Burn In = Voodoo?


I have been an obsessive and enthusiastic audiophile for 20 years, I am not averse to tweaking and The Audio Critic infuriates me. However, I must admit I get a little uncomfortable reading so many posts about "burn in". While I understand that amps may need to warm up, speaker components may need to loosen up, the idea of burning in a cable or say, an SACD player just seems ludicrous to me. Unless of course, the party suggesting the burn in is a snake oil equipment peddlar and needs to make sure someone owns and uses your product for a couple of months before they decide it's really no good. At that point, of course, no one could actually remember what it sounded like in the first place and even if you wanted to return it, it would be too late. Am I being too cynical here?
cwlondon

Showing 2 responses by snobgoblinf669

Not my intention at all; apologies. I thought I conveyed that I felt your point was entirely valid - lower resistance, better conduction, better sound.
Just my two cents on freezing cables: First, absolute zero is a theoretical temperature at which all atomic activity ceases and is -273 deg C or 0 deg Kelvin. Liquid Nitrogen is -196 deg C, not absolute zero. Liquid Helium comes closest at -272. Second, the better sound is probably for real (though i havent tried it) Reason: the cooler a conductor, the better it conducts. This phenomenon is measured as the temperature gradient of resistance and there are definite values for different materials. Interestingly, superconductor technology follows the same logic - cool it down! The holy grail being, of course, superconductivity at higher temps since cooling to such levels is very expensive. Cheers, Raghu