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Comment by Zergy | Hacker News Reader

Amusing that you bring up engines which do require break in. A brand new motor operates less efficiently producing both less horsepower and less fuel efficent than a broken in motor.

"In general, people no longer break in the engines of their own vehicles after purchasing a car or motorcycle, because the process is done in production." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-in_(mechanical_run-in)#En...

Anyways there is very little dispute that headphones sound different off the shelf compared to having been used for a significant amount of time. People dispute if those changes are noticeable or not, but few dispute that the sound signature changes.

Anyways you have brought forth no evidence to support your claim, while dismissing evidence against you opinion as non-conclusive. At the least you might want to be less dismissive and silly with your analogies.

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I did in a separate comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7686552

> Shure has tested some thoroughly used pairs of its E1 earphones, which first launched in 1997. And guess what? They measure the same now as when they came off the line. In fact, during the 15 years Shure has been actively selling earphones, its engineers have reached the same conclusion again and again: The sound produced by these tiny transducers during final testing is the same sound you’ll get in a day, in a year, and in five years… unless something goes wrong.

I would agree that IEMs (the E1 is an IEM which is different than headphones) don't require burn in and the signiture change is not noticable. But even your evidence against burn in doesn't dispute headphones with large drivers (traditionally audiphile grade headphones) have sound signiture that alter with use.

Thank you for providing more evidence for my point and against yours. I would reccomend reading past the title next time.

The full paragraph is:

"Matt Engstrom, director of monitoring products at Shure, admits there is evidence that suggests transducers in larger headphones can experience burn-in, and that this could, in theory, produce different sound over time. Again, no one has shown this conclusively, largely because a) companies aren’t rushing to tell audiophiles they’ve been wrong all these years and b) there’s no single industry standard for testing headphones."

Matt Engstrom is not very sure is he? His evidence "suggests" burn-in which "could, in theory" (sounds like the colloquial meaning of 'theory' too, not the scientific meaning) change the sound.

So really no one knows.

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