Triangle Antal 40th Anniversary Edition

LOUDSPEAKER

- ROB SCHRYER

Has it ever crossed your mind that the reason you like your system more than your friend’s or the store’s is not because yours is better, even if you think it is, but because you’re used to the sound of yours and not of theirs? Welcome to product habituation.

Some people, including some audiophiles, believe that product habituation is what’s really behind what some people refer to as product break-in. It’s not a mechanical or electronic phenomenon, they contend, but a mental one. Assuming the sound of the new gear is of adequate quality, it’s the listener that breaks in to the product, as the product’s sound, which was initially strange, grows more familiar and, so, right.

Those who believe in break-in view the process as a period during which a component’s signal-carrying parts are “settling,” the concomitant effect of which is a gradual improvement in sound quality, until whammy! Everything has seemingly, finally, coalesced into a relaxed, cohesive, enjoyable presentation.

Except that’s not what really happens, according to the habituation theory. That whammy? That wasn’t the sound blossoming into a beautiful swan (song?), it was, rather, the moment your brain completely bought the illusion—an illusion that had been there all along.

I’m a compromiser. I’ll venture that both things are happening— that habituation accounts for about half the break-in story. While humans may be the most adaptive species on Earth, it’s jarring when something new replaces something we’re used to. It knocks us out of familiar territory, forcing us to question what we thought we knew and what this new, intrusive thing is all about.