Burning in Headphones ? WTF ?

[janengelbrecht]

If someone has gone to great efforts to make a piece of art

Not sure who is the "artist" here. The recording engineer is probably the lowest of the artistic totem pole and I don't think most people give a rear-end about how he intended the music to sound.

i like to experience it the intended way

I hope not so many people are as submissive to the "artist" (aka recording engineers).

This sounds for me as it is prefereable to have equipment that is adding to the sound in some way ? personally i prefer neutral sound...whats on the media I will hear...nothing more og less..again its a personal preference

[Lightages]

Are you sure that this effect doesn't exist - If I felt passionately about it I would test if a speaker's natural resonance drops a little during the initial few hours of use. I expect this is possible due to material in the cone's suspension softening with repeated motion.

It would be possible to measure if this actually occurs by tracking the speakers natural resonance - you could do this with active testing, or maybe by analysis of the signal generated if you 'ping' the speaker cone in some repeatable way - a barleycorn from 1m perhaps?

However, the effect is most likely minimal.

I have already conceded earlier that there is a break in effect for speaker drivers.  Speakers can have a break in period if they are of a certain design.

[n45048]

This sounds for me as it is prefereable to have equipment that is adding to the sound in some way ? personally i prefer neutral sound...whats on the media I will hear...nothing more og less..again its a personal preference

All speakers will "colour" the sound in some way. Monitors (speakers designed specifically for audio production and studios) produce a very flat frequency response. I actually use monitors for my general listening and quite enjoy the sound they produce. I remember listening to some of my favourite songs and hearing little things which I hadn't previously picked up on. Most are also pre-amped and accept balanced audio via TRS and/or XLR jacks.

[AndyC_772]

Not sure who is the "artist" here. The recording engineer is probably the lowest of the artistic totem pole and I don't think most people give a rear-end about how he intended the music to sound.

I hope it's rather the opposite. Far too many recordings are completely ruined at source by the ongoing 'loudness war', and the last thing I want is to experience the sound prescribed by the idiot controlling compression and recording level.

The less influence that person can be made to have on the sound in my lounge, the better. If that means my system needs to have non-linearities or a modified frequency response to compensate, or at least to tend to mask the most objectionable artefacts, then that's fine with me.

[Yago]

I'd be careful of assuming the claims of a flatter response from monitor manufactures are true.
The amount of sales BS has been increasing for years now with the advent of the home studio.

EG the KRK rp8 is known to be bass heavy.

[coppice]

I'd be careful of assuming the claims of a flatter response from monitor manufactures are true.
The amount of sales BS has been increasing for years now with the advent of the home studio.

EG the KRK rp8 is known to be bass heavy.

Speaker responses are affected a great deal by the adjacent floor and walls. When exactly is a monitor speaker's response even supposed to be flat?

[timb]

I really don't understand all of the cynicism on this forum when it comes to audio claims, even those that are based in measurable fact.

Speaker response changes in the first few hours of use.  This is well known, well understood, and in over 10 years this is the only time I've seen anybody try to argue the contrary.  It's incredibly easy to measure, I've done so myself.  Built a new pair of towers, got them up and running, and used an RTA to flatten out the response.  A few months later I re-ran the RTA and the EQ required to flatten it out was completely different, the sharp resonances it was trying to tame at first were no longer there, and the EQ adjustments were much smoother.  About a year later I ran it again, and while the EQ settings did change slightly, it was a much less dramatic shift.  A year after that I ran it again just for giggles, and nothing changed.

While a headphone driver is much smaller and of a different design, I see no reason why it couldn't suffer from the same effect.  Will it?  I don't know.  Could it?  I don't see why not.

Could somebody hear the difference?  Maybe, maybe not, I'm sure it depends on the person and the material they're listening to, but I wouldn't discount it.  If you can measure the difference, it's certainly reasonable to assume somebody could hear the difference.

Of course you don't have to play any specific signal to cause it to break in, it's something that will happen naturally as you use it, but I don't see anything wrong with somebody trying to accelerate the process.  It's no different in my mind than somebody going out on a long weekend drive in a new car to break in the engine sooner.  Or somebody twisting all of the knobs on their new measurement equipment for a few minutes to smooth them out (to steal ConKbot's example).

QFT

Sennheiser's high end units are a good example for me. The bass response is pretty poor out of the box, but 50 hours or so later it's greatly improved. I listen to a diverse assortment of music, so I normally just put iTunes on random, hit play and set the headphones in the corner for a few days. Problem solved.

It's akin to a house settling.


Sent from my Smartphone

[Yago]

I'd be careful of assuming the claims of a flatter response from monitor manufactures are true.
The amount of sales BS has been increasing for years now with the advent of the home studio.

EG the KRK rp8 is known to be bass heavy.

Speaker responses are affected a great deal by the adjacent floor and walls. When exactly is a monitor speaker's response even supposed to be flat?

Exactly, saw a speaker being tested for frequency response once.
In an anechoic chamber, the speaker was high in the middle of the room on top of a pole.
Use a pulse to excite the speaker (no a freq sweep).
All to stop the room cocking up the test.

Good mixing facilities have the room specifically built for the purpose, ie. no parallel walls, no reflective materials on wall, ceiling and floor, broadband absorption panels etc.
Room is as important as the speaker, need both to be correct.

[abaxas]

Speakers are a mechanical device. Hence, there characteristics change over time, with the largest change when new.

End of argument, science wins again.

[TheBay]

I agree that speakers/earphones may loosen up a little, though not as dramatic as people make out.

Though burning in DAC's etc is absolute nonsense!

[coppice]

Though burning in DAC's etc is absolute nonsense!

