Sound of cables breaking in?

If you do this long enough, you can tell if a cable will sound good in your system upon a first listen. A more complicated cable design will take longer to settle in than simple one (think multi strand cables of various gauges, some plated, some not, and a single, solid core wire in a loose jacket with air as the primary dielectric). 

Recently, I added some short jumpers to my new speakers dual binding posts and the speed of their breaking in is noticeable, compared to my speaker cables journey. It's all fun.

All the best,
Nonoise

I've never believed in break-in until now. I'm currently going through cable break-in with my Clarus Crimson speaker cables, so this thread is perfect timing. I've had the Crimson cables for a couple of weeks. A couple of days ago my highs(cymbals) had a very subdued sound to them. As a matter of fact, details seemed to have disappeared to the point where I panicked and put the Crimsons for sale. Today everything returned to normal and I realize I need to be patient. I've never had cables that has put me on a roller coaster like Clarus has. The good news is I don't feel the need to sell them and take a big loss anymore.

I think I am asking this again.  Are there any measurable properties and/or qualities of cables (speakers, interconnects, etc) to identify good ones from the bad ones?

pc997,

Assuming the cables don't have any obvious problems with the quality of construction or materials used,

If you’re talking about properties that are measurable with test equipment, I am not aware of any that are really useful for this purpose, but they may exist.

If you are talking about measurable with your ears, then there are many. The most important one, in my opinion, is; how much are you enjoying the music?

My experience with Purist cables is very similar to the OP's.
But my experience with Tchernov cables is different. They kept improving more or less in a linear fashion and never sounded bad. Both Purist Neptune and Tchernov Reference MK II RCAs required about 275 hours to fully open up.
Often, the better the cables the longer burn-in period. More complex dialectric needs more time.