2. cables
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Cable burn in

Hi all. I’m guessing that what I’m experiencing is pretty normal. But it can’t hurt to get some feedback. I purchased a DMS-650 from Cary Audio which is a DAC/Streamer. Since hifi folks have highly opinionated views on cables, nothing is included with the unit. So when I set it up, I had to scramble and I found the three conductor cable that came with a cheap Sony DVD player. Then I replaced that RCA interconnect with a much better quality Blue Jeans cable. Initially the increase in quality was apparent and obviously worth it. However the sound could be hasrsh on certain recordings. Various tracks had a harshness that wasn’t there before. I’ve been playing internet radio during the day for burn in. Now that harshness has vanished. Sitting down to listen last night, things were actually too warm. Some tracks sounded almost muddy. The sparkle was diminished in an obvious way. I am guessing that once burn is complete the sound will settle happily in the middle somewhere. Is that a reasonable assumption?  I’m also likely going to order power cables and an interconnect from Audio Envy or maybe some other companies to compare. The guy who sold me the Cary Audio gear is not a salesy guy, but he did pretty emphatically recommend some higher quality cables. 

chiadrum

Showing 3 responses by holmz

holmz's avatar
holmz
2,328 posts
 

Do streamer always play the same song? Or does the compression go up and down with internet bandwidth that is available?

Like varying compression versus time of day?

holmz's avatar
holmz
2,328 posts
 

Take speaker cable for example. All frequencies need to be transmitted equally without any timing changes and transients need to arrive at the speaker without change. Hmm, I'm wondering it house mains wire would be suitable. I think not.

Yes mains wire would work for speakers.
One can try it themselves to verify it.

 

The wire’s conductor does not know, or predict the frequencies… and it just lets the electrical field do its thing, thereby just pushing along the electrons... or not. The electric field propagates along largely irrespective of the impedance and current.

That electric field is not a timing and transcients thing. For all intents and purposes it runs at the speed of light, or some fraction thereof.

 

Qobuz (and I imagine most others) uses lossless compression and high quality streamers use buffering… so the file received will be the same. Obviously, from then on… it is all streamer dependent.

Is the OP using Qobuz or something similar?
Do they all work the same, or are some of the services lossy?
And if so, which ones are lossy or not lossy?

holmz's avatar
holmz
2,328 posts
 

@felixa

 

 

A cable is a mechanical system that needs burn-in. Every material subject to an electrical field creates a dipole. For non conducting material this dipole is at the atom level so that electrons are more to the side of nucleus that randomly around.

^that^ almost sounds like magnetism?

 

The overall charge of the material remains neutral. The electrons having a mass (very very light), moving them around amounts to a mechanical action.

A charge moving around a coil also produces a magnetic field.

 

 

The atoms in the cable insulation get organized in a dipole one way or the other, when ever there is signal traveling in the wires. As the burn in progress the atoms dipoles get organized from a random state, so that less energy is extracted from the signal and more of it reaches the next component in the chain.

What happens in an AC signal, the the polarity flips 180?

Or if I wire the speakers in reverse polarity, then do they need a long time to reform?

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