Speaker Wire 'Burn in'

[Blumlein 88]

Speaking of "burn in factor for speaker wire", Mike Morrow offers "burn in services". 20 day for $100. Or... 3 days for $30. Even for a set of their $10,000 speaker wires... what a deal.

Anyway. I ran across this thread, and reminded me of this audio review website... audiodrom.net ...and more precisely, audiodrom speaker cable reviews ...if you click on the photo to the left of the scores, you can read the entire "review" of the products. Surprised he hasn't given Mike Morrow's top cables with the pre burn-in service.

In other news, The speaker section is curious. The Revel M106 speakers score a 34% for sound. Ease if use is 90%. People here pretty much understand Revel speakers aren't overly finicky for room positioning, as the sweet spot is rather wide. So one would think the ease of use would be 100%.

Conversely, his review of the Franco Serblin Accordo speakers, he give a 100% for ease of use. BUT... in his review, he wrote this..
"They are not exactly for group entertainment but rather for individualists – if you position them carefully and correctly then their sweet spot is really a spot and I recommend making an X-mark on it and do not move away. In principle the Accordos are not directional, yet the optimum balance, I mean outstanding balance, is achieved only in a relatively narrow listening window. There is no manual how to get the balance right – if it is right then you will simply know it as all music elements lock together and the only thing you would not want to do is to stop listening."

Then you add:
"Well, this is the second reason why the Accordos cannot be considered bookshelf speakers – there is no way to get them play without the original stands. The monitors are connected to the stands with the help of a Speakon terminated cable that runs through the stand and then secured via two fixing bolts. The crossover assembly of low order is hidden in the lower parts of the stands, thus saving valuable space inside main cabinets to enable the Accordos go deeper with their minimum footprint. The speaker terminals are located at floor height and are not bi-wirable. Similarly to the main speakers the stands are also high gloss polished with Mr. Serblin’s engrave signature on them."

If the Speakers are that finicky for placement, and you have to use a specifically designed stand for the speaker to work, one would think their "ease of use" would NOT be 100%. But more like... 10-15% at best.

Shouldn't this be on the humor thread?

 

[Bren Derlin]

I know I'll never hear the things they do. Heck, I don't even understand what they're talking about most of the time. My PRaT could be veiled, for all I know.

You have your very own Chris PRaT?

 

[ahofer]

Shouldn't this be on the humor thread?

Teo Audio used to sell a 5-figure burn-in machine for cables. I see they no longer advertise it.

 

[Bren Derlin]

Shouldn't this be on the humor thread?

One needs a good dose of humor in every thread...

 

[symphara]

Teo Audio used to sell a 5-figure burn-in machine for cables. I see they no longer advertise it.

That's because I'll burn in your cable for only $9999. That killed the market for 5-figure burners. PM if necessary.

 

[fpitas]

One needs a good dose of humor in every thread...

And when the premise is burning in cables, the thread can only be humor.

 

[Recluse-Animator]

And when the premise is burning in cables, the thread can only be humor.

That depends entirely on what forum you are on.

 

[nerdstrike]

I reckon a few thousand amps will burn a cable nicely. No wonder you guys are charging so much!

 

[fpitas]

That depends entirely on what forum you are on.

Yes, on some I can think of it would be a contest of imagination.

 

[srrxr71]

I watched this and it blew my mind:

Who knows maybe since electrons don’t actually flow in conductors like we think maybe it needs some signal in there to optimize the magnetic fields.

Now would that be actually audible?

Probably it’s just placebo effect. Doing something, anything often yields a “difference”.

Mostly it’s your brain burning in.


Also one thing when it comes to these kinds of questions and the “is red book enough” or “does the nyquist theorem actually work?” questions is that everything in our lives depends on these working.

Cars, trains and planes are all full of a/d and d/a converters. Our lives depend on accurate signaling from all sorts of sensors like ABS sensors, throttle position sensors etc. Cars would be stalling or spinning out, planes would be falling out of the sky. A wire cannot pass 12Khz? Some of these systems operate in the MHz range. We use them everyday without thinking about them. If these engineers couldn’t figure out such basic things like transmitting a 20-20Khz signal how is it we have all the technology we have? How is it our world isn’t falling apart because we forgot to consider something about wires?

 

[Holmz]

I watched this and it blew my mind:
…

I believe you.
But this stuff have been around since Faraday and Maxwell.

…
Who knows maybe since electrons don’t actually flow in conductors like we think maybe it needs some signal in there to optimize the magnetic fields.

