Break in for new receiver and cable?

Man83 Unregistered guest	Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 08:42 GMT Hi, I just bought the new marantz SR5500 (one week) but it sound not as in the show room even i'm using the same thing as in the show room. My chord carnival bi-wire speaker cable and ixos 608-100 digital coaxial cable also new. Is it need a break in period to make it sound better? Thanks a lot for any information.
Uncle Fester Unregistered guest	Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 11:20 GMT Ate you using the same speakers as the set-up in the showroom? Positioning of speakers is also important. Speakers can take a few days to get to their best. Receivers might take a few minutes to burn-in. Cables have no burn-in period at all.
Man83 Unregistered guest	Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 13:11 GMT Yes, i'm using the same speaker (wharfedale 8.4). May be the dvd player that i'm used. At show room, they're using a pioneer DV-575A but i'm using Sony DVP-NS730P. Is it cause of that?
diablo Bronze Member Username: Diablo Fylde Coast, England Post Number: 61 Registered: Dec-04	Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 14:45 GMT I assume that you are using a digital link between the Sony and your receiver? That's probably the same as they use in the showroom, so it shouldn't sound too much different, as the receiver will be doing all the decoding/DAC stuff. I have noticed big differences on some source material when comparing digital with analogue connections. The size, shape and furnishing of your room may be coming into play Most demo rooms are big and sonically reflective, whereas your listening room may be smaller and have soft furniture and heavy curtains, which will absorb sound rather than reflecting it. The effect on bass is particularly noticable in a smaller room. The size of a room is difficult to change. And there is not usually much that can be done about the furnishings, especially if there is a wife involved.
edster922 Unregistered guest	Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 15:45 GMT Man, you may want to check that you have all the settings correctly---the Marantz is not the easiest-to-setup and its manual is not perfect. If you have a sub then I'd check that you have the crossover setting and the large/small setting correct, this is what trips up a lot of people. Also check that you have all the speaker cables in phase. The third thing I'd play with is speaker placement and room accoustics...make sure your speakers are at the correct height (tweeters no lower than ear level) and distance apart (no greater than distance to your listening position). Unless you have extraordinarily sensitive hearing, I doubt it's because of the DVD player.
edster922 Unregistered guest	Posted on Thursday, March 17, 2005 - 15:46 GMT Man, you may want to check that you have all the settings correctly---the Marantz is not the easiest-to-setup and its manual is not great. If you have a sub then I'd check that you have the crossover setting and the large/small setting correct, this is what trips up a lot of people. Also check that you have all the speaker cables in phase. The third thing I'd play with is speaker placement and room accoustics...make sure your speakers are at the correct height (tweeters no lower than ear level) and distance apart (no greater than distance to your listening position). Unless you have extraordinarily sensitive hearing, I doubt it's because of the DVD player.
Man83 Unregistered guest	Posted on Friday, March 18, 2005 - 00:43 GMT Thanks guys for all your kindness in solving this problem. Now i noticed a few thing that could be cause of that: 1. Speaker setting (large or small & crossover) - i set it to large because my room is enough for it. 2. Thing in the room as diablo said that will effect the acoustic sounding. 3. Speaker placement. It was my weakness. I put it not as the right position. I thought that problem was from my dvd player. Anyway thanks a lot. That help me so much. Best regards from u all.
jamnpi Unregistered guest	Posted on Friday, March 18, 2005 - 06:04 GMT It took a couple of months for my sr5400 to finally break in. Came home one day and, YES!! SWEEEET!!! At first it sounded flat. Now, it's the best receiver I've ever owned (one Yamaha, one Denon). Give it some time, crank it up every day. My cables were new too but I don't think they were the cause, but I could be wrong. Changing two things at once negates any logic. Oh, I do beleive some cables require break in. I'm using DIY Cardas Crosslink with B&W DM602 S2.
Man83 Unregistered guest	Posted on Friday, March 18, 2005 - 07:42 GMT jamnpi, But some folks said the break in for receiver is not that long. At least u experienced it. Thanks for sharing with me.
jamnpi Unregistered guest	Posted on Friday, March 18, 2005 - 08:13 GMT Man, I think it took that long because I wasn't "cranking" it every day like I should have been. Some friends suggested keeping it on all day at low-level if possible, to shorten the time.
