Thoughts on Burn in #1

If you cruise around headphone forums enough you'll partake in many conversations about burn in. Burn in is the process of vibrating your driver with some sort of music such that the driver "breaks in" and achieves the original intended sound. Now, burn in is going to happen no matter what, it happens whenever you listen to music - this burn in I am referring to however, is the accelerated process. When I burn in a pair of headphones, I plug them into a source, play the music a little louder than I like to listen, and then leave them there for days. Currently I'm burning in my new JVCs (see the previous post) and the headphones are wrapped up in a polar fleece sock and inside a drawer to cut down on irritating noise. I use a variety of tracks for burn in including some white, pink, Brownian, and purple noise, sine wave sweeps, bass and drum heavy tracks, some solid classic rock, some classical, etc... I try to use the purpose built tracks as well as some regular listening music in a rotation to give the drivers a full work out. You will hear plenty of people say that they don't believe in burn in... Personally I am on the fence. Burn in theoretically has no negative impact so I just do it on the off chance that it will really improve sound quality. I do have a burn in example however that gives me at least some faith that increased playing time does equate to improved sound quality. I got myself and my wife a pair of PX 100s way back in the day at the same time. I used my constantly and occasionally burned them in. My wife, well, she used hers pretty minimally. Today, the headphones do not sound the same. And in my opinion, my pair sound rounder, fuller, and richer - basically I just feel like I get more out of them than she gets out of hers - more music that is. So anyways, these new JVCs are going to burn in for about 150 hours before they go off with me to Finland. Supposedly, that is about half the burn in time necessary for these to really grow and come into their own. But, last night, after writing that post, I listened to a few albums as I cleaned up the apartment and every track was a pleasant surprise. These are really good sounding headphones. Good enough that I am now looking at some of the JVC iem choices, naturally all Japanese imports!

Why does Japan get the best stuff?

I don't really have any answer to that question - just an example. Recently, I picked up a pair of JVC HA S500 headphones from ebay. These headphones are only sold in Japan - although it is pretty easy to import them from vendors on amazon and on ebay. They are actually pretty cheap - if you were in Japan, they'd only cost you around 40 bucks. Shipped to the US, they end up running around 70.

These headphones are among the first to use carbon nano tube drivers as opposed to drivers made out of materials like titanium or the like. Carbon nano tubes are super stiff and apparently they form a great foundation for a driver. I have a decently collection of portable headphones: PX 100, PX 200 ii, ATH ESW9 re-cabled with canare, and the HD 238 and I've got to say that these are maybe the best of the lot with the possible exception of the ESW9 which wins on sound-stage. The HA S500 fold up though and are pretty lightweight making them ideal for portable usage (18 hour plane flights to Finland? Hello!). They are also emminently modifable - lots of people buy either ATH pleathers/velours or the sennheiser hd-25 pads and they are direct switch outs. Some are even picking up the HM5 pad and just putting them over the stock pads creating a circum aural headphone as opposed to the stock supra aural style. They aren't really anything special to look at (if you want style and sound get v-moda) but they sound excellent and with substantial burn (on the order of hundreds, not tens, of hours) they supposedly mature into a really fine headphone. I think anyone who gets really into a hobby, wine, audio gear, backpacking equipment, fishing, whatever (it really doesn't matter) learns to appreciate a product that punches well above its price - well this is one for the headphile world. Check it out, definitely worth the money, particularly if you are already in the market for a portable and don't want to plunk down the $250 for dt1350s.