Burn your power cables in PROPERLY with Haglabs Frycorder

Well written responses to the naysayer community.  Keeping an open mind is more often a virtue than not.

@pinwa  i have now 2 days my first Ice age audio FrankenCable  power cord on amp.  Incredible cable , from the start soudstage is fantastic. This is a true giant killer ,  that's why no one dares to compare them with expensive cables in tests.

Paul Seydor just happens to try the Haglabs products in the latest issue of TAS (May/June 2024). He also is a burn in skeptic and thinks cable changes are mostly exaggerated.

Most of my regular readers know that I am about as far from a wire junkie as it’s possible to get. Over two decades ago, Neil Gader and I did interconnect and speaker-cable surveys, as a consequence of which I vowed I’d never subject myself to such an experience again—nothing to do with Neil, one of my closest friends and always a joy to work with, rather the objects of the surveys themselves

Then there’s my subjective experience, to wit, that most of the claims made for improvements said to be wrought by changes in interconnects, cables, line cords, and conditioners are to my ears usually exaggerated, sometimes little or even no improvement at all, merely a noticeable difference, occasionally worse than before the swap. In order to forestall a barrage of angry emails to our overworked editor, please note that I do not say the differences are unobservable or insignificant, particularly to those for whom they are significant, merely to my mind overstated.

So what was his experience?

I opened the first sample, connected it to the FryCorder2, and let it cook for five days. I then plugged it into the line conditioner (by the same company) and played music for another week or so. One day I cued up Impex’s Sing and Dance with Frank Sinatra remastering and listened for about a minute or so. Next, I substituted the unburned-in cord, which until then I had not even unpacked, and played the same passage at the exact same volume (my preamp has a numerical read-out of the level) for the exact same period of time, about a minute, though I certainly did not need that long. The difference left me slack-jawed—this from someone who has often been deeply skeptical, if not positively cynical about the whole break-in, burn-in business.

With the burned-in cord Sinatra’s voice was warm and rich, with as much dynamic range as the technology of the time allowed, full of life and vitality, with marvelous body and dimensionality. With the unburned-in cord the sound was pinched, thin, and edgy. So, the first thing I did is what I usually do when confronted with something like this—called in my wife Danielle. Now Danielle’s no audiophile, but she listens well and astutely, and her responses are untainted by typical audiophile predilections, prejudices, and pomposities. I started with the burned-in cord at exactly the same level and played the recording for the same length of time, around a minute. Then I told her I was going to play it again, but without letting her see what I was doing, adding that she might not hear any difference at all. Not 20 seconds elapsed before she said, “This is not subtle,” and proceeded to describe the differences she observed in more or less the same or closely analogous terms as I did.

What conclusions can be drawn from my little experiments? Frankly, not many of a general nature that I’d be willing to place much stock in without a far greater variety of source material, more numerous comparisons, much more time spent in the listening, and a wider sample of cords and brands. But the one thing that is clearer to me than ever before is the importance of burn-in, so much so that henceforth I shall never trust my impressions of any wire product auditioned immediately after it’s been removed from factory-sealed packaging. And I shall never again disparage the necessity of burning in wire products.