Breaking in equipment

There have been measurements of the Schiit multibit DACs posted on head-fi and super best audio friends. Measurements from cold and warmed up. However, the cold measurements were still after the DAC had been on a while because it takes time to run through the measurements and the DAC has been on all that time.

There are also important and noticeable sonic qualities that aren't picked up by measurements. Measurements don't tell all.

 

What, for instance?

 

The subjective things. The things that engineers who design good audio gear listen for while they're designing the gear because they can't rely only on measurements to tell them if the gear is going to sound good or have the sound style they want.

 

I think that speaker designers, for example, begin with known quantities, i.e., known box/driver configurations, known port diameter/length ratios, known box construction, known crossover designs, known driver dispersion characteristics, etc. They use those specifications to produce drawings and, from the drawings, build a prototype. Then they listen. Then, as needed, they modify a single specific technical quantum at a time and listen to the effect. What they don't do is simply throw things together and hope for the best, thereafter listening and putting themselves through lengthy trial and error. The engineering factors and design criteria and qualified specifications come first in order to achieve a prototype that lands somewhere in the ballpark. In fact, all the component parts chosen to go into the first iteration of any particular design are based on supremely subjective choices because they're choices, by definition, based on specifications and known-good results from previous experience. So basically, we shouldn't confuse the specific engineering, methods and techniques of any particular design with the measured performance of the resulting prototype or final product. Nor should we suggest that the combination of listening and measuring are unrelated. In fact, they're inextricably intertwined. If the designer/engineer doesn't measure various parameters while listening, how can they then know what to tweak and by how much?

 

How can they accurately listen for these things if at that point the audio gear ISN'T EVEN BROKEN IN YET!

Does anyone not realize how ridiculous this argument is?

 

Could you link to those measurements?

I don't agree that a noticeable sonic quality can't be picked up by measurements. Consider that we need measurement devices to accurately define a DAC's noise floor (given how useless our ears would be at that task) what the hell is so noticeable to our ears yet simultaneously unnoticeable to a measuring device?

 

Sounds like a cool Steampunk item. I have lots of tubes for televisions and radios. Just mount a couple tube sockets onto a toaster . I wonder what the voltage drop on the elements are? Tap the filament connections across them.

Maybe I should get into putting some of these together?

 

I have purchased lots of new equipment of the years and have found that breakin does occur. I also mod or swap out part on speakers and amps. Same thing happens. The amount of audible change can be exaggerated for sure.

Tim

 

Can I borrow this sometime?

 

Watch the classifieds.

 

To answer this question. Very often signal ground is tied to chassis ground in consumer audio products/hi fi, but not always. By connecting both ends of the shield, it would create a ground loop (becuase both the - and chassis ground are now running together). By floating one end, you can ensure the ground loop wont occur if the equipment did have the two grounds tied together. On pro audio gear where everthing is using three cables/balanced connections, both sides ARE connected. Now, which equipment should get the arrow side is almost less important than both sides should get the same type of direction connected (float the connection in the same direction).

The answer really is they are using balanced cable on equipment that wasnt designed for it.

However, a previous poster said cheaper cables dont have this type of connection (a balanced connection, which has the three wires and not floating) and thats not quite true... Its not that the cable is lesser that doesnt have this type of connection, its just different. Some will argue that unbalanced is actually better, some will argue that balanced is better...

 

I'm just up the road, let me know if you need help marketing them.

 

Break in. Burn in. The mind boggles.

 

Believe it. Don't believe it. I could care less. But one little detail is I never turn them off. Ever. I have no idea or interest of what an RMAA reading is anyway.

 

Winter is coming. They are from Minnesota after all.

 

I agree, that you don't want to create a ground loop in unbalanced connections.

You can see already, there are differences of opinions on which side of the circuit to connect the grounded end.

 

That's fine but please don't frame anecdotes as facts in future. It doesn't help prospective buyers

 

Neither does drowning yourself in a bunch of measurements that may or may not mean a single thing except you can measure something. I didn't frame some anecdote. It was an observation. Of little importance, I might add.