Is equipment burn in real?

today we've moved into Bill leoben's office and bill is our marketing director Bill's a great guy he knows everybody in the industry he works with the reviewers she works with just everybody that's that's the magazines you know hey guys a high five plus great magazine you know it was funny how this might sound weird but we were sniffing this thing I mean wow this is a classic I think this is an oil-based it's one of the original mean it's really slick paper and it just remember how magazines used to smell I think well this one it's not a bad smell it's just wow just brings back memories anyway what have we got going today din and in the United Kingdom Paul what happens during component burnin oh boy there's a can of words and how long does it take how do you know if a component is fully burned in yoyoyo well yeah yeah burnin is probably one of the most controversial subjects I can imagine yeah cables cables are worse no the the tweaks and the pucks and the dots and all that that's that's the Green Line so that's worse okay so in order of appearance component burnin is right up there so generally in high end audio it's it's thought that components need time to burn in the the naysayers who don't buy into any of that will tell you now it's the person burning and not the not the equipment itself you know and and and we know that's not true because we can take and we routine we routinely do as part of our process here we will burn a product in and compare it to one that hasn't been burned in to see what sound quality differences are so if they're extreme like oh what's a good example the stellar the stellar series the stellar the m700 monoblocks for whatever reason we discovered that they can take days upon days to even sound good okay and we we do this on a regular basis whether it's a BHK or whether it's whatever the product is we'll listen to it burned in and not burned in and some of them sound pretty damn good right out of the box and they get better as as you burn them in and you use them and have them plugged in others sound like yo not so good and it's gonna take days to get them to sound right and for those like on the m700 s we now because we don't want our customers pulling it out of a box with you know here we are with a 30-day guarantee right and they pull it on the Box they go uh and we just let it burn in you know it's gonna need a week or so and a lot of people just go and there's and they'll send it back so what we do is on that kind of a product and I'd like to do it on everything we just don't have the space I mean we we are busting at the seams in fact we just put a bid in on it on a new building to try and get us some more some more room but anyway we burn in m700 we'll burn them in I think for 48 G's maybe even longer 72 hours I don't really remember what it is but it's at least 48 hours that M $700 built they go on to a rack that get burned in now power plants they get torture tested for a few hours but that's different that's that's for testing this is just straight burnin so what happens one thing that we know that happens is capacitors form so a capacitor is a it's a sandwich depending on how it's built let's just take a film capacitor it's sort of a sandwich of an insulator and a conductor so simplest way to think about that is if if I were to use this piece of paper so electricity doesn't travel through paper right it's and and there are actually paper capacitors that there's usually film capacitors and but when that when we when we talk about the kind of capacitor it is a paper film oil we're talking about the dielectric in that which is the insulator so if I wanted to build a capacitor I might I would take a piece of paper let's say and and let's pretend that this is a piece of tinfoil and I would I would place that like this and I would start and I would roll it up into a thing so that I have alternating layers of of dielectric insulator something that doesn't conduct electricity and a layer of something that does conduct electricity and through that process I'm not gonna try and explain caps right now because it's not important but through that process we build a capacitor and capacitors that what they're valuable when we send signals through them because they will not let DC battery voltage won't pass through a capacitor but AC moving like music will pass through so if we have moving voltage AC alternating current that will pass through a capacitor and if we have battery voltage it will not so this is very helpful for a number of things from filters to blocking capacitors etc and we use bigger things called electrolytic capacitors in the power supply and that those are the ones all capacitors have to form when you put voltage on them little you know microscopic holes are filled and it changes the the equivalent series resistance and a number of other characteristics when we form a capacitor and that's usually done for a power supply capacitor and they they act different if they've been on for a while so that's one of the most obvious things I will tell you that while I here burn in while I acknowledge it and recognize it I I don't fully understand it by any means we can point to several things that are probably beyond the scope of this capacitors being one that are affected or impacted by it but do I have a complete answer in there I certainly don't but it but it is real so the other part of his mix the pages of making my capacitor let's see how do you know if it's fully burned in you have to you have to listen you have to just you know it things can burn in over a year for whatever reason but that's very gradual and I doubt you'd hear it from one to the other but I can walk into the music room and hear if there's a brand new DAC in there I can tell that it's new and it's it's kind of stiff it needs needs break-in and my dad's been on for a few years and it's it instantly works what's interesting about burn-in and this could be capacitor related again is it lasts if I take a burned in DAC unplug it put it in my car drive it over to my buddy's house and plug it back in it's still burned in and how long that effect stays with it it doesn't stay forever if you have something sitting in the closet for ten years that was originally burned in it may sound different than original but it's gonna lose whatever characteristic is happening there so you're just gonna have to listen some some some products take an hour some products take a couple of weeks so I I can't tell you any more than that hope that answer your question Thanks [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: Paul McGowan, PS Audio

Views: 151,976

Keywords: Ask Paul 9, Ask Paul 1

Id: lJFnlDTtsBA

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2018