Cable Burn In

hifiman5 said:

"  I can't see how it hurts you to be open to it. "

All I said was that I feel like I know what I need to know as it applies to my needs. That doesn't really fall on one side or other of the issue.

It seems like everyone wants this to be an all-or-nothing issue. I don't see why. I can comfortably say that some smart people here feel like burn-in is a significant issue but that for my purposes and situation is unlikely to have any impact on my listening pleasure. And as I said before, I'm going to plug them in and listen to them, and again, what else would I do with them? And again, the odds of me (a beginner) hearing this difference over the days it takes to change the SQ are slim.

The only other option would be for me to buy cables that were burned-in at the factory and that is simply money I'm not going to spend regardless of the potential perceived SQ improvement. It just would not make sense at this point in my dabbling in this hobby.

hifiman5 also said:

" One last thought.  In the end, the issue is informed by your world view.  If you believe that every phenomenon we experience in life is quantifiable then the intangibles will never matter to you. "

Again, I think this implies that your world view requires you to be on an extreme end of every issue. Don't get me wrong, I am not a relativist by a long long shot. And I firmly believe in elements of experience and reality that transcend the empirical. But certainly there are experiences that are easily tangible and quantifiable and there are experiences that are not. My world view does not require me to put all experiences in one box.

OP - You said, "Again, I think this implies that your world view requires you to be on an extreme end of every issue."

All I said is to be open to things that may or may not be explainable or measurable.  I don't believe at being on the extreme end of audio issues.  If you want to talk about being "extreme" I would consider the "everything is quantifiable" stance to be the extreme position.🤔

Okay, I am open to it. And I think we are generally in agreement. Its just that for me the point is moot from a practical standpoint and my openness to the idea doesn't change that.

What I was pointing out was that you said: " If you believe that every phenomenon we experience in life is quantifiable...."

I think the word _every_ in that sentence is pretty absolute. I'm not denying that some folks are that absolute, I'm just saying that one can believe that _some_ things are quantifiable and _some_ are not. That's where I fall in this approach to subjects like this. I do not deny the importance and existence of the quantifiable nor the importance and existence of the intangibles, even those unique to a single observer.

The problem is that when things are not objectively quantifiable, there is always going to be difficulty arriving at a consensus among various observers. Its the nature of the beast. Especially when the particular observation is by nature likely to be subtle as in the case of this issue, especially when some observers are not physically equipped (hearing limitations) or trained (through experience) to appreciate these subtleties. And in that case....it would be true for the untrained and less sensitive observer that issue is largely irrelevant. Certainly said observer could learn to appreciate the subtleties but cannot overcome physical differences in hearing acuity.

a cable, in order to sound fantastic needs a little bit of a super intelligent chip (make sure you get the 'super', not the regular kind), and few flying saucers for windows (not the ones for doors)....

now back to the original post...can it be that, the concept of 'burning in', has more to do with our auditory system getting used to how an audio system sounds after a change, than with the physical changes that some think occur in cables?

If you hear no difference after time passes, you've lost nothing.  If you do perceive an improvement in the openness of your sound then yippee!

Riddle me this, Batmen: How do you know it's the cables?

Hearing changes all the time. Fatigue, stimulants, temperature and pressure all affect hearing.
Loudspeakers change with temperature and pressure.
Amplifiers can sound markedly different with temperature.
Contact pressure increase with temperature.

It's not possible to isolate 'improvements' to burn-in. It's equally as likely that degradation could result if changes exacerbate inherent system distortions.

The one constant with a HiFi system is there isn't