Hi
I’m a fairly new member and have been getting some good advice on this forum. My first headphones I bought a few weeks ago were the Sennheiser HD650. At first I didn’t like them too much. They sounded a bit out of tune – especially on piano. Good pianists seemed to be hitting a lot of wrong notes! I thought it might be jitter as I remember from my vinyl days many years ago that wow and flutter (called jitter with digital sources I think) were most noticeable on piano. However the jitter specs on the dac I’m using were fine.
Anyway after a few weeks this “tunelessness” seems to have disappeared and the HD650’s seem to have more bass and generally sound great. I’m now thinking this might be due to running in or breaking in whatever the correct term is. I thought this was an audiophile myth at first but perhaps there is some truth in it. Has anybody else experienced this with the HD650? Is it just the driver loosening up or might it have something to do with the earcups fitting my head better now?
I’ve now ordered a pair of AKG K701’s which should arrive in a few days and will probably buy the Beyerdynamic DT880’s as well to experience different sound signatures. Will I experience this breaking in with these headphones and for how long or does that vary unit to unit? I looked on another forum and the answers varied widely. Has anyone here got some actual experience with these phones? Again, looking at other forums there seems to be a general belief that the AKG K701’s sound takes a very long time to break in and will be considerably smoother as a result.
Thanks in advance
Mag
I’m a fairly new member and have been getting some good advice on this forum. My first headphones I bought a few weeks ago were the Sennheiser HD650. At first I didn’t like them too much. They sounded a bit out of tune – especially on piano. Good pianists seemed to be hitting a lot of wrong notes!
A headphone is a transducer, it can't change the tuning of the actual notes played, so whatever you're hearing its probably not the headphones.
If you have been told ahead of time that headphones require a break-in time, then that is quite possibly what you will experience yourself, regardless of whether or not it is actually true.
I’m a fairly new member and have been getting some good advice on this forum. My first headphones I bought a few weeks ago were the Sennheiser HD650. At first I didn’t like them too much. They sounded a bit out of tune – especially on piano. Good pianists seemed to be hitting a lot of wrong notes!
A headphone is a transducer, it can't change the tuning of the actual notes played, so whatever you're hearing its probably not the headphones.
Thanks for that.
I wonder if I had some setting wrong somewhere which I've now inadvertently corrected as it was quite noticeable before.
Thanks again
Mag
If you have been told ahead of time that headphones require a break-in time, then that is quite possibly what you will experience yourself, regardless of whether or not it is actually true.
Thanks for your reply.
In your opinion does break in not actually exist? Is this the McGurk effect or something similar where we hear what we expect to hear?
Thanks again
Mag
P.s. I was definitely experiencing something as I've replied to the poster above. As I'm new I conclude I had something plugged in/set up wrong before.
Hi
I’m a fairly new member and have been getting some good advice on this forum. My first headphones I bought a few weeks ago were the Sennheiser HD650. At first I didn’t like them too much. They sounded a bit out of tune – especially on piano. Good pianists seemed to be hitting a lot of wrong notes! I thought it might be jitter as I remember from my vinyl days many years ago that wow and flutter (called jitter with digital sources I think) were most noticeable on piano. However the jitter specs on the dac I’m using were fine.
Please read TOS 8. You agreed to it in order to sign up here. Please put it into practice!
There's no such thing as break-in as far as I know. There is such a thing as broken, though.
I was definitely experiencing something
While it's probable that you may have accidentally set and unset a setting, placebo is one of the things that can make you experience things regardless of the properties of the hardware.
Most placebo, as I experience it, comes from knowing beforehand that some element of the audio chain "should" be better, therefore my brain automatically pays more attention, and behold, I suddenly hear more, and incorrectly attribute this to the element.
The guy Tyll from innerfidelity measured the effect of "break in".
From what I've understood of his article, the changes are too small, and he didn't want to conclude anything .
What I see, there are less changes in the frequency response with time, than there are differences between left & right.
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/measu...headphone-break (http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/measurement-and-audibility-headphone-break)
I agree with the general sentiment, Arny. But to be fair, even if the effects were imagined – which would be my guess – apparently they have now disappeared, which would seem to preclude testing.
Of course, the rule still stands against confident claims about quality and its agents in the present tense. To that end, I agree with pdq that what you experienced was most probably a result of placebo/expectation bias. Certainly the oft-invoked Djinn of Djitter isn’t likely to have been involved in any capacity. It’s strange that the phenomenon seems to have stopped at some time – I presume without you having read/heard anything that could push your expectation bias in the opposite direction – but, as above, it’s difficult to evaluate the claims without (A) a time machine or (B) a high risk of unproductive speculation that would violate TOS #8.
