C5150, I enjoyed your trancendental view of this hobby. I smell a new book in there somewhere!
As for cables, my understanding as a result of reading many interviews with various cable manufactures, and studying the explanations of engineers and scientists comes down to this:
1.) Cable break-in matters.
2.) It matters because it "improves" (I'm not clear how) the boundry or junction between the conductor and the insulation (dilectric).
3.) And sometimes, (depending on metallurgical issues) it improves (maybe degrades, God forbid!?) the signal carrying characteristics of the conductors.
Cables may need to be broken-in again if:
4.) They've been out of service for a very long time (like six months or more) but this won't require more than a few hours. Not a hundred or more like when new.
5.) If you change their orientation relative to the signal flow, or change the polarity of their connections (which amounts to the same thing, and would most likely apply to speaker cables.) NB: I don't understand the science behind this, but it's been repeated many times (does that make it true?) Also, this re-burn-in (they say) requires almost as much time as the original burn-in did.
My personal take is that except for power cords, most audio cables including speaker cable (and certainly tonearm cable!) don't carry enough current to modify anything very much at the molecular level (I suppose there are exceptions of which I'm blissfully unaware.) So unless you are willing to invest in a cable cooker or cable cooker service, I sincerely believe that the signals normally generated in an audio system are too weak to have a significant effect on the molecular structure of the cables that carry them. OK, have at me ;~))
