Cable Break In for the Naysayers

Excellent observations on break in of your new AQ T XLRs.  About a year ago i upgraded to WyWires Platinum full loom (XLR interconnects, USB, Power Cords).  For budgeting, each type was purchased, 1 type a month over 3 months.  SQ of each type improved substantially over time up to about 150 hours of burn in.  The USB improved the most from initial installation.  The power cords the least but the change was still remarkable.  I will use the USB as an example of how SQ improved. Upon initial installation the platinum was better than me previous USB; however, I noticed digital glare. Over time the digital glare reduced until gone.  Background became dead silent. Timbre improved and the sound became more liquid and sweet.    Staging and imaging improved as the staging widened.   Bass became more detailed.  As you stated, cable (and equipment) burn in is real.  I also have no issue as you do with those who do not hear (or believe).  It’s all OK.  IMHO, I love the coherent, detailed, and liquid sound of WyWires Platinum and think they are an excellent value.  I do not see many AGoner’s using them. 

For those of you who have experienced cable break in first hand, have any of you noticed a cyclical pattern of sounding closed up, followed by being more open, back to being closed sounding, etc - with each cycle being different in terms of how open or closed it sounds?  I’ve had this experience a few times now.  Not sure if it’s burnin, or possibly other factors like THD being higher on the AC lines.

Without any implied agreement or disagreement with the OP, the idea that "if it can't be measured it can't be real" (to paraphrase) cannot in any way be a valid position. (Not that above poster necessarily agrees with it either, while many do).  Science constantly finds better and better ways to measure smaller and smaller  phenomenon and more importantly - new ones.  That's like saying nothing new is left to discover.  Oh well... 

I've used cables professionally in live sound, movie production sound, recording studios and post production studios and have never noticed any difference in a cables sound due to breaking in nor has anyone I've ever worked with, including the best engineers in the world.  

If the frequency range or electronic character changed because of burn in it would be very easy to see these changes on a scope, no one has ever seen these changes. There are definitely burn in periods for headphones, speakers, amps, and even DACs but not cables they carry the signal the same way every time (if they are in good shape), and thank goodness they do if cables changed the signal imagine the issues in nearly every aspect of electronics. 

@akgwhiz @ozzy

You say "if it can’t be measured it can’t be real" as a false argument. You are missing something very fundamental in electronics and physics, frequency changes can easily be measured on scopes that are much more precise than anything you can perceive by your ears. The resolution that scopes can see is billions of times more sensitive than your ears and the neurons in your brain. A simple frequency recording screen grab when a cable is new then compared to when the cable is used for 150 hours or so is a picture that is has many magnitudes more information than is necessary to show that there is no difference in the way the cable carries the data. Sure some thing science can’t measure "how much do I love my wife" and such but frequency or electronic timing is what engineers do best in fact the most accurate thing humans do is measure timing it’s out to about 20 digits I think, just imagine if the cable the signal was flowing through wasn’t burn’t in or in some sort of in between stage of burn in obviously that would leave these timing mechanisms useless, but they're not. Hope that is clear.