None of this means the thread has to stop: discussion of mechanisms that may plausibly have caused this is fine, although I suspect such things are scarce!
Another experience of headphones' "breaking in" http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=ru...kki05aging.html (http://translate.google.ru/translate?hl=ru&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geocities.jp%2Fmister_terch%2Fzakki05aging.html)
Here (http://rinchoi.blogspot.it/2012/04/introduction-it-is-generally-known-that.html) there is a blogger who claims to have measured and ABXed some subtle differences on an HD650 before and after a 100hrs break-in.
He also gives two recordings, pre and post break-in for others to test, anyway maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any log of his own trials.
I'm in no way linked to this blog neither I endorse his conclusions, it's only something I just remembered to have read.
I'm curious how you would ABX the same device 100 hours apart. Perhaps a time machine that sends you to either of two times, but you don't know which?
Edit: I am not opposed to the concept of a break-in period for headphones or speakers. How the characteristics of elastomers etc. change with vibration is certainly something to consider.
I'm curious how you would ABX the same device 100 hours apart. Perhaps a time machine that sends you to either of two times, but you don't know which?
Buy 2 pairs?
I can believe that the ear pads could compress a bit in the first hundred hours of use, maybe putting the phones closer to your ears.
Another oft mentioned effect is that it's your ears that break in and get used to the new <whatever>.
Neither of those would happen if you are just playing music through phones sitting on a table.
I'm curious how you would ABX the same device 100 hours apart. Perhaps a time machine that sends you to either of two times, but you don't know which?
If I read correctly, he says he left the headphone untouched on a dummy head during the break-in, to make the measures pre and post and record the samples and then ABXed the recordings. Of course in this case we weren't there to assess those conditions, but the method seems sounding to me.
^"inserted in EURI's ear canals , its physical placement must remain untouched for the next 100 hours in order to prevent any placement-related deviations. Each 10 times averaged pre break-in & post break-in measurement data are to be compared, and should any type of change occur, they are to be reproduced back utilizing a binaural recording technique to be ABX-compared."
I can't think of a reason why his method isn't sound either, however I assume the two audio samples he has provided are individual recordings and have nothing to do with any "10 times averaged" technique he, I presume, uses for his plots.
@db1989 not to speak for Arny, bought I *think* he was implying not to speak of jitter until you can prove it exists :-D
Thats a neat test, and I think probably quite valid.
However the effect is quite small. I suspect you'd see similar results just turning the room's thermostat up and down
In your opinion does break in not actually exist?
No more so than anything else being parroted to be true and seemingly solely based on the propagation of anecdotes.
Is this the McGurk effect or something similar where we hear what we expect to hear?
Most likely, yes.
IMO burn-in/break-in is total nonsense! And if it's true (or to the extent it's true), it's a very bad thing!
1. Why isn't it done at the factory? Where I work (non-audio electronics) we burn-in everything at elevated temperature for one week. This is NOT to improve specs/performance. It's to weed-out early failures before the product gets out the door. We are making electronics, not wine or cheese! We test before burn-in, and if the board/unit fails, it does not go into burn-in. We test after burn-in, and if all goes well (which it does at least 95% of the time) the unit passes post burn-in test, and it gets shipped.
2. I've never heard of a reputable manufacturer recommending customer burn-in. Some "snake oil" audiophile manufacturer's do. But again, why don't they do it at the factory?
3. If the specs/performance change after burn-in (or several hours use) by the end user, the manufacturer's factory tests & specs mean nothing... It's a poorly designed & built product by an incompetent manufacturer! If the performance/specs are not stable, the manufacturer has no idea if the customer is getting a great product or a crappy product. There's always going to be some performance drift, aging, and some measurement variation. But the drift should be insignificant, and most importantly the product shouldn't drift out of spec (at least for a year or more).
4. Why is it that the product always seems to improve with burn-in? Why doesn't it sometimes get worse? (Most things deteriorate with time, use, and abuse.) If it really does improve after a few hours, what happens to this unstable product after twice the burn-in time, or longer? Does it continue to improve, or does it begin to deteriorate. Do my $50 headphones sound like $500 headphones after several years, or do the drivers disintegrate and distort badly?
We test after burn-in, and if all goes well the unit passes post burn-in test, and it gets shipped.
