For Those of You Who Believe in Speaker Break In, I have a few questions

Dependent some on material selection but of course the components that are designed to flex during cone movement have some form of break in, i.e. the surround and the spider both relax some or stop changing after so many flexings. Crossover components slight burn in as well imo. So a speaker balance can change, usually bass being more full and more detailed after the break - in so a bright sounding speaker could sound a little less bright after break in period due to the change in "balance".

 

I just called Polk again to ask a separate question and the topic of break in came up again. This tech rep (a different one from last time) told me that Polk recommends 50-80 hours for break in. I am running Depeche Mode's Violator today while I am at work. We'll see how this break in goes.

Many thanks for all the feedback, guys!

 

George, measurements of your speakers can be found here

 

Thanks! I had seen some for those, I was hoping to find some for my old speakers, Polk Audio - Monitor 40s.

 

The question is, are the couch and carpets broken in?...

Seriously though, I believe that electromechanical things break in to some degree over time, but more dramatic changes can be achieved through speaker positioning and listening position.

Good luck and congrats on your new purchase!

 

When I bought my new B&W 700s recently, they told me about 100 hours. That's about a weekend for me

 

This thread is making me wonder if there are not only monetary, but also time and sonic benefits to buying my speakers used.

 

not always. my second last set of speakers broke in too much and they dominant bass monsters so I had to get rid of them.

 

Only of you don't listen to much music. If you do, it only should take a few weeks or less.

 

I'm a believer that they do change over time in addition to you becoming used to them as well.

http://www.gr-research.com/burnin.htm

 

That depends on the speakers. When I got my Reference 3A mm de Capos they were used, but had been sitting in the back room at the dealer's for half a year unplayed. When I got them home it turned out they needed a few hours of break-in time again to sound right. They've been great ever since, but then they don't get very many days they don't get exercise.

 

Well there is a break in period with new speakers. But I believe is more like your ears/brain/perceptions thats being broken in. And that period depends on the person, not the speakers.

 

Good to hear Mazzy. I was hoping this would happen for you. Think new B&W's are known for long break in periods.

 

It is reasonable to assume that anything mechanical, may need some drive time for everything to work as smoothly as possible. Lot's of new things are stiff and could use 100-hours to loosen up, from their original tightness.

I have bought three pairs of vintage Wharfedale W-Series speakers, W60's/W70's and W90's. Two of the cabinets had not been played for many years, sitting idle in living rooms.

When you go the vintage route, be prepared to need extensive break-in, because, when you first fire them up, they really sound like crap, I really mean crap, not something that it would take an audiophile to notice.

Zu audio, who have a 30-day return police, used to have a minimum break-in at the shop, before shipping out the speakers. At that time, they were having higher return rates. They changed their focus and are now giving all of their speakers a couple of hundred hours of break-in time, before shipping them out to customers.

Their return rates, dropped significantly.

Tweeters may be initially harsh but should smooth out the quickest, because they are small and vibrating at high frequencies, which accelerate the break-in process.

The other drivers will break-in a bit slower and will sound more relaxed and natural.

I agree with Warren Jarrett on the following:

They will relax and sound better. Plus perhaps, your previous set of speakers were presenting a different sound signature to your listening ears and you are getting a new speaker which might by more dynamic and revealing, which may be compared to brightness, even though it might not actually be the case.

While I have not heard the LSiM bookshelf line of speakers, I do have their LSiM707's, and many other Polk speakers. One thing that I will positively comment on, is that from my initial purchase of the Monitor 70's Series II, back in 2011, I have never thought of any recent Polk speakers being harsh, as they are not. At least, I don't find them to be.

Most bookshelf speakers are not always classified as being full range speakers and are lacking in the deeper bass that is usually associated with tower's. That can make the mid's more forward sounding, because they don't present the balance that is more easily found in speakers of tower construction.

As the OP stated:

The RTi line, according to @F1nut was designed for home theater in mind and are more dynamic and forward of the modern day Polk offerings.

I have the RTiA9's, which are large speakers, and never thought that they sounded excessively bright, but they were dynamic and played really loud. They sounded good with stereo and HT.

In their lesser expensive models, they utilize "silk" dome tweeter's, which are neither harsh or bright.

In their flagship line of LSiM speakers, they utilize ring radiator tweeters which are not harsh or bright, quite the opposite. They are very detailed without being bright.

Currently, I have a pair of LSiM707's as one pair of my front towers, the other pair are Zu, Omen Definitions, which are more forward and operate at a higher efficiency rating. These are selectable with an A/B switch box.

