Cable "burning": Real or VooDoo ???

Sean, you're so right! Hearing acuity can be trained well beyond that level, which even complex measurements will be able to show. Another example for what our senses are capable of: Wine tasters or perfume testers ( vive la France )are schooled for years and can point out subtle differences which no chemical testing ever could and the industry depends heavily on their results. Why should it be different on the aural level?

Garfish,

Point taken. I guess the afterthought about Emerson and his hobgoblins confused me. Seemed like you were damning him with faint praise. Guess you meant to praise Caesar, not to bury him. Cheers.

Vantageaudio: Do you seriously find fault with Steve's assertion that all electrons are alike? Really? No, come on, do you? Are you saying they're different? Do different electrons move at different speeds or something? Or with less grain and improved soundstage?

Kdmeyer: As Steve mentioned, the heat buildup in audio cabling is so microscopically minuscule as to be negligible. And that's a good thing, because when metals (copper, silver, et al) heat up, their resistance to current flow increases. That would degrade their performance characteristics, especially for speaker cables.

Detlof: Wine tasters can indeed discern fine gradations between wines. But wines also have been proven to sometimes change with age and environment, whereas cables have not.

I would be highly suspicious, though, of a wine "expert" who looks at the label, sips some wine, and then says "Ah, yes, of course. Pinot noir. Domaine Carneros 1997. It certainly is," then after a palate-cleansing cracker, goes on to the next one, looks at the label, tastes the wine and says, "David Bruce Russian River 1998, yes, I could tell, it has the shadings that one would expect only from this vintage." And so on. Yet in audio, we're supposed to accept this sort of "testing" as "proof" of phenomena that are highly improbable or scientifically impossible.

As a former wine afficionado I must jump in here and say that I personally know two acknowledged wine experts and they have never expressed an opinion anything like that described by 70242. I do see his point, but we (the cables make a difference members) are not some group of followers being beckoned by the Pied Pipers of the Audio Press to parade behind their golden ears and march to the rhythm of their imaginary distinctions. Instead we are mostly experienced listeners with decades of experience with open, but still skeptical minds who are aware of audio phenomena that is not completely explained yet. What is gained by asserting we are all wrong and that we are imagining "burn in" or differences in coax cables?

Steve: I grant your point that heat in your example appears unlikely to make much difference. My point was in response to somebody previously who said electrons sloshing through a wire make no change to the wire. Heat cycling is just one example of a change-inducing physical effect that electron sloshing does have on wire. Maybe there are other effects not related to heat. And, given the subtleties of the differences we claim to hear, maybe it doesn't require much of a physical change to make the cable audibly different.
Also, relating to your example--I'm not an engineer, but couldn't the amount of power running through a speaker wire be substantially higher, enough even to create a measurable heating? So, even if a cable conditioner doesn't generate enough power to make a difference in your opinion, maybe burning in a speaker wire with real signal would at least push a lot more power through the wire and potentially have a much greater physical effect?