Hi, I had some questions about breaking in new speakers.

Is it a myth?
How long does it take?
Are there special ways of doing it, or is it just a matter of listening/usage time?

thanks

This is another subject like "speaker cable".

Whether or not you believe in "break-in" the simple movement of the drivers over time will change the flexibility of the material.

Do speakers need to be broken in? Probably not.

Will they sound different over time? Possibly as you become used to the way they sound and the drivers have had the material flexed for a period of time.

My advice, "break-in" will occur as you use them.

It really depends on the drivers. Some companies' drivers (especially the tweeters) will start to mellow slightly over time. In most cases, this is a good thing. Really, the only way to break them in is to use them normally.

It is definitely good to break in your speakers before you start making adjustments for sound.

This is especially true for subs though. I would recommed a break-in period of at least 20 hours before you start to try blending that sub in with the rest of your speakers.

Most speakers will benefit from break in and most high-end speaker manufacturers acknowledge this fact. Although you can purchase special CD's that exercise the drivers, an easy approach is to:

1) wire one speaker out of phase to the other; i.e. reverse the positive and negative leads.

2) put the speakers face to face as close a possible to each other.

3) play white or pink noise for about 24-48 hours.

4) turn the volume up to some reasonable level.

You don't have to wire the speakers out of phase and position them face to face, but this will reduce the amount of volume they produce in the house.

It's true that speakers will break in naturally over time, but playing white noise will accelerate the process.

i don't know about home audio but for subwoofers in car audio you can tell a big difference between new speakers and broken in speakers. Rockford Fostgates and JL audio's sound much better once they have been broken in.

According to Ken Kantor (founder of NHT), speaker break-in is a myth.

I agree. I think over time the user becomes accustomed to the sound of the new
speaker, not that the speaker changes its sound.

Well, I broke in my speakers and definitely heard a difference.

I did not use the "white noise" method as above, I just played them for two session of 4 hours each at a moderately loud level.
Some people say it really makes a difference and some do not, but I dont know.


I have a pair of Klipsch KLF20's, which have a horn tweeter. When I took them out the box and played them, the highs were so harsh that my ears physically hurt. There were metallic and anynnoing. After playing them for 8 hours, the sound mellowed out was great. Klipsch have notoriously bright highs, but the harshness was not attributed to the brighness.

I think the tweeter just needed to be broken in.

Anyway, it cant hurt to play your speakers for several hours, so I suggest trying it.

My monitor audios had a break in of 60 hrs

I have never noticed speaker break in on mids and highs but with bass... yea there is no doubt that it is true.