Burn in vs perception

@curiousjim 

Has anyone bought two power cords and left one in the box and used the other one for a few months?  Then pulled out the unused pc and done a A/B test?

 

curiousjim

Yes, I have done this exact power cable A/B test to test the theory!

I bought several mains cables from a well known cable supplier. These were 10 times the price of my original cables and had many rave reviews. So I was confident that these will sound great.

These were very well made cables with high grade plugs. When I first connected these, I thought the sound appeared to have improved! but I wasn't sure! Problem was powering down the system, switching cables, powering up and remembering what the previous cables sounded like!!

I am an engineeer so I decided to design a test jig.  I bought several IEC sockets, rocker switches and made myself a test box. The two rocker switches were wired to allowed me to switch any of the two cables in or out of the circuit. When both switches are ON then both mains cables are running in parallel. This enabled me to switch between any two cables almost instantaneously from my listening position without powering down the equipment.

With CDs in my Oppo 205 player running on repeat  and able to switch cables without powering down surely I should hear any differences. 

Unfortunately, I heard no difference, good or bad!

I also did a burn-in for 4 weeks as recommended by the manufacturer. Still I heard no difference! 

I spoke to manufacturer regarding my test, They suggested I may need a longer burn-in!

I did a longer burn-in as these cables had all these good reviews so I was happy to give it more time but still heard no difference in sound.

I also tested another same out of the box new cable against the now burned-in cable. No difference!!

By now the cable return window had closed.

May be I need a 600Hr burn-in. My mind keeps telling me that these are expensive well built cables and should sound better.
May be they do sound better but I just can't hear it! May be if I had not done the A/B test they would have sounded better in my mind. May be if I keep going  one day I will hear the difference.

Burn-in or perception, you decide.

But hey, these cables fo improve the appearance of  system so all is not lost.

Good threat. There are (mechanical ) things that need break in. But perhaps most break-in in electronics/audio happens in our minds which are highly adaptive, and our desire to be satisfied of what we have (except that it is virtually impossible to be adopted to a really bad sound). Finally, what God helps us to find our satisfaction. 

@rshank64 

Thanks for sharing your listening test.  I am actually not surprised at the results.  The only times I have suspected hearing a difference in power cables is when switching to a much larger gauge cable.  Even then, I did not try a structured test like yours so I cannot confirm whether I would be able to select the larger vs. smaller cable with reliability.

If you are still curious about your cables, you might look at this thread.  If you check with Amir at ASR, and offer to send him one of the power cables, along with a summary of your listening test methods and results, I suspect he would test the cable for you.

Thanks @rshank64 for your sharing your experiences. Mine are pretty much the same, but I don’t have a pc that cost more than $400. 

Speakers Definitely loose some of their "rigidity" after a couple hundred hours...some sooner , but they ALL need to "break in" to sound to their fullest.