Wait.. doesn't that mean you essentially ship pre-damaged equipment?
You light a match and say "this one works!" and put it back in the box.
I've never heard someone suggest burn-in was a bad thing before.
Doug nailed it. Well done!
4. Why is it that the product always seems to improve with burn-in? Why doesn't it sometimes get worse? (Most things deteriorate with time, use, and abuse.)
Amazing coincidence isn't it? No-one's really going to admit their product gets worse are they, or that burn-in reduced the sound quality of their shiny new gear!
We test after burn-in, and if all goes well the unit passes post burn-in test, and it gets shipped.
Wait.. doesn't that mean you essentially ship pre-damaged equipment?
You light a match and say "this one works!" and put it back in the box.
No, what he's referring to is standard practice for equipment that must not fail (e.g. military). All components and the resulting assembly suffer from what's called infant-mortality, whereby new equipment can suffer early failure. Once past a certain threshhold, equipment that didn't fail is likely to be highly reliable for a long (and usually predictable) time. Critical equipment will be taken out of service before it's time-expired. This doesn't only apply to electronic gear, things like jet-engines are treated similarly.
It's a different idea from burn-in or break-in, which is usually claimed to improve equipment in some way. It makes sense for mechanical equipment, where components bedding-in to each other is a real and demonstrable effect. For electronic gear and especially transducers, it's dubious.
Bathtub curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve)
Here (http://rinchoi.blogspot.it/2012/04/introduction-it-is-generally-known-that.html) there is a blogger who claims to have measured and ABXed some subtle differences on an HD650 before and after a 100hrs break-in.
He also gives two recordings, pre and post break-in for others to test, anyway maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any log of his own trials.
I'm in no way linked to this blog neither I endorse his conclusions, it's only something I just remembered to have read.
The google translation of the conclusion of the first of his references (in Japanese), which he claims supports his thesis is:
"A result of the aging 200h the GS1000, Frequency characteristic for the (amplitude), I think to be no difference between the measurement error or more."
My interpretation of that there was no significant difference once typical variations were considered.
The cited paper and some other of its references don't seem to be as careful or thorough.
No, what he's referring to is standard practice for equipment that must not fail (e.g. military). All components and the resulting assembly suffer from what's called infant-mortality, whereby new equipment can suffer early failure. Once past a certain threshhold, equipment that didn't fail is likely to be highly reliable for a long (and usually predictable) time. Critical equipment will be taken out of service before it's time-expired. This doesn't only apply to electronic gear, things like jet-engines are treated similarly.
Those practices, and strict quality control in general, are required in fields like military, medical, avionics, automotive and the like, where failing devices could cause catastrophic results like death, injuries or economic loss or in fields like scientific or research labs where the customer is very competent and could sue the seller if the device acts out of specifications. And they do have a cost! DVDdoug, how much of the production cost (not selling price) of the device your company produce is due to QC (burn-in, factory calibration etc...)?
With audio gears we are in a completely different field: none will be actually harmed by a deviation of some percent of distortion, plus audiophiles often are technically very incompetent people who believe in magic and kitchen table tweaks to improve engineering choices and companies try to minimize production costs, no matter how disproportionately high they will charge their customers: that's business! A certain rate of warranty repairs or even rejects are far cheaper than a systematic aging procedure and higher rate production scraps.
That said, personally I've never experienced performance variations that can be consistently related to any burn-in effect and don't believe this could happen in just properly designed electronics, not after a few hundred working hours and not as an improvement, for sure. I only keep an open mind for transducers where mechanics is involved (and for the reasons above).
Don't we have some type of acoustic memory, a frame of reference to what things are "supposed" to sound like, that may take some time to accommodate a change in that frame of reference?
IMO burn-in/break-in is total nonsense! And if it's true (or to the extent it's true), it's a very bad thing!
3. If the specs/performance change after burn-in (or several hours use) by the end user, the manufacturer's factory tests & specs mean nothing... It's a poorly designed & built product by an incompetent manufacturer! If the performance/specs are not stable, the manufacturer has no idea if the customer is getting a great product or a crappy product. There's always going to be some performance drift, aging, and some measurement variation. But the drift should be insignificant, and most importantly the product shouldn't drift out of spec (at least for a year or more).
Can't it be the manufacturer is aware of changing specs due to ware and tare/burn-in and compensate for this? As conducers are not purely electronical but also mechanical (moving/vibrating parts), I expect they can ware. Bend something often enough and it's integrity will degrade (hair fractures). Compensating will likely have to be a compromise and aimed at an average if the performance keeps changing throughout the product's life. I wonder if this break-in or ware is linear or has a steep curve in the start and then levels out...