Now would that be actually audible?
…

The electrons do flow.
They get pushed by the electric field like a sheepdog pushing around sheep…

Not all the sheep move in unison like a school of fish or a flock of starlings, but en masse they all move.

 

[srrxr71]

I believe you.
But this stuff have been around since Faraday and Maxwell.




The electrons do flow.
They get pushed by the electric field like a sheepdog pushing around sheep…

Not all the sheep move in unison like a school of fish or a flock of starlings, but en masse they all move.

Yes it’s old no doubt but most people don’t imagine this. The electrons move but not at the speed of light or anything close to that which is the speed of the energy transfer.

 

[mansr]

I watched this and it blew my mind

It's sensationalist clickbait, same as the rest of that channel.

 

[Keened]

The electrons

FTFY

 

[ahofer]

That depends entirely on what forum you are on.

But I know what forum I’m on.

 

[srrxr71]

It's sensationalist clickbait, same as the rest of that channel.

Oh please. Most people would think connecting a light to 186,282 miles of cable that the light would need 1 second to turn on. That is not the case. Rather it turns nearly instantly. Because the bulb is only 1m from the power source.

 

[mansr]

Oh please. Most people would think connecting a light to 186,282 miles of cable that the light would need 1 second to turn on. That is not the case. Rather it turns nearly instantly. Because the bulb is only 1m from the power source.

No, most people would shrug and ask who won last night's game.

 

[srrxr71]

No, most people would shrug and ask who won last night's game.

Indeed. I bet there was a time when technology was changing people’s lives so radically that people had interest in stuff like that. Telephone, radio, TV. Digital communication all within one century.

Now it’s all taken for granted. Nobody cares how anything works just that they have it.

Anything teaching a little science? That’s clickbait but all the stupid rumors and scandals around athletes and celebrities? That’s interesting.

It goes further into how today people don’t respect science or education. It ranges from people having strong opinions on society, economics, energy policy etc. when they have the scarcest knowledge of the physics, chemistry or geology to have a basic idea of what they are talking about. To doubting things which have powered our lives for decades like the nyquist theorem. It’s good enough for systems which keep us alive but suddenly it’s not good enough for audio.

Of course they will fall back on anecdotal experience. Heck I remember changing out my speaker cables to some $1000 cables at one point. It sounded better to me. All that advanced geometry and blah blah. It’s just placebo in a lot of cases.

Placebos have been known to cure medical conditions. You find results in control groups taking sugar pills.

That’s the part we need to acknowledge in this field and the marketers have been using it on us for a long time.


That having been said this isn’t a sports forum it’s called audio science review. So science and scientific topics as they relate to audio reproduction are the crux of what is discussed here. Not everyone is an engineer and we are all at different levels of understanding.

There is even a 50+ page discussion on digital audio where members very gently convinced someone that 44.1 KHz is enough for the audible range. Sure more is better if you run things into a DSP which a lot of us do these days. Or perhaps to use gentler filter slopes. But you can get a perfectly fine 20Khz sine wave out of it.

There are other forums for discussing how nice the new 93Kg all milled aluminum chassis power amp is and how cool it looks and how big the transformers inside are etc. They don’t care how it works. They care more about the heft, the brand, the pride of ownership and how impressed guests will be at the things which comprise their stereo system.

 

[Schlippwhip68]

Hi All,
Just getting into ASR and i love the move to 'objective measurements', i always found it funny that speakers/Amps all have objective measurements but things like speaker wires etc haven't, then pushed marketing and complete BS to sell more products.

The topic i have always wondered, has Amir ever performed tests to check if speaker wire 'burn in' is a real thing or not? I think its BS that a piece of copper would change its properties when sending an audio signal down it. However, i am happy to be proved wrong! Be interesting to see if any changes in the frequency response happen after so many hours of 'burn in'.....

I bought a pair of 3m Audioquest Rocket 11 recently and noticed a big difference in separation of lower and upper bass and vocals after 15 hours burn in. Initially the sound was quite congested but after running for 15 hours or more, instrument and vocal separation dramatically improved. Futureshop UK offer a burn in service for cables which personally I would not use as I would prefer to here the change myself. My ears belong to me and I am happy with the way God has implemented them.

 

[Svet Angelov]

I bought a pair of 3m Audioquest Rocket 11 recently and noticed a big difference in separation of lower and upper bass and vocals

Obligatory 'no you didn't' comment