TIME TO BURN APP DRIVERS

Then there are popular websites, which shall remain nameless, that purport to do rigorous testing on earphones and include burn-in times in their routines. Read the Amazon comments on a standard pair of $50 earphones and you'll probably find people talking about how long they need to be burned in, and how much different they sound after 400 hours of pink noise. The fact is burn-in has now become tribal knowledge. While some will say all of this harmless, the ambiguity and voodoo can confuse buyers and quickly turn into a colossal waste of time. It's kind of a Pascal's Wager for audiophiles: It costs them nothing, it does no harm to the headphones, and you potentially have more to lose not believing in burn-in than you do believing in it. Who are we to say what's going on between between people's ears, say manufacturers. Well, no one has disproven it, say audiophiles. Indeed, what keeps this debate going is really the lack of quantifiable evidence debunking the advantages of burn-in.

TIME TO BURN APP DRIVERS

So, in theory, wouldn't those drivers always be burning in, and therefore wouldn't the curve be very very different over the course of its life?' 'If you think about it, regardless of whether a mic is plugged in, it's always hearing, it's always on. 'We've got a lot of data on those over the years, and we're not convinced on mic burn in either,' Engstrom says. The company has an even longer history making microphones, which use the same technology as headphone transducers.

In fact, during the 15 years Shure has been actively selling earphones, its engineers have reached the same conclusion again and again: The sound produced by these tiny transducers during final testing is the same sound you'll get in a day, in a year, and in five years. And guess what? They measure the same now as when they came off the line. Shure has tested some thoroughly used pairs of its E1 earphones, which first launched in 1997. After this period, proponents claim they are able to vibrate more freely, thus allowing for better sound. With larger headphones, mechanical burn-in is supposed to describe the gradual settling in of the design parameters of the cone diaphragms (the things that vibrate back and forth to create the air pressure changes that we interpret as sound in our ears) into their intended or optimal state. The only problem? There's zero evidence this does anything but defer your enjoyment of music and add more confusion to an already complex topic.ДЄudiophiles will often apply their own burn-in technique to any number of music-listening devices: earphones, headphones, amps, speakers, even cables.

Think of it as the sonic equivalent of breaking in a new pair of shoes - the idea being that the true character of your earphones will only surface after some robust exercise. This is to be done before any critical listening happens. So let me say it for them: Earphone burn-in is a bunch of hokum.ДЇor those of you unfamiliar with the practice, it basically amounts to pumping different kinds of sound into a new pair of headphones or earphones for a given period of time. And the people in the industry who should know better are only actively encouraging a ritual. Earphone makers seem to be either too polite or scared to say anything.

Time to burn app