cable burn-in / system burn-in

I concur with what you've experienced Johnhelenjake. I just put my system together with speakers that had been shipped but were broken in and an amp that had been shipped for service, cables laying unconnected and dormant. No system up and running for over a month. Since I put the system together it has taken 10 days for the following:
1, the thinness and leanness to go away
2. the midbass and weight in the low bass to fill in (heft)
3. centerfill to come in to play

Johnhelenjake, Usblues implies that this could all simply be in "your mind," a sort of "psychoacoustic phenomenon." I'm here to testify that in all my systems I have witnessed "break in" and "settling-in" of cables, components and systems. One of the key areas that is palpable and cannot be dismissed as psychological or "one's ears breaking in" is in the bass and the way it can strengthen in your room. When I listen to the same discs that were previously anemic and lean at any volume become full and weighty with bass 10 days later, then I know the change I hear is very real. Going from weak bass to strong bass, and from lean and anemic sound to full and weighty is definitely missed when it's not there and easy to hear and feel when it is, especially when you know the discs and music so well. Whether the equipment or cables are settling in after moving things around or break-in/ burn-in with new gear, changes are occurring in the system that affect the sound coming out of your speakers.

No, Dave, you guys just have different systems, goals, preferences, etc. I have tried side-by-side comparisons with the two of the same cable, one cooked, one not. The uncooked always sounded better to me once they had settled in on their own. I do think that even cooked cables settle in after a while, perhaps adjusting to the difference in voltage/current between the cooker and system components.

For what it's worth, I am told by my high-frequency specialist friends and colleagues that it was well known to the scientists working in high-frequency laboratories that new cables "settled in" after a while. I am unaware of any "cable cookers" used in the "serious" radio industry. It seems, though, that the cables had to be used in the very application in which they were settled in. In other words, you don't get a high frequency cable to work well if you let it settle in as a power cable for a while. Has to be the same high frequency application.

I don't know if this stuff was ever published, but it was known and talked about according to people who used to work in the field. I don't know if it was measurable, though. I'd have to ask about this -- highly INTERESTING!

My present theory is that it is but simple degaussing that is going on -- nothing else. You take magnetic domains and keep making them smaller and smaller. That's what degaussing is all about. It is done by taking a signal and making a "fade-out" out of it. Similar to what the procedure used to be with the old CRT monitors, when you pressed the DEGAUSS function.

Now, when you look at a music signal (or any sound signal, for that matter), it is all a bunch of fade-outs. That's what echo and reverberation and all the tails of all the percussive sounds are.

I have taken this theory and practiced with it over the years.

The result was that 100 short fade-outs all the way down to zero of approximately 10 seconds each sounds worse that one very large fade-out going from full power to zero in 100 x 10 seconds.

I have not yet been able to discern any other improvement in quality once the fade-out reached 7 days. In other words, I could not hear a difference between a cable processed with 7 days of non-stop single fade-out compared to another equally new cable processed (faded out on it) for 10 days non-stop.

Who has had any other tangible results and methods?

Louis Motek

Louis,

Yes that is correct. At high frequencies things like capacitance and dielectric can have a more pronounced effect and a drift can be expected as equipment ages and settles in. However audio is NOT high frequency.

Yes, especially power cables!

Today I tested the newest theory. Without a shadow of a doubt, a power cable played in a system for two months every day doesn't sound anywhere near as beautiful as the same cable faded out on over 7 days. So, settling in is different from burn in, if it exists.

It could also be that, as I said earlier, music is a bunch of small fade-outs, and so it could be that some small amount of degaussing does occur with brand new cables, whereby completely degaussed cables (7 days of one continuous fade-out procedure) positively dwarf this minute change of small fade-outs which constitute the music signal.

I think that if this is so, burning in and settling in must not be considered two names for the same concept. They are different things altogether. The burning-in happening once and for all time, and the settling in needing to happen every time you turn off your system for a few days or weeks.

DANGEROUS THOUGHT: There is a logical and perhaps scary conclusion to be drawn from this. This means that you can possibly WORSEN the sound of a cable purposely by applying a very long fade-in with abrupt ending. This is similar to playing music backwards. If this is possible, it becomes even harder to believe in cable comparisons, since the candidates might possibly be tampered with purposely by signals which knowingly alter the sound in BOTH directions. Good or cable "A" and bad for cable "B". Then a blind test in front of the unsuspecting public... all of whom will choose cable "A".

Louis Motek