In reply to chess:
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I do not disagree with you at all that you definitely hear the differences. What I (we) are trying to discuss here is whether the perceived difference is due to a real physical change in the sound coming from the speaker, or it is due to a change in the psycho-auditory processing in your own brain, which can be evoked by your very thoughts and knowledge that you have presumably "improved" the equipment. I do not think anybody is lying, denying or rejecting anything. Just that some people here (including myself) want a more rigorous "proof" that an actual physical change, not merely a psycho-acoustic alteration, has occurred on the sound quality.
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I personally ally myself with the skeptics on this one... but at the end of the day - if it is in the brain, or in the "pudding" (as it were) - it is still "there." I personally don't give a rat's ass if the break-in period were in the speaker or in my ear, but I do know that it took my a bit of time to fully "understand" the sound of my new speakers.
I really can't understand this debate - it seems worse than the speaker wire one. Whereas I think that one is completely spurious and silly, this one documents a real effect, either real or imagined (I hesitate to use that word, but I'm sure you all understand my meaning). Most, if not all, have experienced this effect to one degree or another, despite our skepticism. It happens... and why? I am not personally kept awake at night due to such things. Perhaps we are more sensitive to nuance of things to a degree that may be almost statistically irrelevant. Perhaps the degree to which our brain adjusts and adapts itself to our senses is more pronounced than we would generally like to admit.
Either way - there it is. It breaks us in, or we break it. I personally think it's one of us humans' better traits -the whole damn inconsistancy thing. What else would keep us thinking?
