Is 500 hours of break in really nec.?

Brian, I have owned and listened to high end audio equipment for a long long time. My first high end equipment was made by GAS and I purchased it in the 1970's. I am amoung those who recommend the use of third party cable over the standard cables (IC, PC or Speaker Cables). I will be very honest with you and state with strong conviction that I have never detected a significant difference between cable that was burned in or not. To me, it is that simple. I know there will be those that disagree with me and I respect their opinion, but they should do likewise to mine.

Interesting, Liguy. When trying to gauge the effect of "burn-in" in the past, I would come up against a familiarity factor -- i.e., getting used to the sound of the new cable with time. In this respect, getting "better" (burn-in) could actually mean getting more "familiarised".

If (for the sake of example) "burn-in" is achieved slowly rather than in ear-catching leaps & bounds, the differences (again, assuming there are some such) would be small from one hr./day, to the next. Similarly, familiarisation may make these differences imperceptible.

I assume you've taken this into account long ago -- but your experience, being different to mine, is interesting.

Cheers!

If you have duplicates of any cable it is easy enough to test. I have already done it with Homegrown Super Silver IC's (had two pairs), Kimber Kable (had two double runs), BMI Whale PC's (have two) and Absolute PC's (have three and one of them has yet to be broken in). I will do a demonstation with the "virgin" Absolute PC for a friend the next time he stops by. I am currently breaking in a 47 Labs cable kit in one system and will be installing it in the future in another system. This cable has been all over the map sound wise in 150 hours of play. The silver IC's mentioned above were unlistenable to me for the first 125 hours, but have resided in my system ever since as they sounded great after 200 hours of play. The only cable that I have yet to use that seemed to form its sonic sound very quickly has been the micro wire digital IC from Mapleshade (it evened out in an afternoon of play, perhaps 4-6 hours). I would assume that another factor is how much current of signal is being passed through a cable in regard to break in (and what type of signal it is). If I were to break in speaker cable for instance at low listening levels, would it take longer than at higher listening levels and does the type of music or signal effect this as well? I have also discovered that allowing cable to rest for periods (instead of running it in 7/24) seems to speed up the break in process. What I do now it to run cable for 7 hours, give it a break for an hour or so and then run it for another 7 hours (around the clock). I was originally concerned about the CD sources getting too hot, which is why I allowed the resting peiod, and found out that the break in procees seemed to accelerate with this method over the 7/24 method. I have no idea why this would be, but having broken in identical cable this seems to be the case.

PS: In regard to the Coincident cables and 500 hours (that's a long time!). I would hope that they sound pretty good at 200 hours or so and that the rest of the time is just fine tuning. I have found many cables to sound "good" at 100 hours or so and then just get a little better afterward. I have also been off work the past year and listen to the systems a lot, so this situation is a lot different from coming home from work each day and just listening for a few hours in the evening (with a television blaring in one of the other rooms and the microwave oven going non-stop:-).

Ditto, Dekay.