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Question regarding burn-in

I fear that this may be a stupid question, but I'm still a neophyte in the high-end world ...

If I want to burn in an interconnect between my preamp and power amp by playing a source for a number of continuous hours (24? 48? 96?), does the power amp need to be powered up?

Additionally, any suggestions on the burn-in process would be helpful. I've been looking for a reference article, but haven't found anything that provides much detail.

Thanks,

Martin
mjdrabik
timo's avatar
timo
610 posts
 
Most likely yes. If turned on, the amp will act like a load to the preamp so signal will flow from the preamp to the amp. Just make sure you turn the volume up on the preamp to produce enough signal to "form" the dielectric on the interconnects. That is what burn-in is, forming the dielectric surrounding the conductor.
sidssp
1,077 posts
 
George Cardas thinks there is no need to have everything on. Please go to the following link and click Cable Use on the right hand side for more details.

http://www.cardas.com/faqs/index.html

Personally, I never purposely burn in cables. I just let music take care of it during normal listening.
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
with small signal it's impossible to burn-in.
if you apply some high voltage 300...400V than your interconnect may work as fuse and will eventually burn ...in.
lak's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
lak
4,631 posts
 
The power amp does not need to be on.
The power amp needs to be on when you are burning in speaker cables. IMO.
nrchy's avatar
nrchy
2,124 posts
 
LAK is right about this. That's one of the nice thing about breaking-in cables other than speaker cables since you don't need to shut anything off at night,or during other quiet times.
Let the pre-amp fly!!!
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