For Your Edification and Enjoyment re "Burn In", etc.

@douglas_schroeder interesting article (with due respect to other, somewhat critical, responders above). Going slightly against the grain, I have experienced change in the sound of cables on one -- unique -- instance: when a cable is newly produced, i.e. has not been put under load after having been put together (soldered): I have found empirically that it takes about 10-15mins for the frequency response to extend on both extremes.
Of course this is anecdotal, but I thought the experience might add to the communal fun! Regards

I respect Doug for writing the article but this was no act or bravery, perhaps a small act of bravado but I dont doubt he is trying to help so we should only admonish for his hubris and incomplete methodology. I mean truly it takes hubris to believe that your opinions matter enough to publish.

I doesnt help that he only uses digital. After I got my vinyl rig to an acceptable point, I cant hear anything of consequence with digital these days. And yes I have used some very good digital. Not matter how good, at least in experience, it is just like polishing a turd. Dont be haters...just my experience.

I might be willing to send you my Audio Dharma cooker but I dont think from this whole exchange you have indicated that you would be willing to admit any error. Kind of like sending a cable to Frank Van Alstine for review. 

The one lesson learned is to not let your mouth write a check that your ass cant cash. I think we have dog piled him enough and lets just give him the benefit of the doubt because he published with good intentions.

"I seem to occupy a position in the industry and community that is fairly vacant, that of eschewing most forms of system enhancements/methods called "tweaks", and endorsing other methods that some ridicule. It all comes out of building hundreds of systems, not theory".

DS: Eschew. 
MC: Gesundheit.  

And that is more respect than this pompous and bass ackward comment deserves.

Thank you for your prolonged reply Doug. Again, no argument from me. I look at the manufacturers of such things as scam artists even if they believe in what they are doing.

Cable Cooker? I just returned from Audio Excellence's web site. Everything they make can be done in a home workshop with simple tools. None of it requires an education. None of it has a sound basis for operating as advertised. I think you should review the Audiodharma. Who buy's the equipment you review? Hopefully not you! 

Every human ear has a mechanism of accommodation. A tiny muscle, the stapedius, tightens up the ossicles in response to louder sound. The reflex is rather slow. It can not respond to impulse noises like gun shots. As it responds to louder music the sensitivity of the ear decreases but this varies with frequency. The end result is that treble and bass increase disproportionally to midrange at louder volumes. Add to this our poor audio memory, perceptual changes that occur with mood and other psychological factors and you have...a mess. Humans in general are very poor at analyzing the quality of audio information. They can tell you what they listened too and in gross terms tell you what it sounded like but they can not remember in fine detail what they heard. They can not reliably identify a single system out of a group of systems. What they hear changes with too many variables to be able to predict.
In order to be remotely reliable comparisons have to be made in rapid succession and repeated multiple times. Evaluations are relative. If a person's system is bright a system that is neutral will sound dull and so forth. What is normal for one person may not be to another. No method of calibration is used so you have no idea where a person is coming from. 

I have made no reference to time frame; the hundreds of hours are over the course of the 14 years of reviewing. Obviously, when a person waits for "settling", which of course, has not been demonstrated, but has been shown not to occur via my informal testing, they will get much more of nothing done. 

I expected that at some point the straw man argument of appeal to analogue might arise. ".. polishing a turd." Beautiful; I'm being called out for condescension by my opponents here, and then that kind of comment is made. An appeal to analog versus digital is a weak argument, a straw man, that has zero impact on the testing.

This paragraph is evidentially wrong, " I might be willing to send you my Audio Dharma cooker but I dont [sic] think from this whole exchange you have indicated that you would be willing to admit any error. Kind of like sending a cable to Frank Van Alstine for review."

When Frank was visiting my home, I specifically demonstrated detachable power cords to show him the efficacy of using different aftermarket PCs, and encouraged him to put IECs on his equipment. At the next show, when I entered his room he called me over and had me look behind his component. There was an IEC! 

Further, Frank made a component called the ABX Comparator, that was designed to do the same kind of testing as I did, but with more rigor. Does that sound like a man who prejudges, who shouldn't be trusted in evaluating things? BTW, I did a review of the ABX Comparator. Guess why? I wanted to see if all the talk about cables and ABX was true, and whether I could distinguish between cables in a blind/random testing environment.

Now, I just finished the article returning to further assessment of tweaks and methods such as burn in and break in. I'm doing all this voluntarily, and my judgment is not to be trusted? I revisited the topic to see if further testing would confirm or falsify, and I'm not able to have a balanced perspective? I am not interested in an ongoing defense of myself for you in the face of that heavy of skepticism. Take it or leave it, so be it. 


I would appreciate it if you tried to rein in your wild, unsubstantiated judgments of me. I appreciate the thought of loaning the cooker, but if I work with one, I will source it elsewhere.  :)