2. cables
  3. 1445824907

Cable Cooking/Burnin

I read this on KLE Innovations, http://kleinnovations.com/kle-innovations-klei-products/essence-gzero-ic/, and wondered what your thoughts on Cable Cooking/Burnin might be ...

Burnin/Cooking Time

We believe that the Burnin/Cooking process can be thought of as an extension/finishing of the Annealing process.

This is a practice that can dramatically/drastically improve performance and has been gaining acceptance from HiFi enthusiasts :) Usually, any listener will be able to identify a marked change/improvement in audio component performance within the first 100 or more hours of use, whether it be a cable, connector, component or loudspeaker.

Burnin/Cooking time is the process whereby electrical signal/charge gradually settles/corrects/aligns dielectric, electromagnetic, and material (metal and non-metal) issues that occur/result during the construction process. These aspects are often and usually found in Cables/Connectors and usually results in a brittle, bright, muddy, non-cohesive sound that lacks the Detail, Resolution, Timbre, PRaT, Harmonic Texture, Organicness, Naturalness, and Staging which is desired for music reproduction. Burnin/Cooking Time improves the way that signal passes through the conductors and dielectrics and it is the resulting changes in signal transmission that refines and defines the performance of the audio cables.

While it is most important to implement Burnin/Cooking Time, upon purchase, routine maintenance is always important, also. Cables/Connectors that have not been played, or left unused, for long/prolonged periods of time, may become stagnant and again require Burnin/Cooking Time.
yping
williewonka
3,082 posts
 
Lak - an observation derived from the link you provided...

Over-Cooking can reduce the performance, at least temporarily. The characteristics of this are a reduced or diminished soundstage and a dull, lifeless quality to the music. If this situation occurs, merely letting the cables physically rest, and settle, then putting them back in the music system to play for a few hours brings them back to their optimal performance level. Over-Cooking does NOT do any damage to the cabling whatsoever. Again, incremental Cooking-and-listening tests are highly recommended to avoid over-Cooking one’s cables.

A couple of months ago I was made aware that leaving a system powered on all the time will result in degraded SQ.

I tried with my own system and found that I could leave the system on for up to 5 days, but after day 6 the system suffered similar effects mentioned above.

Turning the system off overnight restored its performance.

So perhaps it could it be possible I was effectively "overcooking" my cables?

Hmmm... It certainly throws some light on something I had no explanation for :-)

Many Thanks
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
I hate to judge before all the facts are in but I'm pretty sure it's true that a signal has to be going through the system in order to accomplish burn in. I kind of doubt the system or the wires of cables will burn in without at a minimum a music signal going through it for those 5 or 6 days. Most likely there's something else afoot if you observed the sound quality go South after 6 days.
yping OP
351 posts
 
Yep, burnin/cooking would require a signal to go through it but leaving a component turned on for 6 days or more would allow for magnetic effects within the component to grow to the point of saturation, at which point you would need to turn the component off for the magnetic effects to dissipate through the ground... IMO.
williewonka
3,082 posts
 
Geoffkait - it was during a burn-in I noticed this effect and I had music playing through the cables, but the amp was turns down.

Yping - I too heard of the saturation issue, but wondered if "overcooking" was the real issue - perhaps not

Definaitely some weird stuff :-)

Regards...
wig's avatar
wig
1,282 posts
 
My experiences are the same as David Pritchard, I've owned too many cables to list and most of them were in my system for thousands of hours and they ALL drastically changed for the better after cooking!

You'll hear more low level detail, blacker background, expansive sound-stage width/depth and organic vibrant imaging; almost like you are there...

Wig
More to discover