Burnin - Should you bother? · Marcus Oct 31, 01:51 PM

There’s a lot of divided opinions on this one, I’ll give mine.

First – there are no long-term benefits of burning in your headphones. It’s purely a short term thing. Whether burnin effects the sound of the headphones, your your perception of how the headphones sound hasn’t really been established. There was a time where I swore that a good long burnin made a difference, now I have unlimited access to multiple pairs of the same model I can do proper tests – comparing “burnt in” models to ones that aren’t. The differences aren’t as big as some might think or claim.

Despite that, my belief is to form a proper opinion of any audio equipment you should stick with it for a while, get used to it and the hole it left in your wallet. Whether it’s a case of the equipment’s sound characteristics changing over time or it’s just you getting used to the sound is a moot point.

In a lot of cases people will judge something on first impression, but to form a valid opinion of audio you kind of have to grok it first. Examine it from multiple directions, give it time.

If you think running your headphones overnight with some kind of white/pink noise CD is going to chance the sound, go for it.

The only thing I do not recommend is running frequency sweeps at high volumes because this could damage the drivers. There are cases of people hating the way headphones sound after “burning them in”.

Bottom line, simplest way to burn them in (in my opinion) is to put a CD that you like that has a good range of frequencies or styles of music on repeat, just above your normal listening volume, overnight.However the only time I ever bother doing this is when I’m testing new headphones for either eval or review. The rest of the time I don’t even bother, if burnin is real the headphones will go through the process in their own time. You shouldn’t be forming an opinion in the first day or so anyway, give them at least a week or two of solid listening (without switching back and forth to others).

Anyway, that’s my thoughts – I hope I make sense

Posted in: Care at Oct 31, 01:51 PM

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