Break-In 4 - Why is the Rebreak-In Process Not Instantaneous?

What is Break-In...and Why Does It Matter?

One of the Most Overlooked Aspects in Audio

Why is the Re-break-In process not instantaneous?

Again, liken speakers to our muscle example:

Imagine you are on a baseball team playing Catcher. You first learned how to play that position a couple of years ago, and that's all you've ever played. Your muscles have become very used to playing the Catcher in baseball. Your mind knows what signals to send to certain muscles to react properly (This is called Muscle Memory). The muscles in turn have become very accustomed to these motions.

Now imagine one day, the team asks you to start playing the Pitcher position. That is pretty severe change, and there is no way your mind or muscles will be able to perform at a fully nominal level instantaneously. Even though the muscles may been "loosened up" over the years as a Catcher, they are not accustomed to the new array of motions and reactions that the Pitcher position offers. So the mind and muscles must enter a "Re-Acclimation" phase of learning the new motions for that position.

In learning these new motions, these will be times when the muscles grow sore from readjusting. It's more or less like working out the "kinks".

Speakers, just like muscles, will go through the same readjusment process.

As Break-In or Rebreak-In begins, the sound can actually be degraded until speaker elements begin to acclimate.

The sudden drop in quality is very temporary, and is usually followed by a huge jump in performance. Once the speakers become comfortable in their new audio system, the degradation fades away, and the system continues to improve. Punch, clarity, and definition will prove to exceed far beyond the speaker's known capabilities.

Once mature Break-In has been achieved, Triphazers exhibit 100% transparent operation with zero anomalies.

Now, going from Catcher to Pitcher is a pretty extreme change, but the same can be said of moving from Catcher to Outfielder, or any other position. There are still new motions and reactions to learn, but since they are not as drastic perhaps as the Pitcher, the Rebreak-In time will be much shorter. In addition, say you had only played Catcher for a few weeks, then moved to a new position. Rebreak-In time in this scenario would also be comparatively shortened.

In translating this scenario to an audio system, it is logical to state that the age of the system, the present playing time, and the severity of the change will always affect the amount of Re-break-In time required.

Break-in or Re-break-in is not instantaneous and performance conclusions cannot really be drawn until the system has had proper time to Break-In.

Rebreak-In can also apply to speakers or an audio system that have not been used for some time.

If you were to abandon the sport of baseball for some time, and tried to come back to it later, you would find that a period of "re-acclimation" or re-training has to take place again before you can comfortably perform at the level you had before.

A speaker that has not been used for a while it will return to an “Un-Broken-In” almost "LIKE NEW" state. It must go through a slight Re-Acclimation Period to regain nominal performance characteristics.

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