Speaker Wire 'Burn in'

[Descartes]

You do realize that all you "science" guys are losing the battle. This is the age of alternate facts where truth and reality are divorced.

In my most cynical moments I rejoice in the fact that I am far closer to my end than my beginning.

Worst part is that is all self-inflicted.

Drink up, I am rearranging the deck chairs as I type!

So true what ever some self proclaimed expert blabs on X, Instagram or Facebook many people believe they speak the Truth!! As they say in Latin
“Cognoscetis Veritatem et Veritas Liberabit Vos”

 

[DonR]

You do realize that all you "science" guys are losing the battle. This is the age of alternate facts where truth and reality are divorced.

In my most cynical moments I rejoice in the fact that I am far closer to my end than my beginning.

Worst part is that is all self-inflicted.

Drink up, I am rearranging the deck chairs as I type!

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”

 

[Deleted member 21219]

This is the age of alternate facts where truth and reality are divorced.

Yeah ... until you mix chlorine bleach and ammonia. Then reality has a way of rearing its ugly head!

Jim

 

[Deleted member 48726]

Yeah ... until you mix chlorine bleach and ammonia. Then reality has a way of rearing its ugly head!

Jim

It does happen with surprisingly regular intervals on Tik-Tok and Instagram and whatever else is out there. -The first time I just was in disbelief of the stupidity but have come to enjoy the freakshow. Like some kind of evolutionary self-culling where the subjects film themselves. It's fascinating and scary.

 

[antcollinet]

By 'mechanics' I mean the underlying reason (mechanism) that enables the change in performance; I'm not referring to moving machinery.

Wow - it took you a long time to respond to that one.

 

[DSJR]

You lot never used QED 'Silver Anniversary' speaker cables - WTF 5* award winners for countless years, directional as hell (oh yes indeedy and repeatable at the time) and it screwed up the sound of every system it was used with. I'd love to know why this was, as substituting any half decent copper cable 2.5mm cross section or above (so 14 gauge upwards?) in 5m or so runs subjectively sorted things out. All this long before the internet, or null tests and so on...

Glad I'm out of it all now frankly and just use the tools here masquerading as a 'sound system' to listen to music via...

 

[AdrianusG]

I do it deliberately to antagonise patriarchal zealots. . Perhaps not the best side of my character, but it amuses me.

Figured as much, sometimes it's fun to throw in some "Red Meat"

 

[mhardy6647]

The underlying mechanism of cable burn-in is, believe it or not, the same underlying mechanism behind homeopathic water memory. Seriously!

It's people inventing wacky stories about molecules to explain the placebo effect they're experiencing.

And yet... audiophiles don't soak their cables in water.
Funny, innit?

Of course, now you've got me thinking -- about deuterium.
I'll bet there's a real marketing opportunity for cables made using insulator and jacket materials made from deuterated polymers. Blacker blacks. Bigger soundstage. Jaw-dropping dynamics.

 

[mhardy6647]

So true what ever some self proclaimed expert blabs on X, Instagram or Facebook many people believe they speak the Truth!! As they say in Latin
“Cognoscetis Veritatem et Veritas Liberabit Vos”

I think that was probably first said in Aramaic.
The second half, more or less, is my alma mater's motto.

 

[egellings]

Wow - it took you a long time to respond to that one.

Well, I am getting along in years.

 

[5-pot-fan]

View attachment 348284

In the context of burn-in, the implied result is always that the cables will audibly change for the better throughout the burn-in period. There is never talk of any other outcome, simply that burn-in is required for better performance. If "better" is an outcome, how much better is really audibly better? If better is an outcome, why is "not better" or "no change" also not a possible outcome? "Worse" and "No Difference" are absolutely possibilities during burn-in but are never discussed as a possible outcome.

Does Normal Gaussian distribution not apply to burn-in of cables? Sure seems like it would, as just about everything else in the world does.

It would seem that the outcome of burn-in simply should not be a binary function. No burn-in = bad vs. burn-in = better. If it is a binary function, there would be a magically turning point during the burn-in period at which bad instantaneously becomes better. But we know that that magical, instantaneous point likely doesn't exist and that if there really is change it is gradual in nature.

So, if there is some form of accelerated audible change to the equipment over the initial use period, does that not infer that the change will continue forever? Why would the change simply stop after a couple hundred hours of use?

