The molecular level explanation of "cable burn-in"

In my 40+ years of audiophile listening, I do believe that break-in of speaker cables and interconnects is necessary and happens.  I don't prescribe to know the physics behind it however it's been a phenomenon I've experienced many times over with a variety of cables, inexpensive to expensive.  I recently purchased a set of Iconoclast speaker cables and interconnects.  I really appreciate the time Iconoclast (Galen Gareis) took to develop his white paper on speaker cable design.  I really like how the cables perform in my system.  While they don' specify a break in period, after about 100 hours of play they have smoothed out and sounded for lack of a better work more refined.  They have a few conductor choices of copper-types and one with silver plated copper.  They say each measures the same, but the types of conductor do sound different.  

theskipperthree - member since 2007, never posted anything until today and this was the best you could come up with?

Back in the eighties, I bought a pair of expensive IC’s. Until that, all I ever used were the thin cheap cables that came with cd players. OMG was the difference huge! From that point on, I believe that cables mattered.  In the last four years, I’ve bought seven power cables (all $500 and under.) and to be honest, I’ve not heard a lick of difference, but I definitely am not going to yell and call people names because they can hear something that I cannot. Maybe someday I’ll be able to try some expensive cables and see if then I can hear an improvement. But until that time comes, why should I care what others think? Or how others spend their money?  When it comes to HIFI, I trust my ears and not others beliefs.

I believe that I can hear the difference between cables that I have put into my system.  The physics of why that is the case . . . I haven't the slightest idea, although it seems like manufacturers believe that they need to say something to explain why you need to fork over sometimes big $$ beyond "buy my cable . . . it sounds better" and we end up with a bunch of technogobbledygook that probably has nothing to do with why the cable sounds different but sounds very scientific -- MIT, I am thinking of your "poles of articulation" nonsense.  So, the debate regarding why cables sound different continues and until some group designs a method of doing a real A/B blind test that eliminates any variances other than the cable, this debate will go on and on.

This brings me to the next logical point.  If it sounds different, shouldn't that show up in some sort of measurement on REW, or an oscilloscope, or at least something? If not, why not?