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Post by flamingeye on Apr 13, 2011 21:47:09 GMT -5
Well if your XDA-1 is burn in I`d say it`s faulty and I`de call Emotiva
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flyhigh
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Post by flyhigh on Apr 13, 2011 21:57:58 GMT -5
Exactly! Do you think we could get Orville Reddenbacher to supply the cryogenically treated kernels? We could get Emotiva to develop an Audiophile Hi-Res corn popper that also servers as a Universal Media Player that will produce fluffy popped kernels capable of filtering 24/192 signals to ensure the most tasteful output.  Come on now. Don't be silly. Everyone knows Popeye popcorn makes for the best popcorn music diffusers. The low frequency absorption is 1.23 x better than Orville's. IT IS FACT. ;D ;D ;D I almost choked on a mouthful of Kashi. Cryo-Corn not withstanding, Kashi gets a Class "A" rating for what one might refer to as "High Definition Downloads". Wow. It's the kind of difference everyone notices. I mean everyone.  |
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Post by monkumonku on Apr 14, 2011 0:41:33 GMT -5
Cool.  I see it as photographic evidence that like vehicles through a choked up intersection, only the strongest, fittest, most sonically pure electrons being able to pass through the properly burned in circuit... Provided the proper cables are used....natch. That's my take on it. ;D Sort of like this - audio signal BEFORE burn-in: Audio signal AFTER burn-in: |
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Post by hawk14 on Apr 15, 2011 8:15:37 GMT -5
Personally, I do believe that a unit needs to warm up sufficiently before you get to hear its full potential. Do I believe that I can hear a difference between an amp with 200 hours on it and one with 500 hours on it? No, not unless there is something wrong with the unit, but then that's not a matter of burn-in at all, now is it?
For what its worth, and sorry to go slightly off topic but still relevant to the burn-in question, I am in the process of comparing a pair of brand new UPA-1's against well used Musical Fielity A3cr. To be fair, I have left the UPA's on since Wednesday, and I have listened to the UPA's only sparingly as background music while working in the room. Probably on Sunday, I will sit down for some critial listening.
I know not listening to them right out the box, and then listening to them again after a few days of being left on, won't help in the burn-in argument, but it will still be an interesting shoot-out, nonetheless.
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Post by tkmetz on Apr 15, 2011 9:05:17 GMT -5
I think there are really two separate issues here; Burn-In time vs warm up time.
I am a long time hifi enthusiast. Music is my passion. I am constantly looking for ways of obtaining more satisfying sound from my system and these days, I am trying to get the highest improvement bang for the buck.
I recently purchased a xda-1 off of Audiogon (about 5 weeks ago now). Because I bought mine used, I didn't know how many hours of usage it had on it. Initially when I fired it up, I thought is was very resolving, had nice highs, ok bass, but I wasn't sure it would be a worthwhile addition. This was on a Thursday night and I probably listened to the system for a couple of hours.
Over the next two days, I was busy and didn't do any listening. On the third day (Sunday), I had a chance to sit down for an extended listening session. Wow, the sound had changed pretty dramatically. Now the unit had a much warmer balance with fuller bass, especially midbass, and more prominent lower mids. The clarity of treble reproduction sounded the same to me.
I have used the unit only as a DAC/preamp feeding either Behringer 2496 - Sunfire Cinema Grand amp - Emerald Physics CS2 speakers or directly into the amp/crossover of a NHT XD 2.2 amp/crossover/speaker system. I have the digital out (AES/EBU) of a Lexicon RT-10 feeding the XDA-1.
One premise made in this thread is that our ears adjust to our systems over time so there is no such thing as burn-in. I don't know about burn-in but I disagree that we accept new components/changes as 'better' just because we have listened to them for a time and our ears adjust.
In my experience, swapping components produces different sound initially and an initial positive or negative reaction. Only later after living with the unit for awhile do I realize if I really like or don't like the sound of the new component.
In my experience, somenthing changed with the XDA-1, not with my hearing. Either it burned it, or it simply warmed up to a point of thermal stability.
In the past, I have found that DACs tend to have a long warm-up time to where they sound their best. I found this to be true when I owned various Theta DACs. Components other than DACs seem to 'warm-up' in a very short time, usually well under an hour.
I have two dedicated circuits for my system. I also use a PS Audio Power Plant Premier power regenerator so I am confident that the quality of my power source is consistently good. As I don't have long periods of time to listen to my system, I always leave it powered on all of the time and I don't want to wait for 'warm-up'.
