Capacitor burn-in
The subject of burn-in time for audio capacitors is a widely discussed topic, often sparking heated debates between believers and non-believers.
We have done our own tests and exchanged opinions with a wide range of speaker designers on this interesting subject.
It is our subjective opinion that for most people and for most applications there is no audible change in the characteristics of our capacitors over time, at least not to a degree detectable by most human ears.
It is much easier to agree about the burn-in or play-in that takes place for e.g. bass or mid-woofer speaker units, where the fabric outer suspension and/or fabric spider often becomes softer over time and reduces the point of resonance.
Light-weight non-treated paper cones may also become slightly softer over time and change properties.
The mental burn-in time
We think it makes more sense to talk about what can be described as a mental burn-in time, where your ears and hence your brain will need time to adjust and reflect on the change that has happened, when listening to a speaker that had new capacitors installed.
When it comes to swapping / upgrading capacitors it will always be a matter of taking some time to get used to something new.
After having listened to many types of recordings and even from different media types for a longer period, it is completely up to the listener to determine if the change is a preferable thing or not and perhaps discover that less is more.
Doing conventional A/B listening test with a switch between different capacitors, is asking an awful lot of our ears and brain.
After a short time, all the impressions become muddled, and we end up more confused than enlightened.
It is our subjective opinion that a more effective A/B listening test is to make a setup A and listen to that for an extended period and then do a setup B and do the same.
Then return to setup A again to see how we feel about the differences between the two.