Don't we have some type of acoustic memory, a frame of reference to what things are "supposed" to sound like, that may take some time to accommodate a change in that frame of reference?
Yes and it lasts on the order of a few seconds. Anything beyond that point is prone to being influenced by factors that may not even be related to the actual experience of interest.
This should not be news to anyone who has followed one of the many similar open discussions that exist on the forum.
DVDdoug, how much of the production cost (not selling price) of the device your company produce is due to QC (burn-in, factory calibration etc...)?
The last time I was doing "shake & bake" testing it took a 25 cent part up to about 2 dollars. This was with hundreds of parts in a rack.
Can't it be the manufacturer is aware of changing specs due to ware and tare/burn-in and compensate for this? As conducers are not purely electronical but also mechanical (moving/vibrating parts), I expect they can ware. Bend something often enough and it's integrity will degrade (hair fractures). Compensating will likely have to be a compromise and aimed at an average if the performance keeps changing throughout the product's life. I wonder if this break-in or ware is linear or has a steep curve in the start and then levels out...
I won't hold my breath for this to get beyond the realm of conjecture. If I did I'd be long dead.
Wait.. doesn't that mean you essentially ship pre-damaged equipment?
You light a match and say "this one works!" and put it back in the box.
No... It's not damaged in any way. It's called burn-in not burn-up! And, sure hope the headphones don't burn-up during their 1st use!
You may not want to buy a used car, but you probably don't want to buy one that's never been started or road-tested either...
If you are testing bolts, you can do destructive testing (pull or shear 'till it breaks) or non-destructive testing (pull to the specified strength). Obviously you can't sell one that's been destroyed (but you can sell one from the same batch). A bolt that has been non-destructively tested can be sold, and is generally preferred in critical applications. I guess the guys building the new San Francisco Bay Bridge forgot to (non-destructively) test the bolts!
DVDdoug, how much of the production cost (not selling price) of the device your company produce is due to QC (burn-in, factory calibration etc...)?
The last time I was doing "shake & bake" testing it took a 25 cent part up to about 2 dollars. This was with hundreds of parts in a rack.
I don't have the numbers... We are not selling "consumer" products. We are manufacturing in small quantities in the USA, so our stuff is not cheap. But, burn-in isn't that expensive. It's just an extra week of inventory-holding time and a some electricity for the heat. The double-testing (before and after burn-in) does about double the test-time. But, that's only a small part of the total labor. The pre-burn test often involves some extra steps, such as programming, and since there are some manufacturing errors and pre burn-in failures to be repaired/corrected, there is often troubleshooting time involved in the pre-burn-in test. This can be significant. If it takes half a day to test 20 units, you might have one failure that takes another half-day to repair,* or maybe you spend a half-day and a PC board ends up getting scrapped. Since post burn-in failures are rare, the 2nd test usually goes faster than the 1st test. So if you look at "technician time", the burn-in and post burn-in test don't actually double the test-time.
Like most small manufacturers,
most of our cost is overhead... Direct labor is not significant! The engineers & managers make the "big bucks". We have about 9 employees (some part time). There are two of us in direct manufacturing (one Assembler and I'm a "Test Engineer" mostly doing technician work), plus one person in materials (purchasing, shipping/receiving & stockroom).
* If you've never worked in manufacturing, you might be surprised to learn that some "brand new" products off the production line have been repaired. I knew it was common in electronics, but I was surprised when someone who used to work for an autombile manufacturer told me she'd done "body work" on the production line! If you are doing high volumes, say making iPhones, you've got to do better and get almost 100% quality without "fussing around" troubleshooting & repairing things.
Don't we have some type of acoustic memory, a frame of reference to what things are "supposed" to sound like, that may take some time to accommodate a change in that frame of reference?
Do you think! ;-)
IME that is the biggest part of the audio break in myth.
If you've never worked in manufacturing, you might be surprised to learn that some "brand new" products off the production line have been repaired. I knew it was common in electronics, but I was surprised when someone who used to work for an autombile manufacturer told me she'd done "body work" on the production line!
Right, before mass production, parts were hand fitted during assembly. Mass production was enabled by precise parts that all fit together on the first try.
