@andy2
Like I said, manufacturers have a lot of cables lying around so they can do A - B between new and old cables so there is no need to recall something many days ago.
And that is exactly why it is suspicious that they do not (that I'm aware of) produce any objective measurements showing the physical changes between a burned in and new cable. Let alone tests correlating such changes to their audibility. (The only, rare, attempts I'm aware of to measure for burn-in in finished audio products, either cables or other devices e.g. CD players, were negative for burn in effects).
Even in this thread people have appealed to the idea "high end cable manufacturers recommend burn in, so it must be a real thing!"
Yet when you check out the claims, e.g. on the Nordost page (one of THE most well-regarded cable companies in high-end), anyone with a critical-thinking neuron in their head can see how dicey and unsupported the claims are.
Look how many cable companies there are. None (that I know) provide objective, repeatable data demonstrating their claims and you'd think they have the equipment! Lots of them just tell you it happens, which entails that it is "only fair" that you keep the cable for the allotted "burn in" time. And that is a good marketing move - salesmen know about the "get the foot in the door" approach, where once you can say "look, just take it and try it out" the sale is more likely than if the customer doesn't even take the product.
Why do things like "cable burn-in" operate like pseudoscience, where the companies (or audiophiles or hi-fi salesmen) make some technical-sounding claim that is never actually supported by measured data, but only by anecdote?
Andy, could you answer the question I posed before, because I'm sure it has consequences for the assumptions you've made about cables, that perhaps you have not thought through:
Do you think the "higher end" cables, such as your QED, transmit sonic information that the Belden cable is incapable of transmitting?
