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How to break-in a new speaker


Cheeks

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Here's some I've heard of, (personally haven't tried any). Hook the thing up to a reciever set to a 24hr rap station at mid to mid-high volume for about a week. Shove the whole mess into a closet with blankets duct-taped over it so you don't have to actually endure that torture test as well as the speaker. Set the guitar into a feedback loop against a cheap solid state amp for a few days. Simply keep thing thing in motion from some sort of varying source at a sane volume level for a number of days/hours without exposing it to a potentially damaging sonic situation. Be mindful of you your impedences during the hookup and exercising. See Avatar Speakers, think their website used to list their proceedures for exercising "Hellatones".

 

Wedgie

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Here's some I've heard of, (personally haven't tried any). Hook the thing up to a reciever set to a 24hr rap station at mid to mid-high volume for about a week. Shove the whole mess into a closet with blankets duct-taped over it so you don't have to actually endure that torture test as well as the speaker. Set the guitar into a feedback loop against a cheap solid state amp for a few days. Simply keep thing thing in motion from some sort of varying source at a sane volume level for a number of days/hours without exposing it to a potentially damaging sonic situation. Be mindful of you your impedences during the hookup and exercising. See Avatar Speakers, think their website used to list their proceedures for exercising "Hellatones".

 

Wedgie

 

Thanks,

well, I'ved donwloaded some pretty torturous files in the past,

inclusing stuff that COULD DESTROY a speaker.

Very low freqs & vibes that were in the RS regions of bass

response... nasty sounds to kill speakers.

 

Thanks for the info.

 

CHEEKS

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Here's an idea, play your guitar through it! That way, you get the satisfaction of listening to the sound get better and better, and get to work on your playing skills.

 

I dunno though, maybe it's a stupid idea. :rolleyes:

 

Great idea !

 

CHEEKS

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  • 3 weeks later...

One other method was to hook the transformer up to the mains with the speaker on the secondary. I don't think I'll be trying that one.

As a small boy I connected a speaker to a 12V slot-car transformer - it briefly made a loud raspberry and the cone shot out across the room.

 

Me, I fit speaker to amp, pick up my guitar and play.

 

If it seems to need any extra loosening up, I'll play the bass through it.

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I have never heard of this before,

in all my YEARS of electronics,

 

I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THIS BEFORE ! [scared]

 

 

Tell us how to 'break-in a new speaker' please.

 

CHEEKS

 

 

 

 

From the just as crazy about this stuff high end audio side of the pool comes; http://www.musicdirect.com/category/54 and http://www.musicdirect.com/category/415

 

Breaking in only the speaker is like eating only the lettuce on a burger. Circuits and cables also require "burn in" and frequent demagnetization too.

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From the just as crazy about this stuff high end audio side of the pool comes; http://www.musicdirect.com/category/54 and http://www.musicdirect.com/category/415

 

Breaking in only the speaker is like eating only the lettuce on a burger.

Circuits and cables also require "burn in" and frequent demagnetization too.

 

NORMAL sane peeple don't do that ! [biggrin]

Demagnetization of copper cable? [confused]

 

Next will be an old box of typewriter 'carriage returns'...

or 'muffler bearings' on your car... [scared]

 

CHEEKS

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NORMAL sane peeple don't do that ! [biggrin]

Demagnetization of copper cable? [confused]

 

Next will be an old box of typewriter 'carriage returns'...

or 'muffler bearings' on your car... [scared]

 

CHEEKS

 

 

Well, actually demagnetizing the (magnetic) phono cartridge is the most common thing to do in high end consumer audio. There is a school of thought, however, which suggests demagnetizing and most importantly applying an anti-static treatment - preferrably from a product such as the old ZeroStat gun - to your cables about twice a year. You have to remember the copper conductor is not the only component in a cable. Thinking of a cable as you would an unrolled capacitor you can start to envision those other components within the jacket and dielectric of the cable which might respond to an electro-magnetic field. As the signal passes through the cable a sizeable magnetic field is generated around the cable's perimeter. Just as with a cap over time this magnetic field takes a "set" and at that point the influence of this field is imposed upon the smallest of signals, smearing details, flattening depth and imaging and diminishing "ambient fields" which are at the heart of why anyone would pay tens of thousands of $$$'s for a system. Thinking of a cable as an unrolled cap should also explain why burning in (the capacitors within) the circuit is desirable. Keep in mind high end home audio is under different usages than is a musical instrument system. Cables lay in the same location for months and even years. To minimize the static electric field surrounding the cable itself and the electro-magnetic field which can be reflected back into cables from the floor or be distorted by a synthetic carpet the high end industry has developed cable lifters; http://www.audiotweaks.com/reviews/cblelevators/page03.htm and http://www.stereophile.com/finetunes/188/index.html. Such exotic products along with cables and other accessories can cost the equivalnent of a nice Les Paul; http://www.musicdirect.com/category/41 / http://stereophile.com/cables/605silversmith/index1.html

High end audio's desire is virtually the polar opposite of what a musician might be looking for in a system. Distortion is to be banished in all forms and microphonics and noise are the enemies. This certainly makes it difficult for me to look at the reviews of various tubes and amplifiers/speakers and make sense of how compression and distortion components are beneficial. I've used tubed audio gear for nearly three decades and I've always tried to maintain the cleanest signal chain. In the 1980's when tubes were becoming more difficult to find I bought a set of Groove Tubes for my vintage McIntosh amplifiers and I was asked how I wanted the output tubes to distort. "Not at all", was my first answer.

