Gadget Lab | Wired.com: OK, audiophiles: real talk. Earphone makers seem to be either too polite or scared to say anything. And the people in the industry who should know better are only actively encouraging a ritual. So let me say it for them: Earphone burn-in is a bunch of hokum.
6 comments:
Ok, what? I have never heard of this in my life. I hope this article is correct in that burning in headphones is not something that needs to happen. I do not know enough about how headphones work to know if burning them in is actually necessary, but it seems like something that would do nothing besides put unnecessary wear and tear on them. And up to 400 hours of burning them? Even if it is something that helps their quality that seems entirely excessive. But at the same time if burning in headphones is not a legitimate need then I really wonder where that myth came from, because it seems like a rather odd thing to make up. Perhaps it really does put excess wear on them which increases headphone sales due to them breaking after shorter periods of time. At the same time though I have never heard anyone talk about this so it cannot be that effective of a selling strategy if it is one. I will definitely continue to use my headphones straight out of the package.
I have never heard of "burning in" earphones, and now that I have, I can't say I feel my life has improved noticeably. Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous! Let's play music through some headphones for two days straight and then they'll be all perfectly broken in and ready for use... No! Earphones are not shoes. They don't break in, they don't change with use. Maybe the people who put store into this "method" don't understand that different kinds of headphones can have different characters, so one pair will probably not sound like another pair. This does not mean that they need to be broken in, simply that they are different and they are meant to be different. As the end of this article says, when you get a new pair of headphones, enjoy them. Don't wait and don't do all sorts of silly, unnecessary things to them to make yourself feel more high-tech and legitimate. Just put them in your ears and enjoy some good music.
Recently I've been looking into getting some nice over-ear headphones and came across "burning in" in the reviews pretty often. Before I read this article I didn't really understand what they meant and now I know what they were talking about is a load of bull. Why would wearing them in make them sound better? What makes the most sense is that every headphone sounds different and it takes our ears a while to get used to the way a new pair sounds. I would be interested in listening to a pair that has been "burned in" and comparing them to a pair right out of the box to see if there is any perceivable difference. I know when I end up getting new headphones I won't be wasting any time before I put them on my head.
I was curious about where this came from, until I mentioned it in class with Kevin. I was unaware that you had to do this with bigger speakers. I don't quite understand why that is true, and its not true of smaller earphone speakers, but I would guess that it is the reason for this belief. I guess if it fulfills your superstitions then there is no harm in it. However to believe there is some reason ti is necessary does seem pretty out there.
While I'm typically a very scientific person, I also "burn in" earphones before I use them for anything important. Regardless of what this article says, I totally believe that this process affects the quality of audio in the phone.
So I'm not an acoustic physicist, but heres why this makes sense to me:
Every transducer that comes off the line is going to be a little bit different. They are going to have tight spots and loose spots and some spots and the film is going to shift a little bit before it finally settles. Playing audio from across the spectrum for a few days before actually using the earphones is going to warm up the transducer and allow the film to settle in an equilibrium point.
It surprises me that Shure claims that this isn't true. As a leading mic manufacturer (and thus a leading designer of transducers) you would think they would know that transducers do, in fact, change sound over time. That being said, I only have my personal experience to back this up.
More importantly, who cares if audio engineers want to burn in their headphones? So what? Everybody has stupid things that they do, even if they know it doesn't actually matter. It doesn't matter if it changes the geometry of the transducer or not, if the engineers THINKS he hears a difference, then for all intents and purposes, he DOES hear a difference. So let he/she do what makes them comfortable.
I chuckled at the point in the article where it mentioned that people have created detailed burn-in mixtapes of audio to run their cans through the full range of burn-in requirements. I have this image of a bunch of audiophiles bowing down to their headphone overlord as they blast white noise. I think burning in headphones is rather silly, but hey, each to their own. I suppose, just don't forget to burn in your XLR cable while you're at it.
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