Cable "burning": Real or VooDoo ???

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?

Lets not bicker about wine experts 702 and of course wines change with age. Cables do not, you so adamantly say. I think it would have been more correct to have added something like " as far as the laws of physics tell us".
This would make a subtle but very significant difference, because it leaves open the possibility, slight as it may be, that new evidence could lead to new hypotheses and finally to new insights. Not with you, the way I percieve it and please forgive me, if I am wrong. To me, your statement has the quality of absoluteness to it and therin lies the weakness of all arguments from your side of the fence. It makes you vulnerable for attacks of dogmatism, of closed mindedness, of a basically deeply IRRATIONAL belief in the infallibilism of all precepts of science, whereas also here, as in all human endevour, there is questioning, movement and change on many fronts.
Tell me honestly - although I'll grant you, this is a poor example - how can you really KNOW , if cables change with age or not? All you could say, to my mind at least, that according to physics, this is highly improbable, that they could change. If you imply more, you move into the realm of BELIEFS, namely that in the unshakeable nature of the laws of physics. As far as makro physics are concerned, belief and knowledge are good bedfellows and I have no trouble with your argument. It gets more tricky, when we enter the realm of micro physics. I am no expert, not technically trained, but does not the flow of electrons through molecules of metal touch both fields of physics and thus inspite of the established laws of electricity does leave some white spots on this so well explored territory? So already here a doubt in respect of the absoluteness of your statement seems legitimate. But then there is another aspect, which lets me doubt the absoluteness of your assumtions about the audiophile quality of wires even more: And that is simply the very large number of people who report hearing differences and whose description of what they hear with what cables often has a certain uniformity to it. The hypothesis, that what they report could be safely put in the realm of phantasy, while the people themselves obviously suffered from some minor form of psychopathology, which more over is fed by unscrupulous manufacturers, dealers, the press and advertisers, is probably more then daring. In fact, it seems even highly infantile, when we consider sociological data of the average audiophile: Which is: over average education + training, high incidence of academics + professionals, over average positions and incomes..... etc. Doesn't really sound like a bunch of irrational, illadvised romantics, does it? No, the longer I follow this and similar arguments here, and I do this, because I am (also professionally) fascinated with how we come to find our "truths" and how we argue and defend them, I am slowly coming to the conclusion, that probably those that hear differences in wire are the REALISTS afer all, and those who deny it are the BELIEVERS. Just my thoughts, and 702, sorry if I accused you of an absolutism, which you perhaps don't have at all.. but well, it sounded like that to me.
Regards

Hello 70242, in reply to your above post I can only say that I am not attempting to find fault with the assertion made by stevemj or anyone else. I am also not saying that there are different electrons. However I am asking if stevemj (or someone) would care to expand on their assertion. It is my understanding that sometime ago a person called Schrodinger proposed that the electron should be thought of a continuous distribution of time dependent waves and denoted this by means of a forumla. This became known as the "Schrodinger wave" but this is only true if the wave remained confined to the atom. However, it is also my understanding that outside an atom electrons can be found in a small region of space so that in general the wave density does not agree with the formula. Another person by the name of Bohr later proposed that the intensity of this wave does not represent the actual charge density of the electron but the probable density of the electron and conceived as a small local particle. It is these and others studies that lead to the belief that there are possible differences in electron charge patterns and their subsequent behavior and that this may have some relationship to the perceived differences we experience between components..??? The subject will always be open to debate and useful and meaningful contributions can only help all our understanding and listening pleasure. Regards, Richard.