The Mythical Burn-In Period

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Hack #25 from Home Theater Hacks by Brett McLaughlin (O'Reilly Media).

Running your components and cables for some arbitrary length of time when they are first purchased isn't helpful, but letting them power on and sit for a few minutes before watching movies or performing calibration is.

With even simple home theater systems now needing universal remotes [Hack #84] and calibration to perform well, a lot of well-meaning folks have passed around some home theater myths, or at best, misunderstandings. One of these is that you need to burn-in your equipment. Burn-in is a term used to refer to running your gear for some arbitrary length of time, usually several hours, to help it perform properly. You'll most commonly hear about burnin when talking about speakers, which often can benefit from this sort of treatment.

Warm Your Components Up, Don't Burn Them In
Some well-intentioned folks have taken this idea and applied it to audio and video cables (discussed next), as well as audio components. In the case of cables, this is just an outright misunderstanding of electronics; in the case of components, it's more likely a misunderstanding; a confusion between burn-in and warm-up. Warming up a component is just what it sounds like -- turning on a piece of equipment and letting it run for a while. Electronics need warm-up time, not burn-in time. Most modern electronics warm up in 1 to 5 minutes. In this time picture tubes and lamps begin to operate consistently, transistors perform as they should, and your system generally settles (metaphorically speaking).

Really heavy-power amplifiers might need 10-20 minutes to reach their steady-state temperature.

Giving components a few minutes to get to this optimal state will result in a better home theater experience, allowing your system to perform at its best.

Cable Burn-In Is a Waste of Time
You'll also often hear that you should burn-in your speaker cables, as well as your components. These burn-in periods have as little effect on your home theater as the length of your speaker cables (see Chapter 5).

Cables don't have some sort of "memory" that is altered in the first few hours of use. This is a slight misunderstanding of electrical fields involved. Yes, electromagnetic fields do have an effect on the dielectric, the white foam that surrounds the center wire of your interconnect cables. As the audio or video signal sweeps up and down (all "within" the cable), the effects of the first half of the signal are reversed by the second half. If you have an electronics background you know that the electromagnetic field depends on current moving through a wire, and it's this current that turns out to be the overriding factor in how a cable behaves over time. With interconnects, very little current is flowing through these cables, so burn-in is essentially a waste of your time.

The one way that a signal can alter the cable is if the signal has enough current with it to heat the cable, and to melt the cable's crystalline structure. This type of burn-in is prone to bring the fire department running rather than your local home theater enthusiasts.    -- Robert McElfresh

This material has been adapted from Home Theater Hacks by Brett McLaughlin, published by O'Reilly Media, Inc. Copyright O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2005. All rights reserved.

A smart collection of insider tips and tricks, Home Theater Hacks covers home theater installation from start to finish, purchase to experience. Just imagine: no frustrating trial and error process and better yet, no expensive appointments with installation experts. Home Theater Hacks prevents both by imparting down-and-dirty technique not found anywhere else.

Home Theater Hacks is available for purchase from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca and the sellers listed below.

Author	Comments
Anonymous	Posted on Sunday, April 03, 2005 - 11:03 pm:    While I certainly agree that burning in cables is a waste of time. To Quote: "Burn-in is a term used to refer to running your gear for some arbitrary length of time, usually several hours, to help it perform properly." I believe that there may to two perceived definitions for "burn-in" one for digital circuits and one originating from older tube electronics. What you are deaming a Myth, that any burning in of audio/video equipment to obtain a better sound/picture quality would certainly seem true to me. However, any eletronics equipment with a digital circuit boards that is newly purchased is more prone to failure within the first so many hours of use. In the past higher quality computer/equipment manufacturer used to perform burn in on their computers/electronics to test for component failure. They found after passing this burn in period electronics were less likely to fail prematurely. As the quality of electronic components went up this practice became less prevalent. However, it doesn't hurt any equipment providing that it is properly ventilated to run it for 8-10 hours after purchase to make sure that no component fails. This is an easy free way to help ensure many years of happy usage and doesn't damage the equipment in any way. Even if one doesn't believe the will run into any parts with a high infant mortality it really doesn't hurt to try. In computers there even exists special software to tax the system with a large amount of computational data and video to generate legitamate heat to test for proper cooling design by the manufacturer. Besides it can be fun to have a movie/music marathon with your new equipment for a good number of hours. Of course it still will not, as this article suggests, make the equipment function better than a similar model that hasn't had a "burn-in period."
pictureguy Unregistered guest	Posted on Tuesday, August 09, 2005 - 08:34 pm:    I agree whoe heartedly with you regarding burn in. I've done it and forgone the process and can nary tell any difference. I think those that do have to much free time on their hands or they're trying to avoid their significant other. Now I agree that tubes and solid state should warm up... But burn in??? Makes no sense. I wonder if anyone has hooked up any equipment to scientifically discern frequency and tonal changes? Thanks for your helpful thoughts. I'll be sure to pass them on.