BS Button List of worthy Myths

[ClaudeJ1]

9 hours ago, Chief bonehead said:

Don’t need to. I have almost 36 years experience. I don’t have to prove anything to you or anyone else. You can believe what you want. Develop your own data. 

It's not a need, but it would have been nice. Like PWK used to do. I did but not accumulate for 36 years because I was not hired to do that for a living. I guess I'm just guilty of too small of a sampling (short on data, unlike you).

 

It just puzzles me that you waste your time cherry picking this kind of BS and making contributions of only a few words each time. You are an amazingly prolific speaker designer. No one will ever question your integrity. I'm just basically saying it's a waste of personal time on your part, and it comes off as simply being lazy writing , rather than educational.

[Khornukopia]

3 hours ago, Edgar said:

But does it sound better? 🙂

I usually wear ear plugs when riding my bikes and motorcycles, to protect my hearing from the wind noise. Saving my ears for the soft, gentle music flowing from my big Klipsch speakers. 

[Edgar]

2 minutes ago, Khornukopia said:

I usually wear ear plugs when riding my bikes and motorcycles, to protect my hearing from the wind noise. 

 

If you get excessive wind noise when riding your bicycle, then you must be very fast. 🙂

 

Old adage among bicyclists: "Anybody who rides a circular route and complains about a headwind the whole way is either very fast or has a bad attitude."

[Khornukopia]

15 hours ago, ODS123 said:

Claude said  "I've not measured anything that drifted from specifications more than a few percent", not "sound 2% better".  

 

You are right to point that out. I should have written "a few percent different" not "2 percent better".

[ClaudeJ1]

13 hours ago, Khornukopia said:

 I just rolled past 1,000 km on my half year old mountain bike. I like it more now than I did when it was new.        

LOL,Same is true with speakers.

[ClaudeJ1]

16 hours ago, Khornukopia said:

 

A few percent improvement in performance is usually classified as success in most technical and athletic aspects of our lives, and the reason many people establish goals and try harder to achieve them.

 

A few percent increase in taxes would be considered a significant burden to most taxpayers. 

 

So, if a new loudspeaker might sound 2% better after xx hours of use, what is so difficult with accepting that as a distinct probability?

 

 

Acceptability yes. Blown out of proportion to the Consumer is BS/Mythical.

[ClaudeJ1]

15 hours ago, Chief bonehead said:

Whether it takes 20 minutes or 200 hours, they break in. I will tell you that I don’t have 200 hours to waste. We apply voltage to get the drivers to 80%of their excursion level. Woofers for 30 minutes at 20 Hz free air.  And compressions drivers at 100 Hz for 30 minutes, no horn load. We check to make sure that they have achieved natural state by letting them cool down and doing a freq and impedance. And you would surprise when they line up almost on top of each other. And when a driver doesn’t, then something else is wrong…….there. I said it. 

Thank you. This is the one I missed.

[Khornukopia]

3 minutes ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

Acceptability yes. Blown out of proportion to the Consumer is BS/Mythical.

 

That is true.

[PrestonTom]

20 minutes ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

It's not a need, but it would have been nice. Like PWK used to do. I did but not accumulate for 36 years because I was not hired to do that for a living. I guess I'm just guilty of too small of a sampling (short on data, unlike you).

 

It just puzzles me that you waste your time cherry picking this kind of BS and making contributions of only a few words each time. You are an amazingly prolific speaker designer. No one will ever question your integrity. I'm just basically saying it's a waste of personal time on your part, and it comes off as simply being lazy writing , rather than educational.

 

Claude, This is an odd way to encourage an expert to provide their insights. Personally, I am quite interested in the knowledge of experts.

 

Many times listening is preferable to arguing.

 

That is the extent of my insight.

 

[Curious_George]

I can understand why CBH is brief and sometimes may just overlook a question or comment... he has to. In reality, anything CBH says or writes can be used in a negative manner. The Internet proved that 10 minutes after in went online. 

 

 

[ODS123]

So, as I see it, this discussion can be summarized as following:

 

Break-in that is barely measurable and barely audible in 20 HRs or more: MAYBE.

 

>20+ hours of Break-in that can take a speaker from "Unimpressed" to "Love it":  MYTH.

 

If you don't love your new speakers right out of the box, don't expect "break-in" to change this.

[ClaudeJ1]

5 hours ago, Curious_George said:

I can understand why CBH is brief and sometimes may just overlook a question or comment... he has to. In reality, anything CBH says or writes can be used in a negative manner. The Internet proved that 10 minutes after in went online. 

 

 

Understandable, but he still owns all the options here.

[Islander]

20 hours ago, Khornukopia said:

                                                                   I just rolled past 1,000 km on my half year old mountain bike. I like it more now than I did when it was new.        

 

Naturally.  The seat is finally broken in and is much less painful to do a long ride on.  That’s your primary contact point, right?

[Islander]

52 minutes ago, ODS123 said:

So, as I see it, this discussion can be summarized as following:

 

Break-in that is barely measurable and barely audible in 20 HRs or more: MAYBE.

 

>20+ hours of Break-in that can take a speaker from "Unimpressed" to "Love it":  MYTH.

 

If you don't love your new speakers right out of the box, don't expect "break-in" to change this.

 

Something that seems to be overlooked in many of the comments here:  Heritage Series speakers, and maybe other lines and even other brands of speakers, are not “fresh out of the box” when they leave the factory, since they likely have had a brief test before leaving the driver factory and another test (brief or not) after being installed in the speaker, as part of the final quality control check.  