 

 

High end audio forums have threads which go on for fifty or more pages with the naysayers who cannot measure/perceive anything different with a cable swap doing battle with the believers who hear vast improvements in cable selection. It can make a guitarist's search for "Tone" look downright simple.

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Well, actually demagnetizing the (magnetic) phono cartridge is the most common thing to do in high end consumer audio. There is a school of thought, however, which suggests demagnetizing and most importantly applying an anti-static treatment - preferrably from a product such as the old ZeroStat gun - to your cables about twice a year. You have to remember the copper conductor is not the only component in a cable. Thinking of a cable as you would an unrolled capacitor you can start to envision those other components within the jacket and dielectric of the cable which might respond to an electro-magnetic field. As the signal passes through the cable a sizeable magnetic field is generated around the cable's perimeter. Just as with a cap over time this magnetic field takes a "set" and at that point the influence of this field is imposed upon the smallest of signals, smearing details, flattening depth and imaging and diminishing "ambient fields" which are at the heart of why anyone would pay tens of thousands of $$$'s for a system. Thinking of a cable as an unrolled cap should also explain why burning in (the capacitors within) the circuit is desirable. Keep in mind high end home audio is under different usages than is a musical instrument system. Cables lay in the same location for months and even years. To minimize the static electric field surrounding the cable itself and the electro-magnetic field which can be reflected back into cables from the floor or be distorted by a synthetic carpet the high end industry has developed cable lifters; http://www.audiotweaks.com/reviews/cblelevators/page03.htm and http://www.stereophile.com/finetunes/188/index.html. Such exotic products along with cables and other accessories can cost the equivalnent of a nice Les Paul; http://www.musicdirect.com/category/41 / http://stereophile.com/cables/605silversmith/index1.html

High end audio's desire is virtually the polar opposite of what a musician might be looking for in a system. Distortion is to be banished in all forms and microphonics and noise are the enemies. This certainly makes it difficult for me to look at the reviews of various tubes and amplifiers/speakers and make sense of how compression and distortion components are beneficial. I've used tubed audio gear for nearly three decades and I've always tried to maintain the cleanest signal chain. In the 1980's when tubes were becoming more difficult to find I bought a set of Groove Tubes for my vintage McIntosh amplifiers and I was asked how I wanted the output tubes to distort. "Not at all", was my first answer.

 

 

High end audio forums have threads which go on for fifty or more pages with the naysayers who cannot measure/perceive anything different with a cable swap doing battle with the believers who hear vast improvements in cable selection. It can make a guitarist's search for "Tone" look downright simple.

 

I think most of that is nonsense.

All wire has capacitance... even doorbell wire. Nothing new.

Placement of chassis wiring is critical as to capacitance

problems with circuit and chassis wiring.

 

All wire may NOT have magnetism however.

 

The extremes mentioned above are not applicable to me as such.

I am happy with a transistor radio. Yes I have retro

Pioneer audiophile gear. So what. It makes music and that's

good enough.

 

Tubes make noise too... thermionic emissions of the cathode

etc... yadda yadda...

 

CHEEKS

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I think most of that is nonsense.

All wire has capacitance... even doorbell wire. Nothing new.

Placement of chassis wiring is critical as to capacitance

problems with circuit and chassis wiring.

 

All wire may NOT have magnetism however.

 

The extremes mentioned above are not applicable to me as such.

I am happy with a transistor radio. Yes I have retro

Pioneer audiophile gear. So what. It makes music and that's

good enough.

 

Tubes make noise too... thermionic emissions of the cathode

etc... yadda yadda...

 

CHEEKS

 

 

 

 

 

I'll put you down as a naysayer.

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  • 1 month later...

If you pass electricity through a copper coil you get a magnetic field. Yes.

 

If you turn the electricity off, the magnetic field goes away. Copper coils cannot be permanently magnetized.

 

There are only four metals which exhibit permanent magnetism, one is liquid at room temperature: iron, nickel, cobalt and gadolinium.

 

There are some materials which are diamagnetic i.e. repel magnetic fields, they have no pole, they simply repel magnets: water is one such, so a very strong magnetic field can be used to levitate frogs. Which is far more useful than what I've just read above.

 

The bit that needs degaussing on a tape head is the iron core. Doh!

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