Headphone burn-in
 

I just got a brand new pair of Ultimate Ears Super.fi Pro 5 for Channukah last night. When I used them straight out of the box, I noticed they were pretty muddy sounding. I remember when researching for IEM's that one or two review mentioned a "burn-in" period of about 100 hours for these. Right now, I have them connected to my iPod playing in a sock drawer and plan to keep it there until Friday night/Saturday morning. When I pulled them out today, I noticed that they sounded much more at ease and less muddy than they did yesterday. I also researched a lot of info. about "burning in" headphones and many claim that it is a myth and it's yr brain that gets used to the soundstage, not the headphones actually improving themselves. Well, I've only actively listened to them for around twenty minutes since I got 'em, so I doubt my brain is doing that much adjusting, but I suppose I could be wrong?

Anyway, should I continue to do it, or am I wasting time? If I should continue doing it, how much longer?

I just don't get why my music should sound so not up-to-par with $190 phones.

Its virtually impossible to wear them out so if it seems to help, go for it.

Mine were pretty decent out of the box, but run a sawtooth wave through it for an hour per day or so if you want a good burn in. Gets all the frequencies going.

Thanks. I'm going to keep it running till Saturday since it's already been going a little over 25 hours, but if that doesn't work, I'll try this. :7)

this says it all -

 

the graph shows the frequency response to be woolly. the whole burn in thing is a falacy. i have never had to "burn in" iem's or any speaker i have ever worked with. do not play a sawtooth wave through the speakers for an hour a day this is bad information. it does not get all the frequencies "going" as a saw tooth does not cover the frequency spectrum like that. if you really want to continue to "burn in" you iem's and cover all the frequency range of the iem's then use pink or white noise. personally if the don't sound good out of the box and you need to "burn in" the voice coils then there is something wrong with them or the design.

No, don't use white noise. It's not a constant enough sustain on any particular frequency so it's pretty useless.

I forgot to add that you need to modulate the sawtooth wave up and down an octave or two so you cover (more or less) all the frequencies. Modulate it slowly though.

white noise is all frequencies at equal power, it is completely constant. speakers cannot actually produce real saw, square or random waveforms accurately as the driver cannot physically move like that, speakers can only produce sine waves accurately. everything else saw tooth, square that you hear coming out of a speaker is an approximation.

Of course I know that :p
To do perfect square waves you'd need to be able to go from zero volts to a higher voltage instantaneously.
I was just posting what works for me, that's all.

if you knew that why post this?

Because I didn't know that
I knew about what speakers can reproduce etc.

I figured out the problem. It turns out the bass are so powerful on these that it slightly overpowered a lot of the mids and highs, which in the end makes sense since a lot of my bass-oriented music sounded a lot better than everything else. A simple switch to "Bass Reducer" on my iPod did the trick.

Thanks for the responses. :7)