Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners The science behind speaker break-in

What exactly do you mean "master version"? If you're talking about live performance, how would you compare it to reproduced sound? Do you think digital signal can capture all information such comparison may demand?

I just think science (at least the stage we are in) may not be able to answer everything. I prefer to believe in my own ears instead of some figures on paper when I'm talking about sound. =)

Congratulations.

If your business succeeds, that means those who believes in the break-in thoery (your customers) are deaf. You can probably use that as a counter example proving break-in is only a human perception... =)

It can be easily proven that the brain/ear setup (or the brain /eye setup) can be fooled. Like I said, sonic memory is not great. I was talking about a recorded performace, preferably to the master tapes. If a digital signal can't capture all the information required, then the speakers can't reproduce it anyway, can they?

Waves is waves. Science has an excellent understanding of those. Unless you can hear quantum fluctuations, I think we're in pretty good shape.

Some professional reviewers claimed in their reviews that the M22s get less harsh after about 50 hours of playing them.

Me - I have no opinion. I am not sure I could tell with my ears and brain, and if I felt there was a difference it would most likely be because I set up my system wrong to begin with.

I think my speakers sound best up near the ceiling!! I have never heard this recommended.

Though I don't really agree with a break-in theory on SS equipment (tube equipment undoubtedly changes w/time as the tubes degrade), I know for a fact that my speakers, tweeters specifically, have become less-harsh over time.

My M60's were demos and had some use on them by the time I hooked them up to my system. They sounded incredible from the get go. But when the tweeters blew due to an electrical issue I had to purchase a new set from Axiom. I got them in and put on one of my test CDs that I usually listen to and immediately I had to turn the volume down to almost nothing because it was so harsh sounding that it felt like my ears were going to start bleeding. Like I had read about, I had left the stereo running when I was out at work for the next few days. I also ordered the resistors from Axiom and installed them. But even without the resistors on, the tweeters lost their harshness over time. I didn't dream this up and I surely didn't "get my brain used to the new sound" because I was already used to the sound previously from my speakers.

As it goes, I finaly found replacement tweeters for my rear Advent speakers and installed them last week. Same issue. Very harsh from the get go. Much more mellow after a few days of running time. I'm sure that I'm not the only one seeing a pattern here.

The way I feel about break-in on speakers can be equated to the break-in on a new baseball glove (minus the oil, of course). You've got to massage them in for a while before they perform at their optimum level.

And with that said, I really feel this topic's been beaten to death on the boards. It's quite apparent that it's just a black and white issue now. It seemes to me that you either believe in break-in or you don't.

My two cents based on my experience, so please take it with a grain of salt.

-Kevin

Compare the master tape to what? Are you going to record the sound coming from the speakers again?

This may be a good experiment set up...
1. Put a good quality mic in front of a pair of brand new speakers (in sweet spot)
2. Record the sound and compute the deviation to the original master digital signal.
3. Run the speakers for more than 100 hours.
4. Repeat 1 and 2.
5. Obtain the difference between two deviations.


And yes, wave is wave. We can measure frequency easily. Can you please inspire me how our science can measure other qualities like smoothness and sweetness of a piece of music?

Hard to argue with that one; I don't think the sweet-o-graph or smooth-o-graph have been invented yet.

Your proposal sounds good, although I would prefer to do it with a single speaker to minimize cancellation/diffusion effects. Smoothness and sweetness are properties of the waves. I'm sorry, this is not mystical. Since I do not have a degree in physics or music reproduction, I can't answer the "how", but it's just waves moving in a medium of air.

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My M60's were demos and had some use on them by the time I hooked them up to my system.

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They sure did....there were cranked up more than a couple of times.