Do speaker cables need a burn in period?

That is because, as you have illustrated, you are not very familiar with manufacturing and the costs involved, and how little per unit amortized costs can be.

Since you believe I am wrong, why don’t you show me how? ..... use some real numbers, I will even allow you to guess at values. I don’t have to guess. That is why I have a company (not a single consultant) that consults to the audio industry and several others. We even manage contract manufacturing and do some low volume work ourselves where it makes sense.

You are long on ad hominems, short on useful content.

andy2802 posts11-19-2019 10:33pm

I don’t think there is a lot of excuse for not doing it, at least for a reasonable amount of time, say 144 hours (1 week).

Except nobody is doing it except probably for some high end cables which the cost has already taken into account.

I am getting scared for whoever you’re doing consulting work for. That is if that’s your actual job.

Oh well ... if you want in indulge into your own wet dreams, who am I to stop.

First show me a cable cooker with link.  And how many cables can it "cook" at the same time?  And it will be a simple multiplication really?  It's just simple math.  Doing a quick search, it seems like some of the "off the shelf" cooker can only 2 or 3 at a time.

Also, breaking in a cable takes more than 24hrs like you said.  It takes at least 100hrs.  24hrs barely scratches the surface.  

So 100hrs / 3 = 30hrs.  So it takes about 30hrs to cook one cables on average given the cooker can do 3 at a time.    

If you only have one cable cooker, for a week, you can do (24hr x 7)/30 = about 5.6 cables.  Now that counting weekends.  Not counting weekend, it would be (24hr  x  5)/ 30 = 4.  Good luck running a business that can only do 5.6 or 4 cables a week.  

And considering most audio cables makers are mom and pop operation, I doubt they have the mean to buy a lot of cable cookers.  And to hire some high school dropout to swap out the cables, that costs money too.  This is not exactly Apples where you can do mass production.  

This is real world we are talking about.  Not some guy's wet dreams.

Yes, the real world, where people don't burn in AC power supplies in production with $5,000  Keysight or Chroma loads, they use the least expensive way they can ... even just a resistor.

100W class-D stereo amplifiers are < $100 each. A bank of those with resistive loads could burn in 10 sets of speaker cables at a time. Could even do double duty burning in AC cords at the same time. So let's call it $100*100 + $1000 for miscellaneous cabling = $2000 to burn in 10 sets of speaker cables and 10 AC cords a week, or say 450-500 a year (mom and pop shop remember). Time to put them in and take them out is likely < 2-3 minutes per unit, tops.  If we amortized the equipment in the first year, that is $4-5 / unit. $2-3 over 2 years.  A system for interconnects would be even cheaper.  If you have the resources in house to manufacture 50 sets / cables a week (or 10), then the extra few minutes to put them on and take them off the burn-in system is not going to be a burden.  If I was doing 50+ sets a week, I would likely do something a little more sophisticated and lower cost on a per unit basis, not to mention less hungry for electricity.


Now realistically, running 100W continuously through a cable is likely far more stress than what anyone would do at home, so it is likely the time could even be shortened, even considerably for the speaker cables and you could similarly load up the interconnects much harder.

You don't have to be Apple to do mass production. For many companies, 1000 units/year is "mass production".

It seems like a real pain to go to all that trouble just to do 1000 units/year. QED sells probably 1000 units per week or more. If they have to burn in their cables to sell, they probably go out of business. Maybe that’s why nobody is doing it. You always managed to come up with fantastical ideas, that to be honest, anyone could come up with anything. To do it in the real world, it’s entirely different matter. And considering these boutique mom and pop cables makers come and Go as often as a call girl changing her panties, yeah, good luck with that.

I’ve heard that Crystal Cables offers cable burn in, but their cables cost like $7000 per pair which is justified. If your cables cost like $80 dollar per pair, yeah, that’s like a prescription for going out of business.

That NoNoise guy apparent opened his mouth before he knew what the hell he talking about.  

If I was making a thousand a week the cost to burn in would drop to <<$1.00 per cable.


This is the real world. Many products are burned in and they don’t just turn them on, they monitor them too, even inexpensive items. That is manufacturing and is done day in and day out and none goes out of business because of it. If some companies are doing it, they obviously feel there is marketing value in it. It would be a upper mid to high end feature sell, not a Blue Jeans cable sell, i.e. > $500. $80 cable vendors are normally not talking about burn in at all, nor are their customers.


There is nothing fantastic about this. It is done day in and day out.