My rear pair of speakers are Klipsch WF-35's which are my 2nd brightest speakers, the brightest being the La Scala's, which are extremely bright and not that well suited to home stereo use (just my opinion).

To me, I have the A7's perfectly balanced, with the addition of a JBL "baby cheeks" super tweeter, that picks up after the 511B's (horns) with their 908 series drivers and the addition of a commercial cabinet sub-woofer (which is driven by 1,600-Watts of SS power). But the rest of the A7's upstream chain are 100% tube driven, from the phono stage, to the preamp and the final power amp.

They are not harsh, but can be, without a properly mixed and mastered source.

The least harsh and least bright speakers, that are currently running in my system are the LSiM707's, AND... they are being powered by a sand amp, (an Emotiva XPA-2, 1st generation)!

Even the Zu's are more balanced and dynamic and not really bright, but with some poorly mastered sources, they can be fatiguing. I do plan on upgrading their drivers to the next level, as my next system upgrade.

When I just want to listen to Pandora One, while I work in the office, I will generally put the 707's into play, along with the WF-35's in the rear.

I find the Zu's to be an interesting speaker, some will like them and other's definitely will not. Some people do not prefer the "in your face" live venue sound" that the Zu's are famous for (which is fine). I don't know if it works well with all types of music, but with Jazz, it is an A+!

I do want to give the Zu's a shot of tube amplification, because I do think that may take of that "edge" a bit.

I have a few pairs of ERA/Peachtree speakers, both three different bookshelf models and their large tower speaker, and they are not bright or harsh at all, yet they play loud and clean. ERA started out selling speakers, before they started producing their amplifier line. Back then, the ERA D-series, was designed by Michael Kelly of Ariel Acoustics, and these are beautiful bookshelf speakers. They preform significantly better than would be expected at their price point of under $1k.

Since I had the opportunities to pick up some of these excellent speakers at some very attractive prices, I choose to do so. Good move, since the move from Era to Peachtree, many of their nice speakers have been discontinued. I think that they are currently only selling the DS4.5's (for nearfield desk use) and the larger D5. They even made a compact tower speaker, the D14. Though, not very tall and having small size drivers, it has some substantial bass.

The cabinets weigh over 70-lbs. each and doing the knuckle rap test, is like knocking on a tree trunk.
All of the Peachtree/Era speakers, use silk dome tweeters, so no brightness to tame.

It's a shame, that they discontinued their original speaker line, which was aimed at the HT market. The D3, D4, D5, all had matching center channel speakers.

The D3, front three speakers were perfect for HT in small rooms.


The speakers in the photo appear to be the D4's, that have been wall mounted and the center looks like one of the D5 MTM.

 

I didn't think that tweeters really change at all. Only the illusion they do since everything else dramatically does. Not true??

 

I would think that it all depends on the tweeter. I think the tweeter break-in applies more to the metal and horn tweeters, which can be harsh right out of the box.

My rear speakers are Klipsch WF-35's, which were a bit of a departure in form for Klipsch. They are real wood, mine are an espresso stain. More refined looking for the home. They originally retailed for $1,500/pr. Apparently, the line did not sell well and they were discontinued and the remaining stock found its way to NewEgg for clearance. NewEgg sold them for $600/pr., almost 1/3rd of their original price.

The key deal closer was the reviews, saying that they don't have that bright harshness that Klipsch speakers are known to have. That was all that I needed.

That was several years ago, when I first bought my Polk Monitor 70's and 60's (Series II). The Monitor 70's were the front mains for stereo and HT. The 60's were going to be used in my bedroom, but I was playing around with the 60's and decided to use them as rear towers. I like rear speakers for both stereo and HT.

I purchased the WF-35's with the idea of placing a better speaker than the model 60's, in the bedroom.

I had a lot of stuff stored in the bedroom and really did not have the space at the time, for the WF-35's.

I had room to stand them next to the Monitor 70's, so I did, with the intention of listening to them, to see how they compared to the 70's.

Going from the nice, pleasant Polk's to the WF-35's was not pleasant, they were edgy and very fatiguing. I was missing my Polk's from early on.

I decided to give them two weeks of breaking in. I broke down after 12-days, and reconnected the Monitor 70's. Life was good again.

I still wanted to explore them more and compare them against each other. I tried switching the speaker cable back and forth a few times, and was over that exercise, fairly quickly. I located a speaker switcher from Outdoor Speaker Depot, that had a wireless remote control.

