The term “break-in” is used in audio with respect to a variety of components. Electronics and speaker drivers may benefit from some break-in, and speaker cables and interconnects certainly do. As these components break in, the way they convey the signal changes, and the overall sound of our system will change accordingly. Over time, each of these components begins to reveal the sound characteristics that it will have going forward through its functional life.
In an analog system, perhaps the most important component requiring break-in is the cartridge. A brand new cartridge will have a cantilever that is stiffer than one that’s been used for a while. As the cartridge runs, the cantilever relaxes, and its sound changes in important ways that affect everything from bass reproduction, to slam and impact, to tonality, transparency and top end extension.
When installing a new cartridge, we need to keep break-in in mind when considering how a given cartridge is affecting the sound of our system. The sound we get with a cartridge right out of the box will be different from what we’ll get after it plays 100 records.
I’ve always appreciated the way the sound of the various cartridges I’ve used over the years has improved as they broke in. But because most of my new cartridges have replaced older ones that were often past their prime, the immediate improvements in sound quality I’ve gotten consistently with brand new cartridges have tended to overshadow their flaws. Thus my experience has generally been that my new cartridges have sounded better than my old ones.
Recently I had the unfortunate experience of damaging the Dynavector 17dx I’d been running for the past year and a half. It was a cartridge that was, by all accounts, still in its prime. And as frustrating and expensive as this mistake was, it did have a bright side. By installing a brand new 17dx within a few days of removing one that had yet to decline, I had an opportunity to observe in greater detail how break-in influences the cartridge’s sound.
When I installed my first 17dx, I changed from a modified Sumiko built by Andy Kim of The Needle Clinic. Up to that point, the NC-2, as Andy calls it, was by far the best cartridge I’d ever tried. Nevertheless, with so much of Tom Port’s advice bearing so much delicious fruit over the years, I decided that I really needed to try the 17dx to see if it delivered for me the way all of Tom’s other recommendations had.
When I got my first 17dx up and running, I loved it immediately. I’d never heard a cartridge deliver the tight, deep, note-like bass the 17dx does. Straight away, it gave me the most satisfying impact and slam I’d ever experienced, and with it, my soundstage grew considerably. There was, perhaps, a bit of harshness in the upper midrange, but at the time it didn’t bother me. In fact, I quickly forgot about that harshness as the cartridge broke in and I continued to make improvements in other areas of my system.
With this latest 17dx, I am better able to appreciate the differences between the sound of a brand new 17dx versus one that’s fully broken in. Once I had the new cartridge installed, the first few records I played had a jagged edginess to their sound that was far from musical. In particular, any instrument with any metal parts sounded coldly, glaringly metallic. I happened to be comparing a few copies of Muddy Waters Folk Singer at the time of the installation, and the new cartridge conveyed the pluck of the guitar strings with a sharpness and rigidity that, while in a way striking, hit my ears much too hard.
Cymbals, an instrument my system typically reproduces with an appealing combination of palatable impact and subtle airiness, were clangy and imposing. During these early days with the new 17dx, a musician friend of my wife’s requested a demo of my copy of Brubeck’s Time Out. I obliged, but during “Take Five” I was feeling a little self-conscious that the drum solo, one of my favorites on any jazz record, was failing to live up to its full potential.
But as off as the cymbals and guitars sounded, an even more striking limitation of this brand new 17dx, particularly in the first few hours I was running it, was its inability to reveal instruments and vocals deeper in the soundstage. I was having trouble “seeing into” the music in the way I was used to, a quite serious limitation I was eager to see resolve.
Interestingly, besides just running the cartridge more to break it in faster, I found I got an improvement in the sound after just running it for about an hour during a listening session. It seems that, as the cartridge runs, it warms up, and the playback flaws are reduced appreciably, albeit temporarily.
Fortunately, I play a lot of records, and in no time I’d put more than 25 hours on my new 17dx. Better Records uses the 17dx in their shootout system, and founder Tom Port recommends 50 hours before doing any serious listening. At 25 hours I was already hearing some big improvements, and now that it’s fully broken in, I’d say that a 50 hour break-in for optimal performance seems just about right.
It’s worth mentioning that despite the fact that the overall sound of the 17dx, and I’d guess any cartridge, improves after it breaks in, there was one quality that my new cartridge had that I did find rather appealing. The brand new 17dx had a striking forwardness and precision. Instruments would leap from the speakers with startling clarity, even if they sounded less musical than was ideal. With break-in, the overall sound became more laid back and less forceful. You might even say more analog.
When the sound changed this way, I realized this was the ideal time to readjust the azimuth. Now that the sound was a bit less forward and I could hear deeper into the recording, I needed to bring the elements of the music that were further back in the soundstage into better focus. And I needed to do this even though I had dialed in the azimuth pretty carefully for my last cartridge.
You see, despite the fact that the 17dx has a very short, rigid cantilever, it still succumbs to the very intense forces of playing a vinyl record, and it will eventually start to angle slightly away from vertical. Therefore the optimal azimuth setting for a new cartridge will be different than for one that’s been running a while. This means my new broken-in 17dx needed a slightly different azimuth setting than its predecessor.
Once I adjusted the azimuth, the precision and clarity that I’d liked in the sound of the brand new cartridge returned, but without the metallic edginess. And that precision now extends to the back of the soundstage, where I can more clearly make out elements of the music that were blurred before, or in a few cases obscured by the sound of noisy vinyl.
Not that long ago I was lamenting my carelessness and cursing my shrinking bank account. A few days later I was enjoying the thrill of listening to a cartridge I’d been hearing for more than a year sound, in some ways, even better than before.
And now, just a few short months on, a mistake that I’ve very nearly forgotten about has led to the best sound I’ve yet to hear from my system. It just goes to show you that progress in audio can come in some surprising and unexpected ways.