Some hand fitting was common on automotive production lines through at least the 1960s. One stop on the line was a guy with a bar of lead and a torch, who smoothed over some of the sheet metal joints before painting, for example. The next guy took a few strokes with a file. The next guy had a power disc sander.
I worked on computers near the production lines at Buick in the late 1960s and about 1/5 of the cars took work to get off the end of the line. There were a few cars that were so flawed that they never left the plant and were used for tow and push and the like.
One big difference between Packard and Rolls Royce Merlin engines in WW2 were that the RR engines were all hand fitted, which made field repairs far more time consuming. Packard scrapped that approach for their US production and replaced hand fitting with precisely made parts that just fit, so any field repairs could be performed with off-the-shelf parts that fit into any engine.
The big pay off comes when it is faster to simply make parts right than hand fitting them. Often this involves making parts and then inspecting them and reworking or scrapping the ones that fail inspection.
If you are doing high volumes, say making iPhones, you've got to do better and get almost 100% quality without "fussing around" troubleshooting & repairing things.
We could hope for that to be universal, but there is still a lot of breaking equipment down into subassemblies that are individually tested before final assembly.
For example 100% testing of chips is usually still done by the chip manufacturers.
Where I work we use a factor of ten rule. It costs ten times more to fix or discard a defective module once it is assembled into an instrument, and ten times more to fix an instrument at a customer site than to fix it before it ships.
One big difference between Packard and Rolls Royce Merlin engines in WW2 were that the RR engines were all hand fitted, which made field repairs far more time consuming. Packard scrapped that approach for their US production and replaced hand fitting with precisely made parts that just fit, so any field repairs could be performed with off-the-shelf parts that fit into any engine.
Still, the North American Mustang only become a success in the WWII when the Allison was replaced by the RR Merlin...
Let's not drift any further off-topic. Use the PM system or start something in the off-topic forum if you wish to add your two cents on WWII-era manufacturing.
Don't we have some type of acoustic memory, a frame of reference to what things are "supposed" to sound like, that may take some time to accommodate a change in that frame of reference?
Yes and it lasts on the order of a few seconds. Anything beyond that point is prone to being influenced by factors that may not even be related to the actual experience of interest.
This should not be news to anyone who has followed one of the many similar open discussions that exist on the forum.
Not the direction I was thinking about, more like how long does it take before we stop noticing some acoustic variation. Like staying in a hotel and having trouble sleeping due to road noise the first night or two, but after a few days you don't consciously hear it and sleep just fine.
Ok, that makes sense too.
Hi
I'm the OP - I've been reading all your posts and it has been very informative. I've also looked at some of linked articles and it seems that break in may exist but is pretty minor. I'd like to update on two matters which might affect my position:
1. I was originally using a Fiio E7 docked into the top of my E9 (had been using for over a year for gaming audio). About two weeks after getting the HD650 I docked the E7 into the E9 using the normal line in for the amp (the wobble in the dock port had been annoying me for ages but never got round to using the adapter for the E7 which allowed me to do this before). I wonder if this inadvertently cured the problem - I was switching the set up around for a different reason. I'm now using an O2 with ODAC inside so this won't occur again.
2. I got a pair of AKG K701's yesterday and have listened to them for hours. They seem fine - nothing sounds out of tune or harsh at all. They sound different to the HD650 but both sound good and tuneful/musical.
In the light of the above I'm inclined to think my docking error probably caused the problem I put down to break in since it seemed to clear up later.
Thanks for all your help.
Regards
Mag
both sound tuneful/musical.
You need to understand that these words don't mean anything.
both sound tuneful/musical.
You need to understand that these words don't mean anything.
To clarify, exactly what those words mean to everybody but their author is highly variable.
I know for sure that
tuneful means something quite different to people who are musicians and people who are music listeners but not musicians.
F*ck the effect of break-in. OP is claiming his headphones are changing the pitch of the recording, why does that sound completely nuts?
Another term was added to the placebophile lexicon.
PRAT -> PRAPT
???
The guy Tyll from innerfidelity measured the effect of "break in".
From what I've understood of his article, the changes are too small, and he didn't want to conclude anything .
What I see, there are less changes in the frequency response with time, than there are differences between left & right.
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/measu...headphone-break (http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/measurement-and-audibility-headphone-break)
On every well thought out piece of audio blogging, the first comment will be from some nut job that still believes in the magic. This one is no different.
Comedy rage inducing gold.
Another term was added to the placebophile lexicon.
PRAT -> PRAPT
???
Whats not to love about placebo? Other than expense.
