Burn in for new equipment?

Just got a 555ES w/ mods from Oade Brothers. Haven't done any serious listening yet but was wondering how long should it take to burn in? Should I expect a difference after the first 30-40 hours?

Thanks,

Chris

 

I like to enjoy listening to the music over the first 100 hours or so while, going back to my audition music on a regular basis in order to gauge an items progress.

From what I understand, the Sonys take quite a long time to reach their full potential.

 

Based on my experience, give it about 50-100 hours.

 

I have been meaning to ask this on an audiophile forum for awhile: What exactly is happening during the "burn-in" period with digital hardware?

In theory, you would think that a laser-based system would not need to "burn in", yet our ears tell us otherwise.

So, what mysterious things are happening in there?

 

I believe they are now made by ELP - see www.elpj.com based on the older Finial design

There's no needle like no needle - Andrew

 

I have never understood how this is possible with solid state equipment.

 

Be it solid state or tube, electronics are affected by temperature and they age over time. From infancy to demise, their performance gets better as they burn in, reaches a steady state (hopefully for a long period of time), then starts to decade. Isn't this true for most things in life?

Evreything changes and nothing lasts forever.

 

Paul, I do see your point.

But, are not these electronics at their best performance when they are new (and hopefully true to design specifications) and then decline (wear) from that point on?

 

If that were the case Matt...This thread wouldn't even exist. Too many people have reported on just about every compnent ever made that it always improves after the initial 100 hours of use. Me included!

 

I believe in burn-in. All those caps, wires, etc like to form and become settled to the new set-up & electricity. It's like a brand new house settling...

Todd

 

Matt,

This may not be a good analogy. Isn't a Porsche 911 supposed to be built true to the design goals and performance specs? Most definitely. But would it perform best coming off the assembly line? I would say probably not. Its engine, suspensions, and all the bells and whistles needs some loosening up.

You may say that is like comparing apples to oranges. Right. But why should electronics be any different, especially solid state stereo equipment? I guess most of us have a better understanding how things mechanical work so are more comfortable with the idea of them needing a break-in period. To some extent, audiophiles could be more in tune with tube gear sounding better after burn-in because the vacuum tube has been around longer and we can see it in operation, sort of.

Other members have mentioned that burn-in makes a difference on passive elements (capacitors, resistors, wires, transformers, etc.) in a piece of solid state stereo equipment. But I would go even further by saying it also affects the active elements such as transistors. Semiconductor components, discrete or integrated, go through a tremendous amount of stress during the fabrication process. During burn-in, the crystal structure may change microscopically. The atoms may get re-aligned. The dopants could shift ever so slightly and settle into more stable positions. In VLSI chips, aluminum atoms which form the interconnects (in more advanced processes aluminum is being replaced by copper in some layers) will drift when electric currents flow through them (the electromigration phenomenon). I could go on and on and pretend to be a physicist, a semiconductor research scientist, or a process engineer working in a fab but would prefer to stop here.

Should electronic components sound best when new? I think stability and consistency of the components in stereo systems are good to our ears. The proof is in the pudding.

 

Well when I was in the business of making complex power regulation hardware costing lots of money for industrial research and development projects we would burn in all new units. The primary purpose was to ensure reliability because one can expect component failures, if you enjoy such an event, to take place during the first 100 hours of operation. Heat and vibration during this period can disclose component defects and failures. Heat will also change the value of some coils, capacitors and resistors over time. But even with our highly sensitive instrumentation we seldom found that operational specs changed very much. But then again we selected components from reliable sources, with tight tolerances, and our boards were not anywhere as compact as commercial hardware demands. Is it possible for the sound to change, yes; is it typical or likely?

 

Semiconductor companies run burn-in tests on their integrated circuit products to screen out parts that couldn't sustain the tests. High temperature and electric field accelerate the early failure of weak parts, which break down in higher number due to defects at infancy in the well-known "bathtub" curve. I think this time-dependent failure mechanism described by the bathtub curve is valid in many different industries.