The XDA-1 is an excellent unit and competes with more expensive units such as the Benchmark DAC1, at least in my system. YMMV
Tim
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DYohn
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Post by DYohn on Apr 15, 2011 9:46:02 GMT -5
Two points: "warm up" and "burn in" are entirely different things. Warm up in solid state gear requires on average less than half a minute and it occurs each time you turn it on. Burn-in happens once during component manufacture, as mentioned in the excellent comment I quoted below. If your gear still requires burn-in after you receive it then it is a very poorly made unit indeed. Audiophiles thinking their new gear needs a "burn-in" period is likely becuse someone once learned about standard component burn-in during manufacture and decided if it is good for the ICs it must be necessary for their expensive boxes... Second, if things like "burn-in" or "break-in" or any of the other usage-related mumbo-jumbo attributed to solid state gear were actually occuring in the home, then please explain to me why the change always occurs in a positive direction? Why are the changes always for the better, making things "sound better"? This is impossible: physics and statistics dictate that there would be at least a few examples where the change went the other way, where something sounded "worse" after it had changed. I never hear about this. I never hear about some electronic component getting worse sounding after "burn in" it's always better. Odd. Burn in IS a fact at component manufacture, and in some cases during post-manufacture testing of finished units. It's done to weed out defective products, and has no bearing on the subjective performance of the device in question. It either works to spec, or it does not. THIS is the purpose of "burn-in" testing. Having worked for some years in military electronics reliability testing, I have some exposure to this, and might suggest that circuits do not generally improve over time. Rather, the trend is ultimately to increased failure rate as they slowly deteriorate, and wear out. The higher the demands on the device...the faster the degradation. Heat, and vibration being particularly unkind. In summary, when the consumer receives his/her audio component...it is about as burned in as it will ever be. Burn out is the next step. |
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flyhigh
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Post by flyhigh on Apr 15, 2011 10:39:26 GMT -5
Nice commentary DYohn. I would accept "thermal stabilization" as a cause of some perceived change in sound of a unit, but as stated...this stabilization period should occur within a relatively short amount of time. Minutes as opposed to hours or weeks. During the brief stabilization period, we really have no idea without instrumentation and testing to know if the components are closer, or farther away from design center once they've warmed up. It's a total crap shoot, but as long as the component does not exceed the tolerances specified in the design, the circuit will continue to function as advertised. The circuit COULD actually be performing slightly worse when warmed up. In the grand scheme of things, these "changes" are being greatly overstated, and leads one to recall an old 1950's TV set. Our electronics today are far more developed. Anyone remember the first "Instant-On" TVs? that was a big deal. Anyone want to rely on a defibrillator that really needs a couple hundred hours warm up?  Not me! I could go on.....about the apparent selective application of "burn in" to home audio components. Why some (usually very expensive) components warrant hundreds of hours "burn in"....while a 25wpc receiver is written off as grainy, and mid-fi sounding...often before the UPS man has even left the driveway. Why don't we afford THAT piece of equipment a couple hundred hours to sweeten up, and blossom? Kinda strange isn't it? Just an observation. |
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DYohn
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Post by DYohn on Apr 15, 2011 10:46:46 GMT -5
I agree, and thanks! By the way one of the smaller product lines my company manufactures are little test fixtures fitted with Kapton-insulated heaters that are used for burn-in of computer processors. They heat the newly minted chips up to 200C for 60 seconds just before they go into the speed and stability test fixtures. So if you're reading this on a PC chances are I "burned in" your system for you way before you received it.  |
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flyhigh
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Post by flyhigh on Apr 15, 2011 11:02:38 GMT -5
There ya go..... Now if I remember correctly (I was a little kid then ya know), these TVs were never "off" as long as they were plugged in. The filaments were all lit...ready to go. I don't know what B+ was doing. Used to drive my Dad nuts... "It's sitting there running up the electric bill!!!" He'd unplug it...then complain later... "Instant On my A$$" Mem-O-Reeeeees........ Attachments:
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flyhigh
Emo VIPs
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Post by flyhigh on Apr 15, 2011 11:25:12 GMT -5
You had to be careful in the 1960s.... This Ad has a "Peace Sign" disguised at a channel selector.... The TV would scan your brain (you can see this in the picture), and turn you into an LSD crazed hippie if you didn't take adequate precautions. You could see colors...even with a BW set! None of that is true of course....but I liked the ad. ;D Attachments:
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Post by mauriceminor on Apr 15, 2011 11:39:52 GMT -5
My sainted Morris Minor sure runs a lot better now that the spark plug cables have, you got it, burned in.