 

Chief Bonehead explained how Klipsch drivers are run in before the speakers leave the factory, which takes care of much of the initial part of break-in.  The customer only experiences the last part of it, which is why it seems to be barely noticeable, or even unnoticeable, to some of the commenters in this thread.

[Travis In Austin]

7 hours ago, ClaudeJ1 said:

It's not a need, but it would have been nice. Like PWK used to do. I did but not accumulate for 36 years because I was not hired to do that for a living. I guess I'm just guilty of too small of a sampling (short on data, unlike you).

 

It just puzzles me that you waste your time cherry picking this kind of BS and making contributions of only a few words each time. You are an amazingly prolific speaker designer. No one will ever question your integrity. I'm just basically saying it's a waste of personal time on your part, and it comes off as simply being lazy writing , rather than educational.

I think it is lazy listening and reading. It's all there.

 

It's also apples and oranges. What Roy's burn in is for and the goal is different and apart from what the end user is doing. 

 

Break-in is a thing, at least with the drivers that Roy samples and ends up using. Is it a real thing for the end user? 

 

I think there should be a two day Bonehead class on run in from the designer's perspective. Curve before run-in, do a run-in demonstration, curve after run-in. Compare. 

 

Curve 10, new in the box, drivers, overlay the graphs to each other, look at the ranges. Compare to natural state drivers. 

 

Curve a new driver (known to have significant changes after a 20 minute lab run in), put it in an enclosure and run it at normal listening level on music starting the first day of class. Curve it after 5 hours at the end of the first day. Curve it after 24 hours the next day. 

 

The fact that drivers require some sort of break-in is NOT a myth at the design level deserving of a BS Button. We know there will be some changes to get to "natural state." Bonehead can see and (apparently) hear them before and after run-in.

 

What gets put into the speakers which reach the consumer is new, out of the box drivers, no run-in. We know that it will take some time for them to get to their "natural state." Whether the average hi fi  audio consumer can tell a difference when he hooks it up at home or not is a whole other question. I'm assuming that some can, and some can't. 

 

Not a myth, doesn't get a BS Button. 

 

 

I think there are bigger and better myths that deserve the BS Button. 

 

Burn in for speaker wires (high dollar or not)

 

Burn in for capacitors or not (lot of places out there that say you need hours of burn in on the network caps to reach full performance).

 

Do SS AMP power transistors need burn in? 

 

 

[jimjimbo]

How about curving some Crites components at the same time? See what all the fuss is about…

[Edgar]

10 minutes ago, Travis In Austin said:

Burn in for capacitors or not (lot of places out there that say you need hours of burn in on the network caps to reach full performance).

 

At my former employer (I'm now retired), we set up a test of a dozen or so capacitors operating on the medium voltage line. These were special film capacitors designed to face 7200 VAC @ 60 Hz continuously, so we were testing them for premature failure and any changes in their performance parameters. Over the first month their capacitance changed by a few percent, and then stabilized. 

 

Now audio capacitors will never face anything like 7.2 kV, but the example does offer at least some evidence that capacitors "break-in".

Edited May 24, 2022 by Edgar
clarification

[Travis In Austin]

23 minutes ago, Islander said:

 

Something that seems to be overlooked in many of the comments here:  Heritage Series speakers, and maybe other lines and even other brands of speakers, are not “fresh out of the box” when they leave the factory, since they likely have had a brief test before leaving the driver factory and another test (brief or not) after being installed in the speaker, as part of the final quality control check.  

 

Chief Bonehead explained how Klipsch drivers are run in before the speakers leave the factory, which takes care of much of the initial part of break-in.  The customer only experiences the last part of it, which is why it seems to be barely noticeable, or even unnoticeable, to some of the commenters in this thread.

No, I don't think he said that. It's a very, very critical point. What he said was "he" (i.e., the lab) runs in drivers for their purposes - selection of drivers for use in a product, design of balancing networks, etc. He said that in addressing whether drivers need some time to achieve their "natural state." That's "his world." It has nothing to do what what goes into end-user products. 

 

Brand new, fresh out of the box, drivers go into the products made in Hope (at least from what I have observed). They do one "test" at the end of the line on Heritage products and it takes less than 5 seconds. I don't believe there is any run-in of any type on the drivers that go into the end user products. 

.

[ClaudeJ1]

8 hours ago, PrestonTom said:

 

Claude, This is an odd way to encourage an expert to provide their insights. Personally, I am quite interested in the knowledge of experts.

 

Many times listening is preferable to arguing.

 

That is the extent of my insight.

 

I'm thinking you might want to start a thread on that specific topic. This one has gone far beyond my original intent.

To be contiued........................

[Islander]

14 minutes ago, Travis In Austin said:

No, I don't think he said that. It's a very, very critical point. What he said was "he" (i.e., the lab) runs in drivers for their purposes - selection of drivers for use in a product, design of balancing networks, etc. He said that in addressing whether drivers need some time to achieve their "natural state." That's "his world." It has nothing to do what what goes into end-user products. 

 

Brand new, fresh out of the box, drivers go into the products made in Hope (at least from what I have observed). They do one "test" at the end of the line on Heritage products and it takes less than 5 seconds. I don't believe there is any run-in of any type on the drivers that go into the end user products. 

.

 

Aren’t the drivers also run for at least a few seconds in the factory where they’re built?