Gregory Stern Silver Member Username: Gman Mt. Pleasant, SC Post Number: 643 Registered: Dec-03	Posted on Friday, March 18, 2005 - 18:07 GMT Break-in or cables should have no significant effect, unless the cables are truly awful and/or very thin diameter and poorly shielded. The speaker selection on the receiver (big or small), refers to the speaker--not the room size. If you have large 3-way full range speakers in the front (or all the way around)then select large. If you have more limited range 2-way bookshelf speakers, select small. Often people will have 2 tower speakers up front and set them as large and the remaining speakers are of bookshelf-type--and they will be set as small. It would be suprising if the receiver sounded like it did in the showroom. The two most significant aspects to hearing in your media room are your speakers and the room acoustics. The acoustics in your room are undoubtedly quite different than those in the showroom. If you have hard floors and walls the sound will most likely be overly bright. In these situations a most valuable addition is a good large throw rug and in very bad circumstances, artistic wall hangings or wall rugs. "Dead" rooms can be harder to deal with as most people don't want to remove rugs or heavy curtains. To get better performance from your equipment you should get a Radio Shack SPL Meter (about $40) and balance out all the speakers to the spot where you mostly listen to music or watch movies. This should improve performance and balance the sound. Breaking in of solid state equipment takes at most 10 seconds--and probably more like 1 second for all electrical biases to balance out. Some speakers may benefit from break-in, but I always wondered why would any speaker manufacturer let a speaker leave the factory at less than optimal performance? Cables and wires certainly don't need break-in, as they have no moving parts. There is nothing to break-in. A cable or wire is analagous to a pipe that moves water. Unless your wiring or cabling is a horrid conductor and/or terribly thin, I am sure it has more than enough room to allow any and all electrons to pass. Almost everybody buys speaker wire that is significantly larger and more expensive than the hundreds of feet of speaker wire that the speaker manufacturers use inside the speaker systems.
Christopher Lee Silver Member Username: Touche6784 Post Number: 206 Registered: Nov-04	Posted on Friday, March 18, 2005 - 18:29 GMT greg, you wondered why any manufacturer would let their speakers leave the factory at less than optimal performance. what about cars? its a known fact that you have to wait about 10,000 miles before the car starts to perform optimally. why wouldn't that apply to speakers which also have many moving parts? man83, i would double check the settings on the marantz. i have one also and it can be quite the maze to go through and set things up optimally. mine probably isnt set up the best but at this point it doesnt matter that much. like greg said speaker setting refers to the range at which the speakers produce sound. it will change the crossover settings on the reciever. if your speakers dont hit down to like 50 hz well then dont bother with the large setting. also you might have to adjust the distance settings for each of the speakrs. the room size setting you use puts preset values to the speaker distances and might be affecting the speaker outputs. dont bug out so much because it doesnt sound as good as th showroom one. mostlikely the showroom one has been setup to give absolute optimal performance for its setup or has been tweeked to sound better.
Anonymous	Posted on Monday, March 21, 2005 - 04:54 GMT Found this article regarding break-in. http://www.ultraaudio.com/opinion/20030801.htm
Kano Silver Member Username: Kano Post Number: 423 Registered: Oct-04	Posted on Monday, March 21, 2005 - 07:14 GMT From the article: "They call them cable burners, or cable cookers. The one I used is the CBID1 from Nordost. It is a small beige plastic box that plugs into the wall with a variety of input and output jacks designed to accommodate both interconnects and speaker cables. You attach the cable to be cooked, turn it on, and several hours to several days later, your cable is officially broken-in. A number of other manufacturers, notably Audio Dharma, sell similar devices. At $1199, the Nordost cooker I used is not cheap. It is owned by my local audio dealer and used for the express purpose of accelerating the burn-in time of new cables for preferred customers. What I have discovered is that the Nordost cable cooker is extremely beneficial when used to cook cables that already have months or years of playing time. When I first heard the difference between a pair of bottom-of-the-line Ecosse interconnects cooked versus uncooked (raw?), I was blown away. The cooked cable elevated the performance to an entirely new league. In comparison the uncooked version sounded flat and lifeless. " ------------------------------------ I'd have to agree with the poster above. If there is a benefit to "cooking cables" why not do it as the final step in manufacturing? Does the "cooking" wear off after a few days? The author spoke of resonance appearing after the cook-off and disappearing after a few days. The most quantatative argument I have heard for cable break-in speaks of having a uniform distribution of electrons throughout the run. Is it possible that cooking cables would lower resistance by allowing faster conductivity?
diablo Bronze Member Username: Diablo Fylde Coast, England Post Number: 66 Registered: Dec-04	Posted on Monday, March 21, 2005 - 08:39 GMT I'm really sorry for the guy who wrote the article. He goes out and buys a pair or interconnects "1m MIT MI-350 Spectral Ultralinear Series II interconnects. $1,500/pair." and at first they seem to be okay. Then he treats them with the Nordost cooker and compares them to his mate's un-cooked MI-350s, which he then finds "the uncooked version again sounded lifeless and flat". That is, they were like his were the previous week. The guy has been living with a lifeless and flat interconnect which cost $1,500 a pair and hadn't noticed?? Why hadn't he taken it back to the shop and bought some much better $3,000/pair ICs if he found the sound so bad? On a blind test (of any type or duration), I bet the guy couldn't tell the difference between his 'cooked' 350s, normal 350s and the $40 type that I use. There can be changes to the structure of the metal if they are subjected to extremes. Some recommend freezing below -200C. This may change the resistance very slightly. However, until the supposed differences can be detected by the human ear in a blind test, then any such heat/voltage/squareware treatments are worthless -- as the only point is to make a difference to the human ear!!
Admin Moderator Username: Admin Post Number: 268 Registered: Dec-03	Posted on Monday, March 21, 2005 - 11:26 GMT The Mythical Burn-In Period article is posted here: https://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/products/articles/127865.html

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