The remote not only allowed me to switch back and forth between the two speaker pairs, but would allow me to also turn each speaker on and off independently.

The Polk's had larger woofer's and a bigger cabinet, so the bass on them went to 40-cycles, nice deep and full sounding. The Klipsch were in smaller cabinets, with smaller driver's, about 4 1/2", so their bass, didn't go below 50-cycles (at the -3dB point).

In listening and making comparison's between the two, I noted that the Polk's had a somewhat sloppy mid-bass, than the Klipsch's. The Klipsch were tighter all around. But their high end was really grating to me. The Polk's, with their silk domed tweeter's were nicer sounding to me, non-fatiguing.

Then I had an idea, and that's when I discovered that the remote let me turn them both on together. The results were excellent. the different strengths and weakness of each speaker, complimented them well. Together, they sounded better and more refined, than either speaker did by themselves. I was rather pleased with the results.

Eventually, I started to upgrade my front speakers. After I removed the Polk's, I moved the WF-35's to the rear's, replacing the Monitor 60's. I have a credenza on each side of the rear wall, so I have them elevated on the credenza's.

The front speakers are on the west wall and the rear speakers are on the east wall. By that time, I had acquired a vintage pair of Altec Lansing A7, speakers, having run out of space, they sit along the north wall, facing south. I bought a second sofa and have it pointing towards the A7's. The sofa is sitting in front of some audio equipment shelves.

When sitting on the 2nd sofa, the front mains are to my left and the rear's are to my right, with the A7's in the middle, facing me.

Back in 2014, I picked up a middle ear infection, that for the first three months, I did not realize that I had it. But it did make my infected ear much more sensitive to harsh HF sound. The right rear WF-35 was pointing directly to where I was sitting on the sofa, about 15' away, and the HF, was really annoying to me, at the time.

One day, I had just finished rinsing my hands off and walking out of the kitchen, I tore off one of those 3-part pieces of paper towel. After I was finished wiping my hands, I went over to the WF-35, removed it's grill, wadded up the paper towel, and stuck it into the mouth of the tweeter.

My left front speaker, with a different tweeter design is only a few feet away, to my left (my left ear had the infection) and it was not bothering me.

When you have an infection, like I did and it was three months, before I realized that I had an infection and had it treated during the summer. I was to find out, that when you have an infection and it goes on for a time, that your ears would still be sensitive for some time. It was the middle of November before everything started sounding like it should.

Somewhere along the line, the tweeter's in the WF-35's started to mellow out. Because of my long hearing recovery period, I am unsure when they started to mellow out, as I sit here and listening to them every day and they don't have the harshness that that they had before.

All of my other speakers, did not seem to require any break-in, all of them sounded good when I first plugged them in.

The used W-70's, Wharfedale's, did not appear to have any issues with the HF, even though they had been sitting for over 10-years. The tweeter in those, is a paper cone tweeter and it didn't appear to have any issues. The 4" mid-range and the 12" woofer, did require a period of breaking in.

 

That speakers will break in seems obvious. It's a system with moving parts which will change a bit when stressed. Mostly, I have noticed an improvement in bass. Highs could get brighter or less bright. However, a new set of speakers might not be getting along with existing gear.

 

Yeah, they did tighten up a bit, but not enough for me. They went back this morning.

 

A Polk rep told me that their ring tweeters actually do require break in to open up.

 

Yeah, breaking in isn’t going to change the general sound characteristics of a speaker.

 

Indeed they do.

 

Have you checked out the two others I suggested?

 

I made a speaker burn-in audio file.

Bandpass filtered tone sweeps and noise contoured to work your speakers like music does, while not containing damaging frequencies below port resonances etc.





Turn up until you see decent woofer excursion, and set to repeat: burn-in.flac

Scientifically guaranteed to be 2345% more effective than Depeche Mode.

Break-in of speakers can loosen up the suspension, changing the mechanical Q parameters and equivalent speaker volume, so they perform as designed in their enclosure.

Also good at degaussing your tubes, re-aligning the crystals in your wires, inspiring zen trances, and whatever else hucksters might claim an audio track might do.

 

Well is most cases a good long break in will make them far less brite

 

Guys, what about amplifier volume during break in?

I know that the thumpy, boomy quality in the woofers is often part of how new speakers sound, but I am curious if it is OK to play the speakers loud enough to produce this sound during break in? Or is it better to play the speakers more quietly, at levels where no bass distortion is present, until they break in more and increase the level then?