If money was no object I'd love to try Nordost interconnects from the distributor cap to the spark plugs. Imagine the increase in power ! Or at the very least a better sounding note to the exhaust.
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Post by monkumonku on Apr 15, 2011 13:01:28 GMT -5
Nice commentary DYohn. I would accept "thermal stabilization" as a cause of some perceived change in sound of a unit, but as stated...this stabilization period should occur within a relatively short amount of time. Minutes as opposed to hours or weeks. During the brief stabilization period, we really have no idea without instrumentation and testing to know if the components are closer, or farther away from design center once they've warmed up. It's a total crap shoot, but as long as the component does not exceed the tolerances specified in the design, the circuit will continue to function as advertised. The circuit COULD actually be performing slightly worse when warmed up. In the grand scheme of things, these "changes" are being greatly overstated, and leads one to recall an old 1950's TV set. Our electronics today are far more developed. Anyone remember the first "Instant-On" TVs? that was a big deal. Anyone want to rely on a defibrillator that really needs a couple hundred hours warm up? Not me! I could go on.....about the apparent selective application of "burn in" to home audio components. Why some (usually very expensive) components warrant hundreds of hours "burn in"....while a 25wpc receiver is written off as grainy, and mid-fi sounding...often before the UPS man has even left the driveway. Why don't we afford THAT piece of equipment a couple hundred hours to sweeten up, and blossom? Kinda strange isn't it? Just an observation. Well now it was a big hassle dealing with burn in when I got my refrigerator because for a couple of weeks all the food spoiled. Don't even ask me about my microwave oven. |
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Post by Mischief on Apr 15, 2011 13:14:41 GMT -5
I burned in some bread this morning and it tasted much better once I did.
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Post by geebo on Apr 15, 2011 13:25:19 GMT -5
I burned in some bread this morning and it tasted much better once I did. Charcoal definitely cooks better once burned in... |
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flyhigh
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Post by flyhigh on Apr 15, 2011 14:02:44 GMT -5
Well now it was a big hassle dealing with burn in when I got my refrigerator because for a couple of weeks all the food spoiled. Don't even ask me about my microwave oven. HELLO-O???.....stock AC cord on that fridge? Well duhhh!!! |
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Post by geebo on Apr 15, 2011 14:09:21 GMT -5
Well now it was a big hassle dealing with burn in when I got my refrigerator because for a couple of weeks all the food spoiled. Don't even ask me about my microwave oven. HELLO-O???.....stock AC cord on that fridge? Well duhhh!!! If I know Rickie, he has it deca-wired with wireless directional wires. ;D |
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flyhigh
Emo VIPs
North Carolina
Posts: 524
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Post by flyhigh on Apr 15, 2011 14:15:06 GMT -5
You just gotta understand that you CAN'T use a WARM cable with a refrigerator. |
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Post by monkumonku on Apr 15, 2011 14:22:45 GMT -5
You just gotta understand that you CAN'T use a WARM cable with a refrigerator. It was directional, too! Well now everything is fine and dandy. It is running very well after burn in (freeze in?). And after it was properly freezed in and keeping the food cold, I notice that my food tastes better and has better definition to it. Milk has midder mids and cheese seems to have taken on an airiness that I hadn't noticed before. Oh, strike that last sentence.. I just noticed it had gone past their expiration dates. |
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Post by geebo on Apr 15, 2011 14:33:02 GMT -5
You just gotta understand that you CAN'T use a WARM cable with a refrigerator. It was directional, too! Well now everything is fine and dandy. It is running very well after burn in (freeze in?). And after it was properly freezed in and keeping the food cold, I notice that my food tastes better and has better definition to it. Milk has midder mids and cheese seems to have taken on an airiness that I hadn't noticed before. Oh, strike that last sentence.. I just noticed it had gone past their expiration dates. Have you noticed your food getting any wider? |
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Post by monkumonku on Apr 15, 2011 15:22:08 GMT -5
It was directional, too! Well now everything is fine and dandy. It is running very well after burn in (freeze in?). And after it was properly freezed in and keeping the food cold, I notice that my food tastes better and has better definition to it. Milk has midder mids and cheese seems to have taken on an airiness that I hadn't noticed before. Oh, strike that last sentence.. I just noticed it had gone past their expiration dates. Have you noticed your food getting any wider? Well not really but with all my testing I notice myself getting wider. Soundstage seems to be increasing. |
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Not me!
