break in CD

[Tom]

I don't think "break-in" is an exact Science. The first hour produces most of the desired result, beyond that is personal taste.

I recently did an A/B "ear-test" on Omni 10s with Beta 10s where the A cabinet had been broken in and used quite a bit.
The B cabinet was built at the same time, but left empty for a year or so. I finally loaded the B cabinet, taking steps to keep both cabs the same, shaking them down for air leaks and build problems - none existed. Then I set up the A/B test.

Initially the A cabinet had remarkably more low end than the B cabinet, until the B cabinet was broken in with the 80 Hz (+/- 40) warble from Bink's CD. Unknown volume (loud!) and more than an hour.

Now the cabs are indistinguishable.

All of the Beta drivers were purchased at the same time. The B drivers sat for a year under friendly climate control while the A drivers worked hard in a band situation, living in a trailer through a year of freeze/thaw cycles and 100 DegreeF extremes.

[Tom Smit]

What does the CD sound like through other speakers, or headphones

pretty much sounds the same...on the cpu speakers (crappy 2"er's), ghetto blaster, etc. I wasn't too much concerned.

Just tried a new "project" and it sounded ok...might just burn another cd.
Thanks for the help!

TomS

Well, here is what I did. I made sure that Audacity output levels were at about 70%, and the track gain was at 0 db. Then I "exported as WAV" to my flash drive, brought the drive to someone else to burn the disc since my burner is a read-only unit for now. The CD is clean! Yee-haw! After running the speaker open air for 4 hours, I thought I'd try to see how much power could be put in before the cone wouldn't travel farther-it was at 16-17 volts and I heard audible noise, sorta like clacking. The spider was pushing farther down to the coil tooI. It also started putting out an odor (magic smoke about to be on it's way?). It was only for 2-3 seconds before I put it back to 10.5 volts.

TomS

[WB]

How long do you generally loop the 31.5Hz track until the the speakers are properly broken in, 8 hours, 24 hours? Thanks.

8 hours would probably be enough, but unless you needed the speakers for the ninth hour, I would leave them on for a full 24 hours. The last 3015LF I did I left on for 10 days, and the DPro12 I left for 2 weeks.

I think most of the break-in happens right away, but no harm in leaving the loop running a lot longer if time isn't an issue.