Also, if change does occur during burn-in, does that not infer that the change will continue at some (perhaps reduced) rate forever. Big changes in the first few hundred hours of use and then no change at all, for eternity, seems a little far fetched. If cables do actually change audibly during burn-in, how long before that continual change becomes audibly unacceptable and those cables are now burned-out, their useful life has expired? At what point in a cable's life would it transition from burned-in to burned-out?

Know anyone whose cable's have burned-out, in anything other than a house fire?

I volunteer this response for inclusion in @amirm 's latest call for a set of FAQs. Specifically, as an answer to the cable burn-in query that some of us may have had, and also for almost any 'burn-in' question.
I found my own way to what I think is the sensible side of the topic after many hours chasing answers a few years ago - this would have helped get me there sooner!

 

[egellings]

The underlying mechanism of cable burn-in is, believe it or not, the same underlying mechanism behind homeopathic water memory. Seriously!

It's people inventing wacky stories about molecules to explain the placebo effect they're experiencing.

If you believe that cable burn-in improves cable performance, then you, and you alone, will "hear" the "improvement". My question about cable burn-in is, what actually physically or chemically or electrically or metallurgically changes in the cable after the burn-in is completed? Is this measurable?

 

[ahofer]

If you believe that cable burn-in improves cable performance, then you, and you alone, will "hear" the "improvement". My question about cable burn-in is, what actually physically or chemically or electrically or metallurgically changes in the cable after the burn-in is completed? Is this measurable?

And how does it work for recycled metals?

 

[egellings]

And how does it work for recycled metals?

A little copper atom does not care if it was saved from a junk yard or mined from fresh ore. I can't help myself from placing 'little' in front of 'atom' for some reason. Cables are likely not absolutely pure Cu and will likely have other metallurgical contaminants in them. Will that affect sound quality? Unless the wire is really poorly made, nope. The only way an audio cable will have an actual, not believed, effect on sound is by way of its R, L, and C components. There is no magic; it's just electrical engineering.

 

[Blumlein 88]

A little copper atom does not care if it was saved from a junk yard or mined from fresh ore. I can't help myself from placing 'little' in front of 'atom' for some reason. Cables are likely not absolutely pure Cu and will likely have other metallurgical contaminants in them. Will that affect sound quality? Unless the wire is really poorly made, nope. The only way an audio cable will have an actual, not believed, effect on sound is by way of its R, L, and C components. There is no magic; it's just electrical engineering.

Wasn't it an alchemist theory that King Solomons gold was special gold denser than all normal gold?

 

[egellings]

Wasn't it an alchemist theory that King Solomons gold was special gold denser than all normal gold?

Maybe someone figured out a way to stuff another neutron or two into the fat little Au atom and have it not fall apart. That woulda made it heavier, I 'spoze. When I use the word 'atom', I always seem to put 'little' in front of it as a sort of a knee jerk reflex action. Dunno why.

 

[kemmler3D]

what actually physically or chemically or electrically or metallurgically changes in the cable after the burn-in is completed? Is this measurable?

As far as I know, nothing, and no, at least not in any regime of electrical characteristics that are relevant to audio.

 

[Audiofire]

I am astounded that after 3 years not one of you all has discovered the Truth behind all of Audiophiliosis. Electrons are actively malevolent. They sense people who are prone to fiddling and nervousness, who are obsessed with minutia and have more time to fiddle than they know what to with.

Don't worry, it is well known in science as social reciprocity. As electrons spend their days in tightly confined living space with no special rights or ability to explore the world, they of course become malevolent. Then again, it is best to keep them confined like herding other unruly creatures.

 

[egellings]

Don't worry, it is well known in science as social reciprocity. As electrons spend their days in tightly confined living space with no special rights or ability to explore the world, they of course become malevolent. Then again, it is best to keep them confined like herding other unruly creatures.

The little farts must abhor getting herded into capacitors big time.

 

[Induna]

The little farts must abhor getting herded into capacitors big time.

Surely, but they are mere slaves to our audiofonic obsessions nonetheless. We allow them to vent their displeasure by abusing the neurotic credulity of the audiophile class so that we may use them for our own nefarious ends of musical enjoyment. It's really a win-win, well except for the audiophiles...