get used to it.
Thanks for research! I knew this is a bulls**t!
I always knew it was bollocks. Now everyone else does too. Cool!
I hear the sweet sounds of feathers being rustled. 😂
Extremely off-topic comment telling you how gorgeous that green Christopher Ward is.
Next up tackle cable differences! Particularly with IEMs.
I’ve always thought that if a headphone driver’s sound changes noticeably over time with use, it likely indicates an issue with the driver itself
awesome video 👍👍👍in addition to my wallet being burned. my phone, keyboard, mouse, computer fan, usb, hdmi, eyeglasses, shoes lace all needs to be burn in as well. dont forget the tidal mqa that needs 1000 hour of burning in
SCIENCE! Job done.
that's why when i buy stuff i just listen to it 😁
why is the treble on the burn in different? red and blue line ? but then on the green its the same ?
Should do the test with some planars also. Never believed in burn-in, until i got my Audeze iSine 10s. The famous treble harshness was there when i first got them. ~1 hour on a table on the other side of the room, pink noise at moderate volume, the treble spike was completely gone after. They are now perfectly usable with a standard cable, and no EQ. Cannot remember who did it, but there was an article years ago in regards to subwoofers, where they did measure a fairly significant change in Q-factor after burn-in.
Please do a 'cables sounding different' video next.
But, but, but... muh subjective experience!?!??!😱
Seriously though, I need to test this for piece of mind with M50x which I felt twice to go from unlistenable to M50x over night without any brain or pad wear in between.
I would love to see how other types of drivers fare with this test 🤔
So frequency response doesn't change. How about dYnAmIc response? I'd imaging if anything changes with the possible increase in compliance with use, it would be transient dynamic response.
Did no one watch resolves video on the main channel? Do you even know DMS is on the headphone show?
Please consider to talk about sennheiser hd 800(silver) pads. After microfiber pads get old and start to flake, their sound change dramaticly. (in a good way) Also if i remember correct, hd 600 get similar warm sound to hd 650 with long used pads. Thanks, you do great!
Can you find a way to test this on loudspeakers? I used to work in a hifi store and we always found that speakers out of the box sounded off but only took about 10 minutes to come right. It makes some sense that they would be affected a non zero amount from having been dead still for months / years since manufacture but it didn't take 100 hours to fix.
I've only experienced one set of cams that changed sound, the rest.... nope
I wonder if the effect is the same across driver types (planar, EST, etc.)?
My main hobby is mechanical keyboards and there's a similar fallacy of switches "breaking in" over thousands of key presses. Unlike headphone drivers keyboard switches actually will subtly change over time due to friction between the plastics, loss of lubricant, etc... and yet it's something a lot of enthusiasts still present as something desirable, despite objectively being degradation. This burn-in nonsense is a cross-hobby meme that somehow people will continue to fall for no matter how often they're proven wrong.
until you've experienced it...
We all know zeos and DMS are friends. So go tell your friend that he is majorly wrong😂
Is burn in real? Yes it's measurable with objective scientific data.
Can you hear a difference? Debatable
One thing so few audiophiles like to admit is we all have different hearing. I have extremely discerning hearing between about 52hz and 7.4Khz. but on either side of that pass-band I'm not deaf at all but my ears just aren't as sensitive to change.
It's also why I'm still waiting for ANY audio reviewer to have a hearing test done and post the results because that information plays a huge part in their reviews.
I had hearing test done a few years ago. The setup was some crappy looking semi-open headphones you sit in a seemingly normal room and they play you beep sounds that get gradually louder at each frequency, you hear a beep, you press the button.
Two problems, the first signal is at the level very similar to that of room noise, and the other that the test starts at 100Hz and ends at 10KHz.
So the test graph comes out with 0dB at the top and then minus dB values further down for every bit of hearing loss compared to reference. Mine was completely on the 0dB line throughout. I wasn't guessing, i haven't cheated the test, i actually heard each signal.
I know my hearing is substantially better than that of my peers, and the audiologist made the eyes the size of a small planet when printing out the test, but i still don't feel like this test is capable of discerning so-called "audiophile" hearing since i'm not one of them and most of the time, when checking minute differences between complex sounds, i don't know whether i'm really hearing things or imagining things. Like that 0dB line has to be what, 30dBish in absolute terms, that's bloody pathetic.
Still you would hope that reviewers would pass a hearing test even as crude as this. With some of the gear they recommend, i have a feeling many would fail.
