Best Speakers for Vinyl

[Mash]

Well, Joe, "breaking in" implies "wearing out" or "fatigue failure".

I have not worn any audio equipment out except some tubes and a power supply cap that failed c1974. I have fried a cone speaker, and I have had a cone surround rot (long ago). I would not classify any of these as fatigue failures.

To "break something in" means that you have introduced a permanent and irreversable inelastic change, a redistribution of retained stresses, or a wearing away of material, and so it stands to reason that any real "change" that had resulted from "breaking in" a product will continue to accumulate with further product use until a plastic, wear, or fatigue failure occurs. If a flexing system is operated safely within its fatigue and elastic limits then no change will occur beyond any enviromental or oxidative degredation. This applies to all solids (materials having a grain structure) with the exception of Aluminum which does not demonstrate a fatigue limit.

"Breaking in" an item is a harmless fad in the audiophile world which manufacturers go along with so as to NOT alienate any potential customers. "Breaking in" is a harmless concept so no risk is thereby posed to the manufacturer. But audiophiles will swear that they hear a difference........

Automotive engines do "break in" and (eventually) they will also wear out.

[Mash]

"The Master Handbook of Acoustics" will provide a method to predict room modes based on room dimensions, but this procedure is best done in EXCEL (or equivalent) so that you can then reorder the calculated modes in numerical sequence from lowest to highest to determine how smooth, or how uneven, your room is. You want to see a smoothly rising graph with a uniform slope rather than a series of steps with bunched modes. Note that some judgement will be required when that room's volume is joined to another significant volume by a large opening.

Using more than one sub leads to a lot of work both with regard to placement in the room considering modes and also allowing for cancellation effects between or among subs as a result of their distances apart. If you have two sounds of the same magnitude, frequency, and phase combine, they add to a combined sound 3dB louder than the two original sounds. But if those two sounds are 180 degrees apart in phase, they add to ZERO dB. I have done the two-sub exercise in a large room and it was a good bit of calculating. I am not convinced the work was cost effective but it was fun.