Cable "burning": Real or VooDoo ???

In an attempt to add to Albert's well made points. First, in this labour of love I have learnt that faithfulness to the music is not measured well by any of the measures used in electrical engineering. We will all agree that "no distortion of the original signal" is what we want to achieve. But what we find is that most real speakers in real rooms have levels of measured distortion that are an order of magnitude greater than the distortion of a competent amp. And yet, I find that the kind of distortion introduced by an amp does far more damage to my musical enjoyment than do the distortions of most speakers. This may lead on to the conclusion that there are some forms of distortion that are worse than others, or to be more specific, that say 1% of 2nd order harmonic distortion is more benign than 0.1% of 9th order harmonic distortion. And such a finding (albeit subjective) would be very valuable. But this conclusion can only be arrived at by a mixture of measurement and listening. Without the listening part 702, your numbers are just numbers with no meaningful reference point in reality. Without listening, how do you know what level of distortion is acceptable, and how do you know whether that level is more or less acceptable depending on what type of distortion is involved, and how do you know whether a halving of distortion is meaningful or whether it needs to be reduced by an order of magnitude, or just 10%, to be meaningful for a listener. Your numbers create the illusion of some linear relationship, and some ability to sum those numbers, that I believe does not exist for a listener trying to enjoy music in the home - and you cannot prove me wrong on this point - except perhaps by listening. Second, my experience of ABX tests is that people hear the obvious tonal balance differences only, when listening for the short periods involved with ABX testing. But the distortions that cause an audiophile to tear his or her hair out and go on wild binges on the current cable of the month, are those less obvious ones, that emerge from a deeper familiarity, and a growing unease with the music making (or destroying) qualities of a piece of equipment. I would never trust an ABX test to select a piece of equipment - the suggestion is laughable - and maybe Albert has it right, that you just don't have enough listening experience with high-end audio gear to realise how laughable it is.

Albert and Redkiwi,

Both of you have made very sensible, intelligent posts. Mr 702, however, worships at the altar of numbers and you're not going to budge him.

Albert- your story about the racing boat reminds me of my checkered past when I was involved with fast cars. Cant' remember how many times two cars had identical bhp, torque curves, and drivers of the same physical mass. Yet when pitted against one another, there was always a winner. The hardline data types would say it should have been a dead heat every time. But it never was. Why? Obviously there was more going on there than the pure numbers would suggest.

Can we bury this already dead horse??

A $ (or euro) 0,02 "burned" vs. raw cable, blind testing experiment.
Unanimously, "burned in" cables sounded better overall: slightly more musical (I use the word as proposed in the posts following Detlof's thread on the subject), also, thicker bass, smoother vs strident highs, better imaging.

Story: Prompted by Sean's thread & the plethora of fascinating posts (thank you, all), I convinced the local Nordost dealer & two other audiophiles to conduct a blind A-B listening test. Dealer provided the cable info below.
Test cables: Nordost Quattro fil (IC). Burn-in: dealer's german machine (clearaudio?), allegedly 1 week + normal use, 1 week. Control cables, 4fil out of the box.
Test cables used between pre & power.
System parametres:
"Burnt-in" (dealer) quattro fil IC, spm ref speaker cables.
Sources: Clearaudio ref TT/Insider. Symphonic Line Reference CDP.
Amps: Symphonic Line Kraftquelle pre, RG7 power (also "burnt-in" according to dealer). A-Physic Avanti speakers.
Music excerpts: P Floyd "The Wall" ("...we don't need no educAItion..."), LP / Mahler 5th, Barbirolli (intro, ofcourse: those winds...), CD / Meet Me in London, Naim CD ("Caruso" with a female voice.)/Chesky's "Golden Ears" (Vivaldi's flute concerto, intro to 1st flute solo)
The 3-strong "panel" had 10 points assessment sheets, too, prepared by one who is a contributor to a local audio mag. (We tried to do this, seriously...)

What else? I had a great time playing audio reviewer, listened to the excerpts religiously and repeatedly for 4 hrs. It'll take some time before I listen to this stuff again (desintoxication).
Ofcourse, this was an informal experience that I thought of sharing with y'all as a small token to the posts above.

Cheers, Greg

My sincere thanks to Redkiwi and the others here that are as obsessed with the music as I am. I was afraid I would open this thread tonight and see a big bloody battle again. It is SO nice to see familiar names and sensible data posted on this subject.