No, just saying that those particular proposed mechanisms donât stand up to scrutiny.
Disproving any one possibility has no effect on any other possibility.
FAIT DE CARACTĂRE MARGINAL, RELATIF Ă UNE OU Ă DES PERSONNES, INĂDIT OU PEU CONNU, AUQUEL ON PEUT ATTACHER UNE SIGNIFICATION, MAIS QUI RESTE ACCESSOIRE PAR RAPPORT Ă LâESSENTIEL : RĂCIT HISTORIQUE QUI SE PERD DANS LâANECDOTE.
There were some interesting points, about rationalizing or the converse, the validity of âburning inââŠmy point is this: if there is empirical evidence (in this case meaning âobservedâ) evidence of burning in, then rationalizing against it is itself irrational.
The number of people who believe something does not make it not anecdotal. Look at how many people believe in God. Or Vishnu. Or Brahman. Or whatever. They canât all be true - and probably none of them are.
Now look at the various blind listening tests that have been conducted, e.g., in no particular order:
Personally I suspect that the time taken to burn in or have a component come on song has to do with two properties:
The values of electrical or mechanical components changing with temperature as they warm up after switch on. For most equipment thatâs 30mins ish.
The listener becoming accustomed to a sound or particular presentation and growing to like it/accept it and normalise it.
The first is measurable on a test bench, the second is well documented in psychological textbooks. The exception is mechanical components like woofer surrounds or tweeters or turntable bearings and they clearly may take time to loosen up with use.
Indeed!..there is much that we value in our music which cannot be reliably measuredâŠmusicality, PR&T for examplesâŠbut many, myself included, find them to be most obviously apparent.
I suspect there is a lot of truth in that. Itâs one of the reasons I have no faith in observations from people who swap cables in and out for only a few minutes and then pronounce on which is best. In my experience it takes a good while to determine if something is better or simply different. People can use Tune Dem or claim Magic Ears but itâs still guesswork.
I agree completelyâŠit can take some time to decide whether something that sounds different does actually sound better. This, I think, is particularly the case with ancillariesâŠa new major component is frequently a very obvious improvement though.
I have come to be skeptical about most tweaks and upgrades. Naim pre/pwr/psu upgrades have been mostly obvious right away as Iâve climbed through the classic range from 202/250 to 252/300. With other things like cables etc, Iâll try something for a week or two â without doing any back to back A/B comparisons â and then remove it again. If I donât miss it, then itâs not better (or not better enough) IMO and I move on. Iâve experienced isolation products making bigger differences for me than any cables in that regard.
We might not know yet how to measure it, but that doesnât necessarily mean it isnât. Assuming PRaT is real, it might stand to reason that there is something in the audio waveforms to identify it, and just needs someone to isolate and figure out what that is. I donât have an answer, but think it could be an interesting problem.