Power Cord Burn-In

Okay, I was a sceptic at first about burning in IC cables, and also speaker cables. I guess I began to accept that there is some aligning of the copper or silver grains that made me somewhat agree that there is a material change in the process. Is there a sonic difference? I don't know. I think that maybe our brains may make us believe there is after time.
But, burning in a power cable? No, I can't go with this one.
120volts in, is a 120volts in. It should make no sonic difference in the sound of our components.
What could possibly happen? The grains become aligned and give us better power? Give us cleaner power? Nope, I can't believe it.
Sorry, Scott

I have to agree with you, Drrdiamond. I just got finished burning in a TG Audio SLVR power cord over the course of 5 weeks, on a combination of a SS amp that's on all the time and a chest freezer. The process was very instructive.

I tested it three times during that period, comparing it each time on the preamp in my main system to an Elrod EPS2 Signature that had been powering the preamp for several months. The first time, after two weeks, the TG was much worse than the Elrod - it made the system sound lean, edgy and bright. The second time, after four weeks, the TG was almost as good as the Elrod, but not quite - the edge was gone but it still sounded lean. The third time the sound with the TG was better than with the Elrod - it was smooth, transparent and fully fleshed out, and in comparison the Elrod now sounded slightly thick and plummy in the upper bass, with an attendant loss of detail.

I doubt that mental acclimatization played much of a role here, because each test lasted no longer than an hour, and the trials were separated by at least a week. The change in the SLVR's character over time was quite striking. I just repeated the test for a fourth time after having the SLVR in the system for a week or so, and the results were the same, to my ears, as the third test.

I'm quite prepared to believe that some power cords in some systems don't exhibit these kinds of changes, because I've used other PCs where I never noticed any changes at all. Bob Crump, the man behind TG Audio, is adamant that his power cords take this long to burn in and settle down, however. Based on what I heard, he is absolutely right.

FYI:

My present, and best, power cords are also silver.

Richard

Scottht,

Passing electrical signals through IC cables can't align
copper or silver grains - there's just not enough energy
there.

In order for the grains to alter, you have to heat the cable
so that you push the material into another phase on the
phase diagram - then cool the cable so that new grains grow.

For example, you may have a metal that is say FCC [ that is
it has a Face Centered Cubic crystal structure. ] You heat
the metal until it reaches a new phase - e.x. BCC [ Body
Centered Cubic structure ]. When you cool the material -
the molecules have to rearrange themselves back into the
FCC phase.

If you cool the metal fast - you will get lots of small
grains. If you cool slowly - you get fewer larger grains.

That's the essence of "heat treatment".

But cables don't get hot enough to heat treat from passing
electrical signals.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

I'm not an EE, so I have no clue what happens during "break in", but my common sense tells me that, as Dr. Greenman notes, it doesn't have anything to do with a restructuring of the conductive metal. To me, it seems more reasonable to suppose that the dielectric undergoes some small changes. All I really know is the evidence of my own fallible senses, and they tell me that I often notice a change following a cable break in period.