Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

@lanceo .   Who is my hero?  If you are referring to Toynbee I don't consider him to be heroic but the quotes you cited are obviously true.   Rome wasn't killed by externals. Their own cultural degradation led to so great a devaluation of humanity that they did commit suicide.  Check out the current suicide rates in the West especially among the younger citizens. Sad stuff. 

Regarding the human mind.  Science will never"contain" it.  Science doesn't explain the pleasure of viewing a beautiful work of art or more relevant here, beautiful sounding music.  It can't tell me why I prefer Shostakovich to Mahler.   I respect your engineering expertise but for your sake, don't let it limit your humanity. 

@azbrd .  I am sorry to hear that you and your friends were unable to hear cable differences.  If you were swapping them in and out of the system, it would be difficult to perceive. As anecdotal testimony from many who post here demonstrates, burn in and settling time affect the cable's sound. If you were switching the cables in and out in a non blind test, the switching would obfuscate the differences. 

"Dynamic swing" means to me a rhythmic and dynamic life to music. The classic reference to "it got my foot tapping". It, at least for me, is an essential quality of musical immersion and enjoyment. 

Towards the end of life the suspension in speaker drivers will deteriorate, but that is a decade away from first use. 

The break-in period is usually within first 48-72 hours of use, and designers take this into account, so for this period at least, performance will improve. 

@hifiman5 I did not want to get into the details of how the cables were switched, ie blind or not but since you brought it up.  One of us would switch (or not switch) the cables when the other two were in another room.  When the switch was completed they would return to their exact seating position and the same track at the same volume was played. None of us could accurately say which of the cable sets were in use because both sets sounded the same.

To repeat, we were comparing cables with >1000 hours of use to BRAND NEW cables, my take on this is that cable 'break-in' is a myth and that no-one has ever been able to show that there is any scientific justification to the claim, nor shown or measured that the performance has changed in any way.

I would suggest that cable break-in is real, and occurs between the ears of the listener, not in the cable.

azbrd
@hifiman51 A few years ago i replaced my existing cables with some slightly longer ones of the EXACT same brand and gauge. The existing cables had >1000 hours of use the new ones had none and I could NOT hear ANY difference between the 2 sets. I had a few friends over so I could swap the 2 sets for them, Back and forth we went and none of us could hear any difference between the sets.

I guess my system is missing "dynamic swing?" so I was unable to hear what a "broken" in cable sounds like. Also, please define what "dynamic swing" is????

>>>>There are a whole bunch of reasons why cable comparisons oft fail. Many of these reasons explain why almost any test of any audio thing fails.

1. Unplugging a cable destroys the delicate electrical/mechanical connection that took a long time to establish. So, going back and forth between cables proves nothing.

2. The new cables were not properly broken in so you can’t really expect them to sound too good.

3. One or both cables were not connected in the correct direction.

4. As has been pointed out many times cables don’t get fully broken in without resorting to a burn in track on a test CD or a burn in device. Playing music through cables, even for years, is not sufficient.

5. Both cables in the test are not sufficient quality to reveal differences that might be there.

6. The system used for the test is not of sufficient quality to reveal differences.

7. There are errors in the system.

8. The test subjects’ hearing is not all it’s cracked up to be.

9. Differences were masked by “outside conditions” - weather, time of day, unknown causes.

10. Test subjects were drunk.