Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Breaking in a set of axioms.

Your right you will get flamed, but you know what I'm not even going to go there! Lets just suffice it to say that being individuals with personal beliefs is what makes us and reading these posts all the more interesting. Have a great weekend to all.

Marc, although i'm not attempting to flame anyone, your statement as to what is 'fact' is still based on your subjective opinion which is biased by the knowledge of what you are listening to (e.g. Krell vs. Radio Shack Wonders), biased by the knowledge that you know its price ($10,000 vs. $100), and of course biased by the fact that you sell these materials. I respect the fact you have been in the business for a long time, and perhaps your hearing is acute to sonic differences, but unless you have been tested properly in a controlled environment, your conclusions are not entirely credible taken at face value. They are your beliefs, but that certainly does not make them fact.
Those conclusions would have to be second guessed, retested and reviewed from another controlled perspective before they can be labelled as 'fact'. This objective approach is how we conclude 'facts' through science.

I have seen and read statements of doubt about these principles like speaker break-in and they tend to come from people who are not resellers and have dug into the information about the technology and tried to assess it in a logical, educated manner.

The simple science behind determining whether there is a difference b/w broken in speakers, or breaking in electronics, etc. is very easy to do. Yet it is amazing how many businesses refuse to believe the studies that have already been done, with the information being put into the public even by very respected figures in the business such as Mr. Loftt or even after they have had the chance to be blind tested themselves. Of course you will also find the less scrupulous businesses attempting to market results from tests they did themselves in house which again...is biased and the data carries no confidence.

If a person buys a component and believes it makes their system sound better, then all the more power to them. But if a person had the chance to blind test a component before they bought to truly see if it made any difference, how many businesses would make alot less cash and sales because of this practice?

So again i reiterate, show me the science, lose the subjectivity of human emotion or psyche interference and then i will re-examine the 'facts' about such issues as speaker break-in or power conditioners. Until then, the laws of physics prevail and if there is some 'difference, then it will be measurable and it won't be unexplained.

Hi all,

A few comments: Dantana, one of the many virtues of titanium and aluminum-dome tweeters is that the metal dome itself serves as a heat sink to dissipate heat from the voice coil (along with the ferrofluid). Consequently, metal-dome tweeters are able to produce higher sound levels with much less distortion than silk or cloth or poly-dome designs.

Incidentally, during my many years on listening panels at the National Research Council, for my work reviewing speakers for the magzine I edited (Sound&Vision Canada), we kept various speakers, good and bad, as "anchors" for use during double-blind tests. These sonic anchor speakers were mixed with the actual models under test, partly to confirm our own listening consistency and to provide a range of rankings. (In some tests where there were several models that were "similarly good," we sometimes had to have a real clunker in there just to remind us of how bad some brands really are!). What is amazing is the consistency of the rankings of the same anchor speakers over many years by different listeners, even down to the tenths of a point. These were driven hundreds of hours, and the frequency response curves never changed a fraction of a dB, nor did the listening test rankings, so that relegated the notion of speaker break-in to the status of myth. If the loudspeaker's characteristics changed over time, these changes would show up in the measurements and also in the controlled listening tests.

A comment as well on heat dissipation: Years ago, Kef used a popular T27 tweeter with a phenolic dome (it was used on a pair of audiophile favorites, the BBC monitor (LS3-5A), built by Rogers, Kef and other Brits). Under high volume conditions, this speaker's frequency response curve changed quite dramatically. After experimentation, Dr. Floyd Toole discovered that the T27's dome tweeter began to melt from heat and actually changed shape at high volume, so its dispersion traits changed. When you lowered the volume, the dome resumed its original shape! That's the only instance I can recall of a speaker's response changing in measurable and audible fashion in almost two decades of listening tests.

Speaker break-in is another one of these faddish notions promulgated by high-end niche magazines, which at their core are fundamentally anti-science.

Speaker break-in is a psycho-acoustical phenomenon where your ears and brain adjust to a different set of speaker dispersion traits that energize reflections and room modes in different ways.

Regards,

Thanks Alan, I needed that.

CAV104

Yay for someone using data and the scientific method! Thanks very much, Alan.

Not to prolong this thread, but I thought I'd add to the whole perception thing. As humans we're seriously prone to suggestion, perception and conditioning. Just to show an example of this, here's a picutre that will demonstrate how easily we can be deceived visualy.

http://members.lycos.nl/amazingart/images/adelson_checkershadow.jpg

Note: belive it or not, squares A and B are exactly the same color.

Now all of us "see" those as different colors, just like someone may "hear" a change in a speaker after a period of time. But it can be scientifically proven that those squares are the same color as well as the fact that the sound doesn't change in a speaker.

In reply to:

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Note: belive it or not, squares A and B are exactly the same color.

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What?!?! Explain yourself, please.

Semi-On,

He's right. They are the same color. I checked it with an app that measures the RGB values of pixels on your screen. They are both the same even grey - R:107,G:107,B:107.

If you can find an app like that to test it - you'll see was well. I was very skeptical when I first saw it, but I believe measurements!

That's totally bizarre.

You don't need a special app to test it. Just save the file to your local workstation, and open it in any photo editor. Use the cut/copy tool, cut a square containing the "B" out of the middle, and drop it on the "A" square. Same background. Amazing.