Another topic recently pointed out how in real world test the majority of audiophile enthusiasts can't tell the difference between the output of a $100 cable connection and a $10 cable.. Well here's a similar situation.. I had never even heard of the technique of burning your speakers in to reach a point of producing its best sound, but this article about it reveals a big flaw about the practice.. (excerpts):
Lab Tests Reveal That Speakers From the Same Production Run Sound 11x Less Identical Than One Speaker Before and After Burn-In
By Colin Toh
Published on December 13, 2025
https://www.headphonesty.com/2025/12/tests-speakers-sound-less-identical-burn-in/
The audiophile burn-in ritual goes something like this: buy expensive speakers, run pink noise through them for 100 hours, wait for them to “open up,” then finally allow yourself to listen. ... ..But when researchers actually measured burn-in, they stumbled onto something else entirely. The “identical” speakers weren’t identical. ... ..
The most significant differences in impedance magnitude appeared between speakers from the same production series. Units with consecutive serial numbers that should have been acoustically identical showed resonance peaks shifted by several hertz from one speaker to the next. ...
... buyers have no way to know if their pair actually matches. The variation that actually matters to stereo imaging, whether your left and right speakers respond identically, goes unmentioned on spec sheets. ...
Somewhere, an audiophile is running burn-in tracks through speakers that differ from each other by eleven times the amount burn-in would ever change them.
I guess this kind of relates to the stock internal sound cards as opposed to using a quality external DAC.. Some say now days you can't tell the difference anyway so it's not worth the extra expense.. That might be true now, I dont have a good argument for it, but to me it just seems prudent to ensure your source audio feeding the transmitter originates from a quality sound card.
But maybe I'm just an idiot like the guys that worry about burning in their speakers.
Actually I guess that doesn't relate to the speaker burn-in story at all.. but it does remind me of it.
@richpowers The manufacturers of hi fi speakers tell you to play white noise through them like between stations on FM for hours to "condition" them before use. Does it matter? Play a certain track from the same amplifier at the same volume same tone settings in the same place before and after and I bet it's only in your imagination if you hear a before and after difference.
I agree that a good sound card is important to have quality audio going to the processor and transmitter but most computers have the exact same Realtek chips in all of them. But it's true that no matter what you do in the middle inbetween the source and transmitter the audio is only as good as the source. The transmitter itself has a lot to do with it also as it is like the speakers in a hi fi system, the final delivery of audio that you hear and if that is not good it doesn't matter how good the source is. In other words the final is as much a part of audio quality as the source.