"Burn in" Are you serious?

Hi Jostler; It took me several years to acquire "critical listening skills", and using these skills is quite a bit different than listening for pleasure IMO. Perhaps you haven't expended the time and effort necessary to learn these, but many audiophiles have. If you are going to quote scientific evidence to support your position, then please do so. So far you've just stated opinions (even about the "scientific evidence")-- like the rest of us. I would think that someone reading/participating on this site would either have a different opinion on this issue, or more specific evidence for their "contrarian" view. No? Cheers. Craig.

Relativism: a theory that knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind and the conditions of knowing and hence not true to the nature of independent reality and that holds that absolutely true knowledge is impossible because of the limitations and variability of sense perceptions or that reality as it is in itself can not be known by minds whose modes of thinking and perceptions are essentially subjective or that thinking and perceptions sees relations of one thing to another only and not the intrinsic nature of an object and hence are merely symbolic.

Charlie.... that's heavy! Have you been nipping on the "cooking sherry"?...Hitting the egg nog a little early?.... listening to too much "Joshua Judges Ruth"? Forgot to turn the hounds out tonight? or what? I'll be ashamed to come back to "the Forum" until I understand it... I'm too long removed from academia. I hope it means that in some cases, burn-in differences are real-- in your opinion of course. Cheers :>) Craig.

Boy do I get tired of these endless and pointless debates on whether or not someone's opinion about their own experience is deluded or real. What do you hope to gain - petty points scoring? Certainly noone is winning any of these debates. Some believe they have heard the sound change during burn-in, or when comparing new equipment to burnt-in equipment. Some believe this cannot be so, either because they have never heard it themselves, or because it takes them out of their comfort zone where they thought everything was explainable. This thread looks like the Monty Python skit where the chap pays for an argument and just gets meaningless contradiction. We have posts from people who seem to me to be simply trying to be right, and not listening to the posts of others at all. Is that what you are here for?

Bravo, Redkiwi. Jostler, If a stereo system sounds fuller (more bass) after breaking in a cable you say I have no way of knowing if there truly is more bass or if I am imagining it, I don't think so. I will not debate the obvious. If my toe hurts more today than yesterday, I know I am not imagining it, and if my stereo system has a different sound with the same source at the same volume, I am not imagining that either. I am not talking about subleties that only a seasoned pro can discern, I am talking about obvious differences that can be percieved by almost any person.