Phil! This is a nice sunny day here, so I'm rather going to equip myself with some nice cold ale. I appreciate our discussion as being an exchange of beliefs and opinions, without any pressure to actually persuade the other party. Otherwise, I would suggest vodka as the weapon of choice. Now, as to your postulates.
Phil Leigh;437636 Wrote: > I know many manufacturers believe in / advocate burn-in - but > interestingly others deny it completely. I'm tempted to argue that > Manufacturers are really quite clever and they know that if you have > spent a lot of money on one of their items you want (or even need!) it > to sound good eventually - so "just live with it for a while and it will > sound fine" is good advice from them, since it maximises the chance for > their customer to become tolerant of their new acquisition. I intentionally mentioned manufacturers that I value as being rather straightforward in their approach. (I really wonder what is Monster Cable's opinion on break-in. Given their tactics, they should be the the most vocal proponent). Also, a lot of manufacturers advocate constantly keeping their equipment powered-on (which should really be the case with my PS Audio DAC). Some even put the power switch into a hard-to-reach place. What would be the cunning marketing logic behind this? Are they in conspiracy with power utilities? I have yet to read any scientific explanation of "break-in" processes in capacitors, however my previous DIY experience with Black Gate caps substantiated the manufacturer's claim that they take about 100 hour to break-in, and then revert to intermediate condition after some time powered-down. Of course, my experience relied on my _subjective_ perception (more on this later). Phil Leigh;437636 Wrote: > Electro-magnetic burn-in phenomena have no basis in scientific fact as > far as I can ascertain. Indeed, the opposite is demonstrably true - all > components eventually die through "burn-out" of one form or another. I would not argue with this. As I stated, I have not yet seen any credible substantiated explanation. Phil Leigh;437636 Wrote: > On the other hand, the ability of human beings to accomodate or adjust > to less-than-perfect sensory inputs is legendary. Absolutely. Human perception never ceases to amaze me. But it would be a gross oversimplification to view bias as a contaminant affecting some mythical "accurate" perception. For example, the threshold for noticing our own name is significantly lower than for any other stimulus (a fact rather oversimplified for the sake of argument). Is this a result of bias? Yes. Does it corrupt perception? On the contrary. I can't help taking this to a more philosophical level, since this is something I once wrote a course paper on. It is one of the most unfortunate methodological fallacies to postulate or imply that there is OBJECTIVE reality as presented in instrumental measurements, that is reflected in SUBJECTIVE reality as obtained by our senses and then processed by our mind. If we stand on this viewpoint, we are destined to constantly find flaws and errors in our perception, because what we perceive is not really what is measured by instruments. (I am sure you know of quite a few examples of so-called "illusions of perception", the simplest and most famous of which is Muller-Lyer illusion). In fact, the world and its phenomena as we perceive, is much more rich and complex, (in aspects relevant to our existence) than what can be obtained by instrumental measurements. OK, this is an over-generalisation, but we'd have to go through a few bottles of Burgundy (I have a feeling you prefer this appellation just like me!) for me to try to make this more specific. In fact, why don't we take wine as an example? I am not aware of (not that I tried too hard) any instrumental methods to differentiate truly great vintage from simply very good (it must be much easier in the case of quality-vs-substandard wine). Moreover, manufactures provide only vague explanations of what exactly happens with really good vintage wine after it is left to "breathe" for a while after uncorking and decanting (sorry for this crude analogy with "break-in"). Do these differences in fact exist? Maybe not, especially if we rely on "objective" measurements, such as acidity, volatile fractions content (whatever they use these days). But we trust our senses that they do, and the winemakers, buyers and reviewers rely on theirs. Of course, we might deem this one of the longest-running scams in human history :-) Oh my, what a long introduction. Blame it on the ale! Also, if you remember, I initially wanted to "duck" when I brought up the subject of "burn-in". Now to the bottom-line. As I mentioned, I was simply stunned by the drastic nature of changes the sound of my set-up was going through during a month following the installation of Chord Silvescreen Bi-wire cable, which replaced a similarly-prices Van den Hul cable (the reason I went for it is because Chord is a screened cable, and my system started picking up cell phone interference after I switched from solid state to tube amp). The differences were not just about going from unpleasant to pleasant, it was about gradually starting to hear aspects of recording initially missing immediately after installation of the cable, and then aspects I haven not yet heard with the previous cable. It was not only about the "sounstage" or "bass tightness". It was at times much more obvious, such as instrument parts I have not noticed before in an orchestra. Blame it on "human perception"? Of course! Attribute it to bias? Could be, but in my present occupation, when I have to constantly and repeatedly evaluate changes in sound and picture, and then do this again the next day, and then next month in a different environment, I think I have pretty much learned to factor in and thus filter out my moods, states, preferences, etc - the bias. P.S. Wanted to add that some time when I am done with my present project I am planning to bring my M-Audio interface home and do some Audiodiffmaker tests along the lines you described. It is my consistent impression that my Cambridge Audio player sounds "better" than my SB Duet when feeding my DAC. I wonder what I find. And by the way, I made a very nice linear power supply for my Duet, toroidal trans, LM 317 reg, Wima caps. The difference? The power chord now is long enough that I can run it to the same power bar as other equipment. Otherwise - none! (So, I might be not as biased, after all!) So, this was probably the longest post I ever wrote in any forum. You challenged me! I certainly hope you enjoy your wine! In the meanwhile, I am going to restock myself with ale. Cheers! Alexei -- pryamomimo ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pryamomimo's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=21964 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=65035 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
