Does Power Cord Require Burn-In To Sound Good?

To, of course, balance all the unscientific, unproven, useless bull crap that is put out on this forum by questionable sources and to protect the newbie from seeing only the bull crap. Sorta like walking by a guy beating on a woman and doing nothing about it.


+1

My advice: If you bought a $5K amp and it doesn't sound good with the cord it came with, but you think supplying it with a $5K power cord will make it sound great - save your $5K and buy an amp. that has a decent power supply and sounds great with the cord it comes with....Jim

Clarification: Most amps, pre-amps CPDs and DACs do sound better after a period of warm up (usually 20 - 30 min. for tubed gear and sometimes several hours for SS gear) and most equipment will sound marginally better after a period of break in - hours, not hundreds of hours. So the above statement is assuming that the amp is a good match with your other devices and speaker load and has been adequately warmed up and broken in itself....Jim  

Well what I think is that burn in is not enough. I put a heat strip around my power cables to maintain a minimum of 150 degrees F. If you do not do this the burn in reverts to unburn in and then you are back to square one. If you ever let your power cable temp drop below 150F the degradation to your fidelity is quite pronounced. Also you need to keep your power cables suspended above and off any hard heat absorbing surfaces. There is a tendency for the side of your heat stripped cable adjacent to the heat absorbing surface to be a bit cooler. This can cause there to be an unbalanced audio signal which can be quite distracting. Carpet is OK for a contact surface for instance where an oak floor is not. I also recommend that your heated power cable be sheltered from AC ducts in the summer for the same reason. You can never be to careful when the finest outcomes in audio are what you not only strive for but demand.

@mahlman  I put a heat strip around my power cables to maintain a minimum of 150 degrees F

 WOW! This keeps getting more bizarre all the time....Jim