Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

OMG!

I don't think there is a Nobel Prize for pseudoscience and the fact that you would claim to have won a Nobel prize is as crazy as the products you are pedaling.  You do realize that any of us minions can simply query the list of winners??

And once again you have diverted the conversation to avoid PROVING what you claim.  Please, please provide us with actual information to back up your claims!  Many of us ARE engineers and would love to read/see the facts behind wire directionality.

It would seem that even in a high-end forum site such as this, discussions devolve into childish attacks. Lots of psychological tricks being played here. I’ll summarize:
1. If you can’t hear the difference, then your system must be crap. You clearly haven’t spent enough money and may as well be sporting Bose all over the house.

2. Science is fungible. When it comes to the laws of physics and electronics, we like to consider those to be "guidelines".

3. If you can’t hear the difference, it must be your poor hearing - clearly you are not a golden ear, nor do you possess the auditory faculties to understand the remarkable differences.

I find #3 to be particularly amusing, since I’d guess that most of the people here with disposable incomes large enough to spend five figures on wires will be at least in their 40’s, and most are probably older. Those in their 40’s have already lost about 3.5% of their hearing. Those in their 50’s have lost over 11% of their hearing (on average). (link provided below). I would guess that most of us who enjoy our audio systems probably tend to listen at higher levels than the average Joe with his big-box-store HT system connected to his TV. If anything, we would tend to be on the higher end of the hearing loss curve as a result. I probably lost at least 3% at an Aerosmith concert in 1978.

But I’m not trying to convince anyone here not to spend the money if it’s just burning a hole in your pocket. HiFi salesmen gotta eat, too, and your state could use the sales tax. However, I would strongly recommend people taking Leo’s advice (above) and start with the room analysis and treatments. Put in as much acoustic damping material and as many bass traps as your spouse will let you get away with. I don’t think there’s one soul on this or any respectable audio forum who would argue with the enormous and easily measurable differences room acoustics make. Then and only then would I expect to see a clown car.

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/hearing-loss-increases-with-age

It would seem that even in a high-end forum site such as this, discussions from others from other sites with an agenda devolve into childish attacks. Lots of psychological tricks being played here.......

It goes both ways. Do any of you from that other site honestly believe you're the first to raise your points? Do you think that your appeals to authority, name dropping and your credentials intimidate in any way, shape or form?

Please cite the "law of science" that states there is no break in without conflating it with a law that predicts a measurement. And don't forget to omit the other subsets of said laws that say otherwise when it does pertain to sound; that are still debated to this very day by real scientists and engineers who take the time to deliberate.

All the best,
Nonoise

@rldwv  I do apologize for the recent "personal" attacks as you put it.

I just got fed up with all the pseudoscience some members publish and it seens its on every discussion thread.  This hurts our hobby and confuses those of us who are not engineers.

I agree  100%  on Leo's advice as well.

I also agree with you on hearing loss and how it increases with age.  Fortunately, I can still hear the difference between any Bose speaker and  Magnepan 20.7s(hint).

Nonoise: "Do you think that your appeals to authority, name dropping and your credentials intimidate in any way, shape or form? "

Your name is ironic, since you’re adding things I never said (called "noise"). Oh, I did mention "Aerosmith", so I guess I did name-drop.

I posted no credentials, so I’m sorry if you felt intimidated. Let me fix that. I spent ten weeks learning at the USN Anti Submarine Warfare training center in San Diego. You might imagine that acoustics were a topic of discussion there. I was also employed as a senior engineer with Boeing Defense System (you may have heard of them) for seven years working on projects I cannot discuss, but their alignment is relevant to this discussion. I have a BS in math and an MS in Computer Science. Enough said, and I’m sure there are those here with much more impressive CV’s than mine.

All us doubters are saying is "prove it". I don’t know how else you can prove it without a measurement. Most engineers embrace the addage "In God We Trust, all others bring data".

You know what causes changes in how you hear your system? Everything (but probably not the layer of copper molecules adjacent the molecules in your dielectric). Is it getting warmer outside? Is it getting warmer inside? Any change in Barometric Pressure? Did you invite a friend over to listen? Are you standing in a different spot? Did your friend just recline in his chair? Both of you are reflecting some sound energy frequencies and absorbing others. You have changed the room dynamics measurably. Been in the room for several minutes? You’ve probably raised the temperature and the humidity in there, not to mention altered the air volume of the room. Are you worried about the testing? Worried about whether our not your "friend" is going to like your system? Even small amounts of stress and blood pressure change how our ears perform. How loud was it before you walked into your listening room? All of these factors are infinitely more measurable than the alignment of molecules in your cable.

But what it really boils down to is this: are you happier? If "yes", then who gives a crap why? Our minds play tricks on us all the time, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If your kid isn’t going to college because you spent the money on cables, that’s a different issue, but not one I think likely here.

Let me offer some unsolicited advice. Listen to your music and not your system. If you’re fretting over how much better that violin or sax could sound if those unruly little molecules would stay in line, then you are missing the entire point, and cheating yourself out of the enjoyment you’ve paid a lot of money for. As an early HTPC pioneer, I lived that mistake (IRT video quality) for far too long.

azbrd: I would certainly hope so. Just remember that the retirement home isn’t going to allow your Maggies in, so you may need to adapt some day :-) (I know, I know, better dead than Bose...)