Another Cable Burn-in Question

This will be my final post on the Signal Cable. I made one significant change and all the issues I had with the Signal Cable resolved. Before I tell you what change that was, let me remind you that I have Signal silver resolution ic running from my pre to amp and have been happy with it. I had wireworld gold eclipse from cd player to pre and wondered whether replacing it with the much less expensive Signal cable would yield improvements (synergy?). It's important to point out that I use a Furman pf-15 line conditioner. With the wireworld ic I had found that there was glare in the upper-mids when my CD player was connected to the Furman so I left the CD player connected directly to the wall outlet. I kept my pre and amp connected to the Furman. If you read back in this thread, I commented on some of the changes I heard as the Signal was breaking in. The lows were outstanding from the start, the highs were extended and smoothed out over time, the mids seemed to be lacking warmth but there was something that just did not sound right and I was beginning to think that the new Signal cable was just not going to work for me. I had a hard time figuring out what the problem was- too much high end? not enough warmth? And then, just for the heck of it, I connected my CD player up to the Furman and like magic, everything became clearer, more musical and better balanced top to bottom. This is the best my system has ever sounded by far (wife agreed and she has better ears), so easy to listen to and the music sounds so right. I don't know why but with the wireworld and using the furman there was glare and with the Signal cable and the furman it goes away. In the context of my total system, the signal cable silver resolution is a truly great cable regardless of price but it took some experimenting to get everything to work well together. It was well worth it.

NEVER, EVER stop experimenting! Happy listening!! =8^)

About pre-amps being on or off during break-in: test it. Use an ammeter to see if current is flowing from your cd player to your pre-amp while your pre-amp is 1) on, and 2) off.

My guess is that while off, the input impedance of the pre- is virtually infinite, and while on it is some measurable high value. (Probably not that high though, not on the order of megaohms.)

The circuit theory involved is simple -- while the load impedance is infinite, there is a voltage drop across + and -, but no current flows; when there is an impedance less than infinity, you will still have a voltage drop across the load, and current will flow. (V=IR; I=V/R.)

I never thought about keeping the pre-amp off. Of course, I let cables burn-in naturally by running signal through before, during, and after listening for a while. I believe it is the current flow that may break-in the cable, and not merely presenting a voltage drop across a virtually open circuit (where, as a result of the laws of nature, no current will flow). The current flow requirement in my thinking comes from the (capacitive) dielectric properties of the cable.

Special cd for burn-in? Does it sound any good? There is a market that I missed out on creating. Beaten to the punch! We used to use white noise from a tuner in the high-end shops. Cheaper, and you could meditate to it (at home, not at work, of course). Alternatively, we used to use music. A novel idea since music was what we would ultimately listen to with the system.

A passive component(in this case generally an attenuator) does not change it's impedance value when the equipment in which it's installed is turned either on or off. The CDP or DAC output will never see a "virtually open circuit". Just put an ohmeter across the input of a preamp while turned off to verify.

I absolutely agree! I thought of this after I posted; "how about passive pre-amps?" I think the current would flow through the interconnect into the pre-amp.

Thanks for pointing that out!