Running In New Speakers

[admin_exported]

On purchaisng new speakers you always hear 'You will need to run those in befdore you hear them at their best' and such like, so i was wondering,

"what exactly is running in? why do we have to do it? and what's the best way of doing it?"

On a seprate note, i was trying to find this topic on a hints and tips type section of the forum but couldn't find any. Is it possible to make one for future users, or make it more obvious if there is?

maybe put any other general hints and tips with regards looking after recommended things liek how often ot clean terminals etc, the sort of things where the answer dosn't change regardless of what equiment you have and make them stickies etc. just a thoguht.....

 

[Anonymous]

Recommendations to run in speakers indicate that the speakers will not sound their best brand new and straight out of the box. After a period of use, the components will "bed in" (sorry if that's swapping one piece of jargon for another). This is widely accepted as being true for speakers, since they have moving parts (i.e. the cones). It is much more contentious when in comes to electronics (e.g. amps, but also the electronic components of a speaker, such as the crossover circuit) - some people swear by it, others swear at the merest suggestion that non-moving electrical parts could "change" in any way to improve sound quality.

There are ways which people recommend for running in speakers more quickly, e.g. reversing the polarity on one speaker, placing them on the floor with the cones facing each other just a couple of centimetres apart, putting a blanket over them and running them continously for a couple of days and nights.

The vast majority of owners, however, will simply hook them up to their system and put some hours on them through normal use. About 50 hours should do it, although my Epos M5s took a bit longer to start sounding their best.

It's also debatable how much of the improvement you hear is *real* improvement, and how much is simply your ears becoming acclimatised to the new equipment.