Cable Break In for the Naysayers

@tooblue my power cords changed drastically after i switched from burned in demo cords to the brand new cords I purchased (same models).  I think getting used to a particular sound is part of it too, but not in this particular case.

I somehow doubt this thread will be the one to put a rest to the same words and arguments (on both sides!) that has been raging on since I think the 1970's. Funny how the passion has been so fierce through the decades.

What would be productive is if someone were to organize a double blind test, to test such things as differences between power cords, broken-in vs brand new, etc.

This debate could fairly easily be put to rest, I think, with say 5-ish participants from both camps.  And maybe a few neutral judges just to have the bases covered.

If done right, with the right transparency and the right controls in place, the HiFi landscape could be changed forever by such a test.

Come on @jays_audio_lab or some other YouTuber, there is a huge opportunity here to be the one that organized the event that ended these decades-old debates.  I won't mention the other personality on the other side of the fence that could also participate; every time his name gets mentioned threads seem to go sideways!

I’ve just had three demo Audioquest Dragon power cords my system for 5 weeks and my system was absolutely firing on all cylinders.  Just now replaced the power cords with brand new Dragons which I purchased.  Performance of my system took a truly noticeable dive - more constrained mids and upper frequencies, and less of a free flowing sound all around.

For those of you who have experienced cable break in first hand, have any of you noticed a cyclical pattern of sounding closed up, followed by being more open, back to being closed sounding, etc - with each cycle being different in terms of how open or closed it sounds?  I’ve had this experience a few times now.  Not sure if it’s burnin, or possibly other factors like THD being higher on the AC lines.

@ozzy , how long did you find it took for your Dragon source cords to fully break in?  I’m finding they seem to take longer than I recall my Hurricane cords taking.

You certainly don’t require a nice HiFi system if you can’t hear the dramatic difference between my brand new Audioquest Dragon cords and my broken in demos of the same cords. To me the difference is blatantly obvious and my system took a dive with the new cords. But things have changed after a week. Still not where things were with the demo cords yet. Or maybe the evil scheming cable companies hand out superior cables for demos! There’s a new conspiracy theory.

The one thing that the cable companies may be guilty of is charging about 4X what it should cost to achieve decent margins. But I’m just an armchair critic; maybe their costs really do back up their prices. But if so I’d be surprised. It’s their high prices that fuel all the conspiracy theories.

A counter argument to my criticism of the high prices of audiophile grade cables is that if margins are truly over-inflated, then you’d expect that would create an opening for a giant killer company to swoop in and sell cables that perform like the very best at 25% of the cost.  And yet this hasn’t happened.  So maybe it can’t be done.

@ozzy , I’m at 240 hours on the three AQ Dragon power cords and they are really opening up starting today.  I actually hung on to one of the fully burned in demo Dragon cords for a bit longer.  I tried replacing one of my new cords with the fully burned in demo cord, the one feeding my Tambaqui DAC.  Sure enough, the fully burned in demo cord made my system sound even less constrained, through the entire frequency band.  So even at 240 hours I think my cords have a ways to go.

I read a pro review of the Dragons where they say AQ says that it takes two weeks “to form the dialectric”, and two more weeks for it to fully improve.  And yeah I know many give AQ flak for stuff that may not be absolutely grounded in science, with their little battery packs attached to the cords.  All I know is the cords sound great and they are getting better, as I can easily hear comparing the broken in cord with the new ones.  Haven’t done a blind test yet but I’m sure I could easily tell the difference.  But not for long as my new cables catch up.

@ozzy , no question my Dragon cords have improved yet again checking in at 265 hours.  I do not have the Niagara, for two reasons. I borrowed a Niagara 5000 from my dealer once, and found that the transformers buzzed audibly from across the room.  The manual even states that I’d this happens, you are simply out of luck.  Secondly, I find that any and all conditioners change the sound in some way.  I found the Niagara 5000 to enhance the sound in every way except for the upper frequencies which I found to be a bit closed in sounding. The sound was more of a hard, energized, dense, driving sound, which I actually enjoyed aside from the upper frequencies.  Of note though, I had tested the Niagara 5000 with my Hurricanes, not the Dragons.  I’ve found happiness with a Puritan 156, after having used a Torus RM 20 for a few years.  The Puritan may not be as smooth and may not have as “black” backgrounds but in my system I found it to be more even-handed than the other options I’ve tried and it has a very free-flowing and musically engaging sound to it.  It’s a bit more up-front and in-your face which I like.

@ozzy , my new Audioquest Dragon Source cords (3) have just now reached the point where I cannot  hear / perceive any difference between them and the fully burned-in demo cord I had on hand along the way. They have been cooking for just over 400 hours now.  Prior to 360 hours, there was a blatantly discernible difference when I swapped in the single burned in demo cord, replacing just one of my three new cords in my system.  Yes, the difference was night and day.

I have to admit, even though I firmly believe in burn in from my past experiences (or perceptions if you prefer, I consider both terms to apply to my subjective experience), I had started to wonder if something else was at play that would explain the difference I was hearing between the new and burned in cord as of 360 hours and prior.  I was wondering if maybe the design had changed, tolerances were coming into play, etc.  But thankfully my new cord sounds equivalent to the burned in demo cord now. That is to say (here come the SUBJECTIVE descriptors) that it is more open and relaxed, the images are more solidly defined, there is a more relaxed soundstage which means that there is more depth and layering, and there is more unconstrained high frequency detail coming through, in a relaxed and gentle manner (e.g. decay on subtle cymbals are more defined now and trail off in a more 3D space without the sense that the brakes are being pumped).  There is less of a sense of restraint overall, and also I am hearing more resolution, seemingly due to less noise.

All in my head?  I was on a hike on the weekend and we passed a guy who said to his companion “Point to a tree and I’ll prove to you that it doesn’t truly exist.”  Not sure what the context was and unfortunately I didn’t stick around to hear his “proof”.  But at a certain point I need to have faith in my subjective perception of the difference between the burned in and new power cords.