How does "burning in the drivers" work?

TastyMidget · December 18, 2013

hey i've been always curious about how people would say,

"oh sounds a lot better after you blast music through the headphone/IEM for some hours and they will sound better"

how does that work ?

i've looked it up http://www.head-fi.org/t/56744/headphone-burn-in-faq , but im still a bit fuzzy about it.

does it change the shape of the drivers?

unidentical · December 18, 2013

I can't say for certain, because I honestly don't know.

But my suspicion is that because of the way speakers are build, the drivers are a little bit elastic, electromagnets deform them in order to produce sound waves. Perhaps after a break in period the drivers loosen up a bit and respond more quickly?

Probably not something average joe would notice. Audiophiles get pretty intense when it comes to proper sound reproduction. It's actually pretty impressive what some of them can pick up on.

ShearMe · December 18, 2013

Many mechanical device - meaning, a machine with moving parts - needs some time for all the components to settle into a groove before their operation ceases to vary, and the driver in a headphone is no different.

Sometimes, burn-in is extreme, and sometimes it changes the sound very little. Sometimes burn-in makes headphones sound better, sometimes it does not.

KaareKanin · December 18, 2013

The idea is that when speakers are factory fresh, they'll be in a slightly different state than intended. Think of a new shoe, it might be stiffer than it's supposed to be when completely new, but use it for a little while, and you'll have softened it up a little and it'll be much better to use.

So a burn in is supposed to exercise the headphone into its intended design parameters. A burn in is nothing special seen from the eyes of the headphone. A burn in will occur either way over time as you use them, but some prefer to just leave the headphones alone while they burn in. There's no reason why you couldn't just use them as you normally would. The burn in would still happen ;-)

Edit: regarding OP, blasting for a few hours won't burn in. Too high volume could apparently damage the headphones, and a few hours isn't enough time to do a burn in, but all of that is described in your link ;-)

Hikaru12 · December 18, 2013

Burn in literally changes the membrane of the drivers. The membrane of any speaker is usually made of a soft material so it can expand and retract similar to muscle fibers. By playing different types of music and introducing different sounds to it the drivers begin to settle in and become accustom to your unique "sonic signature" if you will. So, if you typically listen to bass heavy music as opposed to someone who listens to classical music the drivers will burn in differently and you'll end up with a sound that's unique and natural to you.

Just my 2 cents. I'm no audio expert and some of these guys here would probably know this better than I would. Interesting to note though is that some headphones can take as much as 200 hours to burn in to sound "proper."

ShearMe · December 18, 2013

Burn in literally changes the membrane of the drivers. The membrane of any speaker is usually made of a soft material so it can expand and retract similar to muscle fibers. By playing different types of music and introducing different sounds to it the drivers begin to settle in and become accustom to your unique "sonic signature" if you will. So, if you typically listen to bass heavy music as opposed to someone who listens to classical music the drivers will burn in differently and you'll end up with a sound that's unique and natural to you.

Uh, not like a muscle, which tenses up and contracts in one dimension. The membrane of a speaker/headphone flexes in response to a particular frequency, much like the salt changes patterns in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w

Burn in will not adapt your headphones to your particular favorite music genre - that's just silly.