THE VALUE OF 'RUNNING-IN' HI-FI KIT

Managing editor Becky Roberts (WHF UK) gathers top hi-fi engineers' thoughts on the topic

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So you’ve just snuck some new hi-fi kit into your house and have wired it up to your system. You have lined up your favourite album and are ready and eager to listen to how much better it now sounds compared to yesterday and congratulate yourself on your latest purchase. But between set-up and performance scrutiny is a process that will undoubtedly irk the impatient but could prevent confusion if the kit doesn’t sound as you remember it from the demo room. Yep, we’re talking about ‘running-in’.

You are probably familiar with the phrase, and it essentially refers to an initial period of use whereby the moving parts begin to work and stabilise in their forever environment, during which a last little bit of shifting could occur.

Just as a car shouldn’t be driven like a boy racer in the first miles of its life while the piston rings are still settling into the engine’s cylinder wall and the brake pads and discs are adjusting to one other, hi-fi performance shouldn’t, according to popular thought, be taken as gospel until all of the moving parts have bedded in.

Indeed, it’s something we have habitually done with every review product that has passed through our doors in the past five decades. But, is this something we still need to do? We asked a number of engineers in the industry for their thoughts on running-in…

The settling of mechanics

“There’s no argument as far as we are concerned,” says Stephen Oakes of Neat Acoustics, and “it’s pretty clear cut” says Cambridge Audio’s engineering team - loudspeakers benefit from being run-in due to their physical and mechanical nature. “Loudspeakers straight out of the box will certainly sound ‘tight’ and far from the relaxed performance that is desired,” says Peter Comeau of the IAG Group. And Oakes affirms that “this is audible and measurable.”