So I wonder how this works with planar drivers. I thought burn in was all bs, my hd560s sounded wider out of the box than my edition XS did and it disappointed me. But after about a year of using the edition XS pretty much exclusively, the sound stage was much wider on the hifiman than it was on the 560s. I bought some Aryas also, and the edition XS is just about as wide as that, maybe a little narrower. Way wider than I remember them being at the start especially compared to other ones
it's burning into your head, bro.. like psychologically :)
How about tip wear on IEMs? Of course foam is going to degrade, but how about silicon tips? Would stock tips wear faster than say TRI Clarion tips due to density or quality of silicon?
This would be interesting with Planar drivers.
If you know statistics you know it is not a big enough sample to call this conclusive, but interesting experiment I would say.
Burn-in is you just getting used to the headphones lol.
^this
I don't think burn in is necessary for headphones as the materials in the driver are already pretty light and thin... but I don't think it is fair to test only the frequency response. I still don't understand why the FR is the be-all end-all when it comes to tests when we know other factors are important, like how quickly can the driver start moving and stop moving (which again, is not as bad in a headphone as it is in a speaker, but there is still mass in this tiny drivers). At least an impulse response would have been nice to see, even if just to show that there is barely any change (if that is the case)
“how quickly can the driver start moving and stop moving” is represented by the frequency response. if FR says it can produce 20khz, that means it can move at 20khz.
Fun fact! For minimum phase cases impulse response is just frequency response visualized differently.
burn-in is dead, long live wear-in
my kz zs10 pro were terrible when i got them, sounded like a tin garbage can being banged with massive treble. now they sound much softer and warmer and much closer to my beyerdynamic tygrs when it comes to overall sound quality.
DMS can you tell me where can I get a pair of 50 millimeters drivers. I need to replace my Demon drivers that went bad.
Cant wait for 1more to delete their burn-in app
Imo, its just the brain burn in
i remember u made similar video a year or more ago about burn in for planar headphones. and there burn in was somewhat visible. maybe im messing smth up i dont know.
That was with pad deformation.
@Shenkle-qx5bu aa, ok👍🙏
Yeah it was just pads
good audio mythbusting , thank you. what about blind testing different dacs on the same iem/headphone ?
Watch the goldensounds video on the headphone show on "proof that DACs can make a difference."
@@williamsteven5613 i saw this one on dac filter differences but i want normal people to take the abx test not a golden ear :)
@amanieux fair enough
Finally, thank you soooooooo much.
Can you test planar drivers i am really curious
Everyone tag Zeos lol
perhaps burn-in was more relevant with cans from an older era.
Now it's like changing a color. You're really good at changing it, but he says that the human eye can't see the difference. It's there, but you can't notice it. There's no point in this. The same thing applies to gold wire, and even if you make a difference, your ears will get used to it and it will disappear. There are things that are not there. Only in this hobby, but in every field Just habits and things that have become famous and doing them is a habit, even if it is proven that they are not real on paper or even in numbers. People will continue to do them or advise them, or even to do them. Even if you tell them that your headphones are bad, they will tell you to just burn them.
I think one thing that can’t really be measured and I’m going to use a horrible analogy.
Is your ears adjusting. If you have been daily driving let’s say Apple Air Pods pros and you buy your first headphones. Your ears are accustomed to the Air Pods Pro and it might take some time to get used to your pair of headphones.
Here comes the horrible analogy. Let’s say you out a horrible fart. Stinks to all hell. Within a few minutes or less you don’t smell it anymore. But your (roommate, significant other, co worker etc) walks in the room they are going to be like “what is that horrible smell)
Granted our ears and nose are two different things but I do fine my ears get used to hearing something a certain way and it does take some time to adjust.
And I know you briefly mentioned this but to me that phenomenon of getting comfortable with a headphone is “burn in”
science!
How dare you!
ERIS is an exception. Right?
I was just thinking same.. Z said burn in was needed to get ERIS sounding best
thank you!
Be careful with the religious extremists!
Do a test if headphones cable change the sound please
It doesn't
the cable does change the sound but mostly not in its structure but in its length, a 1.5m iem cable vs 0.5m iem cable will have the detail change significantly and very easy to recognize
To me , burn in is just your head getting used to the sound profile.
But doesn't that kinda assume you only have like 1 set of headphones? Do the signatures of 20+ headphones/iems just get burned into your brain then?
@@elasmojones yes, how small is the capacity of y0ur brain? What a self report. Lmao
this is an awesome video
Great job
Shocking!