Never to be underestimated, but to me not a very satisfying explanation for a company like Naim to get it wrong despite nearly 50 years experience and the option of listening in controlled settings to thousands of units old and new.
Whether its satisfying or not, the placebo effect is easily able to account for much hifi mumbo jumbo.
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Definitely, but I gave the specific example of an engineering-driven company like Naim with all the experience and possibilities, and certainly awareness of the placebo effect.
Well thatâs just what theyâd want you to think, isnât it. 
And compared to many others, I think youâre right. But theyâre not above some marketing either.
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Also worth noting some makers pre burn in their gear. This doesnât mean that it wonât still require a few days to settle from cold but not months of time.
Whether still true for Linn I cannot say, but in the 90s they claimed their gear required zero burn in because it was pre done at the factory and use of SMPS and surface mount components all the way dramatically reduced the burn in time. Certainly, the performance was fairly consistent, I had several Linn boxes and they took 1-2 days to warm up but no real run in period like I had to put up with with Naim.
OTOH, doing this at the factory is really expensive. Having units on shelves powered up for weeks before being boxed up massively increases your required real-estate and adds another layer of manual labour between completion and boxing. That cost needs to be passed on to the consumer.
Iâd also say that burn in is far more noticeable on more expensive gear by nature of its sensitivity that comes with the territory of being hi-fidelity. You canât effectively make things that are sensitive enough to preserve every microdetail in a delicate signal and yet be immune to racking, cabling, main power and burn in. It comes with the territory. Itâs likely to be a lot less noticeable on lower end gear that is less revealing to begin with.
As to why burn in is often seen as a non linear up and down experience, consider that all the components change during the process at a different rate and reach their final state at different times. Not all of those combinations en-route to final burn in will be favourable.
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Agreed. I just think that they are a bunch of first class hifi nutters with all the toys at their disposal, if we in the forum can come up with the brilliant idea of blind testing a burned-in and a new amp against each other, someone at Naim in the past decades might have as well
No sane hifi company would rely on double-blind testing in the public sphere. Naim (and all others) link-to, and reference subjective tests as part of their marketing. If any double-blind tests have been conducted, the results are not generally made public. Not that I have ever seen, anyway. Very happy to be corrected.
Easiest that way, really, in the final analysis.
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I did not say one word about public
As always, when people, specially those with a scientific background, canât explain something, this something doesnât exist.
These same persons will tell you that data is data, bit is bit, so audiophile ethernet cables and switches are a non sense.
They will tell you also that a perfect cd rip is a perfect cd rip, so it canât be improved. They deny the possibility that a better ripper can provide better sounding rips.
Then same for burn in: as there is , for their knowledge, no proof in the burning process, this process is only a mental brain fooled phenomenon.
20 years before these same persons were claiming that a power cable is only a power cable, so an audiophile one is only a snake oil one.
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i hope you like hat
Data are data, bits are bits - the cause of cables etc having an effect on the sound, and differing with different DACs, network setup and electrical environment has a sciebtific basis, as has been explained in some of the cable threads.
A bit-perfect CD rip is just that. The difference in sound a few people say they have observed is so far unexplained, but if a genuine difference there absolutely will be a scientific explanation. There was one example on here a few months ago with with some discussion of possible causes of effect, including IIRC file format or how the metadata are attached. However with few people willing to do the necessary elimination of psychological effects, some even claiming to be immune, and with no-one in that discussion either interested or willing/able to share files with others able to look deeper into file structure, it didnât progress.
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I do. (You know you did something right when getting bashed by both sides )
They deny the possibility that a better ripper can provide better sounding rips.
If so, then not because the bits differ, and there will be some unknown but explainable reason
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FR, who are these people you refer to? Iâve seen a fair few people on the forum that wonât tolerate vagueness or inaccuracy, but not sure there are many people on here that fit that rather two dimensional description you just posted.
Not to speak for FR, but I read it as referring to hifi âskepticsâ in general. Seems similar to what I wrote above, we have all been told over the years by shortsighted âskepticsâ that this or that cannot possibly make a difference, and then it did and even had an explanation when looking deeper. So on the flip side, skeptical objections are now often dismissed with similar but inverse shortsightedness
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Itâs not a question if there is any effect at all, there is obviously, since every material in the world changes over time and under the influence of external forces. The question is if these changes are anywhere near enough the threshold to realistically be discernable by a regular person. Ofcourse there are many people who claim that itâs definitely audible, but there is a confirmation bias in most if not all of those people since they have already bought into the audiophile story, literally and figuratively.
So objectively we cannot âtrustâ those accounts, since the more someone has paid for their equipment, the higher the chance that there is an expected psychological bias towards certain audible effects. People expect to hear the tiniest changes through their âŹ5.000 cable or âŹ20.000 amplifier, so as a consequence they do. This is in line with the placebo/nocebo effect mentioned by @winkyincanada.
In my country these necklaces were widely sold in the nineties to âregulate your bodyâs energy fieldâ:
A lot of people were absolutely convinced that they worked. There was no scientific basis for their claims but they would say âI donât know how it works but iâve tried them, and it definitely does somethingâ. And this were literally thousands and thousands of people claiming a noticeable effect on their health and well being. So if itâs that many people saying the same thing it must be true, right?
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When I was on an extended surf trip in the canaries a few years ago, every surf shop sold armbands with holograms in them that were supposed to improve your balance on the surfboard and in general. People tried and âtestedâ them in of course uncontrolled settings (similar to this video by my Vortex Hifi friends, https://youtu.be/8w9zKof9kJ4) and also ended up with âI donât know how it works but iâve tried them, and it definitely does somethingâ. And not just surf tourist beginners, but very, very serious surfers who risked their lives on a weekly basis in 5+ meter waves. A few months later the fad was over and it was as if it never happened.
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A friend of mine also used to wear a âstabilizing braceletâ that looked a bit like this:
They made me do the push/balance test as well wearing the bracelet and were really disappointed that i didnât notice anything. Supposedly most of the people that did the test reported a noticeable effect, thatâs how they were certain that it worked. They suggested that i probably needed some more time to get synchronized to the effect of the bracelet, and for the energy field to stabilize.
The bracelet itself looked like regular stainless steel to me. There were different versions of it, also a gold plated and a titanium one, the cheapest one was around âŹ50 i think.
Itâs fascinating to me how these kinds of things tend to make excellent salespeople out of some people. Once they are fully on board with the idea they become itâs most loyal ambassadors. Not unlike what you see in religions sometimes i suppose.
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Power Balance were the ones in the canaries, like BioStabil they earned themselves a Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Balance
(On the page it says they had to retract claims in Australia by 2010, but were going strong in the canaries in 2011)
A lot of run in myth has been perpetuated over the years by dealers using run in to counter buyers disappointment or buyers remorse.
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