Steve,
Actually I didn't use the words "bad" or "better" so quotes are not
inappropriate. I said that "I found that some speakers sounded
disappointingly harsh and thin when new". Nowhere did I say that that I
expected them to sound that way. I found that out by listening.
Did the speakers change, or was it just my attitude? I always thought it
was the speakers that changed, but then nobody knows the depths of their own
mind. I may mention that many of my independent minded argumentative young
salesmen who loved to have a contrary opinion heard the same thing. Or
maybe their attitude changed.
My "standards of proof appear to be somewhat less than rigorous". I admit
that am not a scientist doing rigorous testing. I'm just a person telling
what I have found to be so for the general information of the group.
No, I never "investigated". Nor performed controlled tests. I listened a
lot to alot of various stuff.. I thought about it and formed some
conclusions, but my conclusions are the sort of personal unproved
speculation that I would not pass to the group. Similarly I have a computer
that works. I don't know how or why, and I will never investigate why; I'm
just convinced that it does and am willing to say so without further
investigation.

Wylie Williams

"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
Wylie Williams wrote:
After being an audiophile for 25 years I worked in my audio store for 22
years and I have some experience with break-in of speakers. I found
that
some speakers sounded disappointingly harsh and thin when new, so in my
store we started breaking them in so we could make them sound their
best.
Depending on the models they sounded deeper, warmer ,and smoother with
continued play until a certain point was reached, depending on the
speaker.
And, no, it was not getting that we were getting accustomed to the sound
because we did not listen to the speakers while they were being broken
in.

You're expecting them to sound ''bad' at first and 'better'
when you're done. Amazingly enough, they do. But the question remains,
was the change in the speakers or in your 'attitude'?

We di it three ways: we played them loud overnight on FM while the store
was
closed, or we used CDs (including some "break-in" and CDs with bass test
frequencies), or we ran the speakers off the lower voltage taps of a
transformer. For this we set up the speakers in a receiving shed, put
them
face to face, connected them out of phase and let them rip for a week or
so.
We proved to ourselves time after time that break in is a reality for
speakers, some more so than others, and more important usually on the
better
speakers, especially the ones with butyl surrounds.

Your standards of proof appear to be somewhat less than rigorous.

As for wire break in, that too is real, though not always dramatic. My
most
dramatic personal experience was when using 25 foot silver coated
speaker
wire in my home. The first listen was dreadful. Extremely and
unlistenably
harsh. At that time I was already a believer in cable break in and I had
a
device called a cable enhancer that used a proprietary test tone to
break in
cables and interconnects. After 10 days of break in I found the cables
to be
vastly inproved. My wife, an impartial observer, had hated the cables
first
time. When I played them after break in she said she liked the sound
and
asked what I had changed. She was amazed that the cables that had been
so
dreadful were now an improvement over my previous speaker wire.

Classic.

I'm not selling anything. Having insufficient technical background I
don't
know why cable and speaker break in work beneficially.

You worked in audio for 22 years and you never bothered to
investigate *why* this extraordinary phenomenon might be occurring?

But break in is real
for everything in audio as far as I can tell, although it's not always
easy
to tell. The situation in a store let us listen and compare the same
music
on the same sets of speakers so often that we could easily tell changes.

Did you ever, even once, do the comparisons in a controlled fashion, in
all that time?