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I've heard 30 years -- sell them if don't expect to live 30 years longer

Posted by Richard BassNut Greene on May 25, 2007 at 08:24:55

In Reply to: Paradigm Singnature break in time posted by gnugear on May 24, 2007 at 12:44:19:

If they don't sound good after ten minutes of use, it's mainly because you have never heard these speakers before in your room.

They won't sound the same as prior speakers.

They won't sound the same as they did in the store.

You may have inferior locations for them at first.

Speakers will sound as good as they can sound after five or ten minutes to warm up the voice coils.

You can break in new drivers in the same time period required to heat up the voice coils.

The 100 hours break-in, after which the speakers will sound perfect forever after, is an urban audio myth!

Of course it may take your ears 100 hours or longer to get used to the new speakers. They'll have different colorations than the old speakers you were used to.

That's why speaker manufacturers don't mind the 100 hours break-in myth.

Use LOUD bass heavy music to break-in the driver's suspension (fine cracks will form in the spider coatings the first time the driver's cone is stroked significant distance).

Don't use string quartets -- the cones have to cover a significant portion of their linear stroke (XMAX)!

Most likely the audible portion of break-in was handled at the factory during brief quality control testing.

There are typically 5% to 10% changes in some driver parameters during break-in. This may be audible.

Similar 5% to 10% changes to driver parameters happen EVERY day when the voice coils warm up. No one seems to notice this!

It's funny that audiophiles never seem to report hearing 5-10% driver parameter changes over 5 minutes of voice coil warm up ... but many report hearing 5-10% changes spread over 100 hours during "break-in"!

Some subwoofer driver with large single or dual spiders may have driver parameter break-in changes in the 10-20% range. These changes are audible because the bass is so weak initially compared with three minutes later as the drivers play a LOUD bass heavy RAP song.

Find some music with a loud repeating bass drum and play it as loud as you can tolerate for a few minutes.

But if the bass output seems okay the first time you play your speakers, the audible portion break-in, assuming there was any audible portion of break-in) was already accomplished at the factory during quality control testing.

There may still be small changes to driver parameters AFTER the first 10 minutes of LOUD use ... which become very small after a few hours of use.
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Richard BassNut Greene
Subjective Audiophile 2007

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