You poo poo that, yet you wouldn't argue against the fact that you can burn out a DAC. Its sheer hypocrisy. 

[TheBay]

Though burning in DAC's etc is absolute nonsense!

You poo poo that, yet you wouldn't argue against the fact that you can burn out a DAC. Its sheer hypocrisy. 

No that is true LOL

[janengelbrecht]

Not sure who is the "artist" here. The recording engineer is probably the lowest of the artistic totem pole and I don't think most people give a rear-end about how he intended the music to sound.

I hope it's rather the opposite. Far too many recordings are completely ruined at source by the ongoing 'loudness war', and the last thing I want is to experience the sound prescribed by the idiot controlling compression and recording level.

The less influence that person can be made to have on the sound in my lounge, the better. If that means my system needs to have non-linearities or a modified frequency response to compensate, or at least to tend to mask the most objectionable artefacts, then that's fine with me.

It rather depends on what you are listening to. Classical music in general are not overproduced

[Yago]

I can say how my monitors sound, and it ain't good on everything.

Old recordings like The Who, original War of the Worlds sound great, very full sounding, pretty much across the board.

With modern stuff it is really hit and miss, normal to sound harsh, too much high freqs, instruments cluttered together or distorted.
There are exception to that, GoldFrapp sounds very good.

So yes, worry about the loudness wars, I won't buy modern music, and MP3s are simply pants. (duck from incoming attacks on MY cognitive dissonance... well it's mine )

[janengelbrecht]

I can say how my monitors sound, and it ain't good on everything.

Old recordings like The Who, original War of the Worlds sound great, very full sounding, pretty much across the board.

With modern stuff it is really hit and miss, normal to sound harsh, too much high freqs, instruments cluttered together or distorted.
There are exception to that, GoldFrapp sounds very good.

So yes, worry about the loudness wars, I won't buy modern music, and MP3s are simply pants. (duck from incoming attacks on MY cognitive dissonance... well it's mine )

Its seems that the loudness war is over in the industry. Only Dance music is still subjected to cruel maximizers turned to 10 theese days

[coppice]

Its seems that the loudness war is over in the industry. Only Dance music is still subjected to cruel maximizers turned to 10 these days

If they are down to 10 they've already dropped by 1. 

[TheBay]

Don't talk to me about loudness wars!!!! 

It is still going on, I am shocked at the clipping on some recordings, my hifi is not very sympathetic AT ALL!

[Lightages]

Speakers are a mechanical device. Hence, there characteristics change over time, with the largest change when new.

End of argument, science wins again.

A bold assertion with no data and then you call it science? I agree that some speakers change over time. Is it for the better or worse? There has been data supplied here for specific drivers. Not one bit of data has been presented for headphones. Please don't insult science this way.

[Yago]

Was it an "ology" Light?

Thought the biggest change in a speaker is when it is old, and dies!

[TheBay]

Was it an "ology" Light?

Thought the biggest change in a speaker is when it is old, and dies!

Foam rot 

[Yago]

Was it an "ology" Light?

Thought the biggest change in a speaker is when it is old, and dies!

Foam rot 

Oh Jeeves, we had to shoot old Wharfedale, he was foaming at the mount

[TheBay]

Was it an "ology" Light?

Thought the biggest change in a speaker is when it is old, and dies!

Foam rot 

Oh Jeeves, we had to shoot old Wharfedale, he was foaming at the mount

Poor old woofer.

[AndyC_772]

It rather depends on what you are listening to. Classical music in general are not overproduced

I'll take your word for that, it's not something I'd know about.

[Mark Hennessy]

It rather depends on what you are listening to. Classical music in general are not overproduced

I'll take your word for that, it's not something I'd know about.

Most people would be shocked if they knew how much editing and post-production was carried out in classical recordings. However, the end result does have decent dynamic range (though nothing like the original performance - for good reason).

The loudness wars have been around for a lot longer than people realise. They exist because historically audio levels had to be peak-normalised to avoid overloading record cutting lathes, radio transmitters, tape, etc.

By compressing the music, the average level rises, and the audio sounds subjectively louder, even though it is reaching the same peak levels that more dynamic music reaches. The ultimate endgame is where we are now, where tracks have single-figure dynamic range, and are often heavily clipped.

It arguably started back in the days of juke boxes, where in addition to the limitation of vinyl, the reply level was fixed. Motown recordings - the (in)famous "wall of sound" - started the ball rolling. Things stepped up a gear when people started (ab)using Optimod boxes on their radio stations - the '80s was when all that got silly (in the UK at least).

Today, we are much less concerned about running everything up against the maximum level possible, as we have much more dynamic range available to us. It is ironic that when delivery media was limited (vinyl, cassette tape, AM radio), we did have some really quite nice recordings. Today, we have nearly 96dB of dynamic range available to us via 16 bit audio (far in excess of what anyone actually needs for delivery), and a large percentage of "popular" recordings occupy the top 10 dB. Crazy.

The way to end the loudness way is to normalise for average level rather than peak level. This simply means turning down the level of the whole track to the RMS value matches the reference level. Having done this, you find that modern hyper-compressed recordings sound flat and uninteresting, while older recordings with natural dynamics are the ones that stand out. As soon as record producers realise this, recorded music will start to get better again.

Loudness normalisation is something that is being introduced to broadcast environments, and services like iTunes and Spotify are implementing their versions. Let's see what happens...

[dannyf]

-I agree that some speakers change over time-

So, you think there exist speakers that don't change over time? Are those some immortal speakers or what?

The only thing constant in life are death, taxes, and now, some speakers!

Those are SOME speakers, I have to say.