Nice, dude. If rainbow says it takes 50 hours break-in time on their drivers, i'd tend to believe them - they designed them, they measure their TSP's - so they are going to be the ones who can tell me if the TSP's change during the first hours of play. They say they do.
If I sell cables and I tell you they'll sound better after 50hrs of play time because it allows time for the electrons to properly synchronize and lubricate for maximum electron flow, would you believe me
because I designed the cable?
The 50 hours thing is a pretty good marketing/customer satisfaction ploy though. What happens over those 50 hours (that most people will just accumulate as they listen rather than let it play 50 hours straight)......
you adjust to the speakers. Not satisfied right away? Great! Just wait 50 hours and you'll thoroughly enjoy them after
you've adjusted to the speakers.....err, I mean, after the speakers "break in". //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif
Furthermore, for the first few hours of play with 1 broken in sub and 1 brand new sub, it was quite noticeable - the speakers were not playing in sync... tight bass hits sounded like they were playing out of phase or something; like one woofer was delayed or playing slightly different frequencies. After 20-30 hours of play the subs blended together; now I can't hear a difference; it sounds like 1 sub.
The net performance of a completely "broken in" driver and a non-"broken in" driver will be virtually identical. Response curves/etc are well within audible tolerances for any compliance changes that would reasonably occur (change in compliance of +/- 10% or so). For one driver to have markedly different response in a given enclosure would require a MAJOR change in compliance, which simply
does not occur over any short period of time under normal conditions (short meaning less than
many years). Not something that would occur in 20-30 hours. This has been studied and measured. This isn't a matter of opinion.
FoxPro's example however seems reasonable given how temperature
can audibly affect performance, and this effect seems much more pronounced in extremely cold temperatures.
Call it psychoacoustics if you want - that's the easy play, you get to claim that you simply know better than me and since I didn't MEASURE the difference on my new driver, I can't PROVE that there was a difference - therefore, there wasn't.
I have no doubt you could measure a difference with accurate enough equipment. The disagreement comes in to play when discussing 1) What time frame it takes for this difference to occur, and 2) how large of a difference it creates.
Our contention is that it 1) does not take anywhere near 50 hours (or 20-30) as suggested, and 2) that the differences are minute enough that they wouldn't be audible on normal, functioning drivers.
However, you can't prove there was not a difference either - you just think there wasn't, and the people who DO measure the drivers say that the parameters do change. Maybe they're lying - have you tested 2 rainbow woofers TSP's to see if they change from brand new vs. after 50 hours of play? Perhaps you can prove them wrong about their own speakers; can you link me to the tests?
Unless Rainbow sprinkles their spiders and surrounds with special "50hr break in required" pixie dust, there is no reason to presume they would perform or measure any differently than any other driver on the market under similar conditions. Which means it takes no where near 50 hours to break in the drivers, and that the differences will be minute (i.e. inaudible) .
