Burn-in

[BillyB]

Just checking to see if anyone had a strong opinion on the best way to burn-in new speakers as I'm in that mode right now with my new Quad 22L's.Is it best to stay at a moderate volume initially or is that a myth.I do like to play my speakers fairly loud but of course I have no problem waiting until they're broken in before I crank them up a bit.

[JoeE SP9]

Wire them out of phase with each other. Turn them so they face each other place them close together and let them cook. This way you can run the volume fairly high without disturbing things because the sound tends to cancel itself out.:cool:

[Jimmy C]

Just checking to see if anyone had a strong opinion on the best way to burn-in new speakers as I'm in that mode right now with my new Quad 22L's.Is it best to stay at a moderate volume initially or is that a myth.I do like to play my speakers fairly loud but of course I have no problem waiting until they're broken in before I crank them up a bit.

...ANYTHING should be used TOO hard, whether it be a pair of speakers, a car, even my wif... err, nevermind.

Seriously, why not just listen and enjoy them? Are they not living up to your expectations? I mean, if you have 50 or so hours on them, that should be enough to tell if they are going to "float your boat".

If you're simply worried about beating them up, your ears will tell you.

Gettin' better?

[Dusty Chalk]

Actually, a mono signal should cancel itself out if the two speakers are wired in phase with each other, and then set up facing each other. (I tried it, it was louder out of phase.)

In answer to the original question -- there's two schools of thought: (1) that you should burn them in at the volume at which you will listen to them, and (2) that you should burn them in slightly louder than the volume at which you will listen to them (and of course there's the school of thought that burn-in is unnecessary). Either way, you will want to use either a specialized burn-in source (there are disks made specifically for this purpose) or full-range music. I prefer the latter (mostly because I'm too cheap to pay $75 for a burn-in CD). The most important thing in burn-in is the bass, so make sure whatever you burn it in with has plenty of bass (but it is explicitly not recommended to play pure low frequency tones through your woofers -- that may damage them).

See here (http://www.gr-research.com/burnin.htm).