On the Measurement and Audibility of Headphone Break-in

[Zeruel83]

I thought some folks would find this an interesting read.
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/measurement-and-audibility-headphone-break

In short.

... the kind of break-in that is mostly talked about is mythic keyboard enthusigasm.

[Marcus]

Colour me unsurprised.

Makes for interesting thoughts when combined with the violin blind test results

[Riverback]

I'm one of those people that think that burn-in does something, but its not that drastic for it to really be noticeable.
Unlike those people that try to burn-in K701's hoping it'll give them more oomph

[Marcus]

There's dozens of reasons people could perceive a difference, the biggest one being confirmation bias.
If you WANT to hear a difference, there's a much greater chance you will. I'm not talking a conscious want but more a subconscious one. Things like having read dozens of articles online discussing burnin and wanting to be able to hear that difference, rather than admitting that maybe they can't hear a difference.

It works for selling cables, hifi-furniture and a whole slew of other stuff that "might" or "could" make a difference, but when measured tells a different story.

Honestly, I don't care either way - I like listening to music, different headphones present it in different ways and sometimes my mood, or other outside influences (eg: alcohol/full moon/hunger/sun spot activity/global warming) influence me to perceive things differently - that's cool, as long as I'm still enjoying the music I'm happy

Audio preference isn't something anyone has been able to benchmark so far. We have as many headphones as there are types of beer because it's a taste thing. They change the labels, release a fancy special edition now and then or side projects, but ultimately a good beer is still a good beer and will be until people stop enjoying beer.

mmm beer.

[GougMan]

Stop talking about beer - you're making me thirsty and it's only about 9:30am !!

On the subject of audio, agree with Marcus that people have different needs/preferences when it comes to music. Normally I don't believe in the whole "burn-in" thing as your ears do adjust to the sound of the headphones over time. But saying that, I'm fairly sure that even taking into account the ears adjusting to the sound, after a while the sound on my headphones did become a little tighter and the bass became cleaner (compared to the sound straight out of the box). Maybe the drivers were just settling down.