The fact that people are deluding themselves and others unnecessarily? Assuming we’re talking about faith-based and/or pseudoscientific concepts, whose proponents tend to staunchly oppose efforts to evaluate them in a proper way, I don’t really care how good that type of placebo makes people feel. It’s a toxic mindset that hampers their own understanding of the world and, if propagated to others—as many people evidently feel the need to do—spreads those misconceptions as if truth and reduces everyone’s ability to gain an accurate understanding of existence. The ability to collect and transmit knowledge using valid methods is probably the best thing we have going for us as a species; why shouldn’t we be annoyed whenever said methods are subverted/perverted into nonsense?
Um, </soapbox>. This isn’t directed at the OP or anything, but for the record, that’s my idea of “What[’]s not to love about placebo”.
4. Why is it that the product always seems to improve with burn-in? Why doesn't it sometimes get worse?
I think this one is the most compelling for it being psychological rather than physical.
Placebo is not to be loved, but not hated either. It's to be understood so that people who are told that they may be experiencing it don't immediately feel offended as if you're saying they're nuts. We're all susceptible to it. Ben Goldacre and other MD skeptics have written quite a bit about it, and as it turns out, it usually is more powerful than even many skeptics believe. I was surprised that the color of the placebo pill, for example, can vary its effect. Less surprising is the pill vs. injection form.
I’m not denying the existence of the phenomenon, how interesting it can be, or even its usefulness in spheres such as medicine. What is bad is when people start charging money for products that offer nothing except abstract placebo and weaving wild fanciful tales of how they’re superior in concrete ways. Then you’ve moved from taking advantage of a psychological predisposition for therapeutic purposes, to exploiting people’s lack of knowledge to hawk products that are usually highly overpriced whilst also spreading ignorance and even mistrust of objective methods. The two aren’t comparable.
P.S. Goldacre’s Bad Science is a great book, if very depressing.
I had someone recommend that I candle my ears yesterday.
I agree. It's bad when people take advantage of other people by using it. More understanding and acceptance of the phenomenon would help those being swindled. I've heard so many times the phrases "it can't be placebo cause I know about placebo!", or "...cause I was expecting the opposite!" which are missing the point completely.
Well, I thought there could be moisture , dust or whatever on drivers , that would dissipate quickly after first use.
I got a particular experience with my old iems, the senn ie7 : I found them very bad out of the box, but this impression was gone less than a half hour after.
It's commonly believed at head-fi that the senn iems , needs lot of burning .
It's commonly believed at head-fi that the senn iems , needs lot of burning .
And more than likely why you thought them bad out of the box. You've read the previous posts on placebo right?
One would never be done if one took advice from what's "commonly believed" at head-fi. (Full disclosure: when I was a newbie here I also had the same burn-in questions, misinformation spread by head-fiers.)
I don't see how sharing religion from another forum that is in clear opposition to this forum's principles is in any way constructive. Check the unsubstantiated beliefs at the door; they aren't welcome here. Extrabigmehdi, you've been here long enough to know better than to offer a logical fallacy of appealing to popularity, especially after there was a good-faith attempt to further the discussion through scientific experimentation.
@probedb
And more than likely why you thought them bad out of the box. You've read the previous posts on placebo right?
Placebo, would be indeed the most trivial explanation. But it must be the strongest placebo I've ever experienced . I went from a reaction of disgust, to an opposite one.
Unless there's a way for me, to confirm it was placebo; I won't reject any other explanation.
@greynol
Extrabigmehdi, you've been here long enough to know better than to offer a logical fallacy of appealing to popularity
I thought that the popularity of the phenomenon, makes it at least worth a discussion. Sorry, if that's not the case.
My Senn HD555 was perfect out of the box and remained that way until now. Of course I don't have perfect memory of those first days, so it's hard to say if the phones have significantly degraded in those ~10 years of loving service.
@probedb
Placebo, would be indeed the most trivial explanation.
A trivial explanation in this case is also the most likely one.
But it must be the strongest placebo I've ever experienced.
This does not make it any less likely. Almost by definition you cannot evaluate subjectively and anecdotally how much of a placebo effect you're having.
Unless there's a way for me, to confirm it was placebo; I won't reject any other explanation.
Aliens? Tiny ear unicorns?
I thought that the popularity of the phenomenon, makes it at least worth a discussion. Sorry, if that's not the case.
It's not the case.
I thought that the popularity of the phenomenon, makes it at least worth a discussion. Sorry, if that's not the case.
Do you like Justin Bieber?