Breaking-in Techniques for new speakers

[roundmound]

Are there perferred techniques for breaking in new speakers? My 805Ss arrived today and these speakers hopefully will be passed down to my yet to exist children one day and I want to treat them with the delicate gloves they justly deserve. Thank you for any replies.

[roundmound]

I guess this was a stupid question since no replies were posted. Well, as we read, the speakers are breaking in.

[caleb]

Best advice I can give is just to run them playing at a low level for a while, put in a CD and play on repeat.

BTW "a while" means about 200 hours!!!!!

You will notice a huge improvement to the sound after this time.

You can buy a commercial RUN IN disc which basically cycles from about 20Hz up to 20KHz but this drives you crazy after 5 minutes.

[greggz]

Stereophile's Test CD #3 ($9.95) has a "burn-in" track on it. It's basically a 20 second track with a broad range of noise (people banging stuff together, blowing whistles and horns, sine wave tones, etc...). You set the volume at a safe level, press play and then track-repeat and let it run for as long as you can stand it.

Two tips: Listening to it for an extended period of time is borderline torture, especially to pets. And, if you wire one speaker out of phase with the other and point them at each other it does cancel out the awfulness to some degree.

[PewterTA]

Just sit down, and LISTEN to the speakers. Use them as you normally would. YOU will start breaking in around the same time THE SPEAKERS do...

I listened to my speakers normally for about a month and every time I'd use them they got better and better. Then one day I just cranked the music...ever since then, they've been phenominal.

I don't think there's any great technique to it, just keep playing and listening to them. There's as much adaptation by YOU as there is to the speakers being broken in. There's no need to buy a special CD, or change the phase of the speakers.

[roundmound]

Thanks all.

Greggz, your input is exactly what I was inquiring about but I don't think I or the cats could handle the annoying sounds. I think my approach will be just what Pewter suggested - sit back, listen and enjoy the ride using the philosophy as with cars - drive cautiously the first 1000 miles to allow for breakin, then floor it. I can't wait.

Darin