Cable Burn In


I'm new here and new to the audiophile world. I recently acquired what seems to be a really high end system that is about 15 years old. Love it. Starting to head down the audiophile rabbit hole I'm afraid.

But, I have to laugh (quietly) at some of what I'm learning and hearing about high fidelity.

The system has really nice cables throughout but I needed another set of RCA cables. I bit the bullet and bought what seems to be a good pair from World's Best Cables. I'm sure they're not the best you can get and don't look as beefy as the Transparent RCA cables that were also with this system. But, no sense bringing a nice system down to save $10 on a set of RCA cables, I guess.

Anyway, in a big white card on the front of the package there was this note: In big red letters "Attention!". Below that "Please Allow 175 hours of Burn-in Time for optimal performance."

I know I'm showing my ignorance but this struck me as funny. I could just see one audiophile showing off his new $15k system to another audiophile and saying "Well, I know it sounds like crap now but its just that my RCA cables aren't burned-in yet. Just come back in 7.29 days and it will sound awesome."
n80

Showing 1 response by pbnotlive

I believe it is a matter of degree. For sure new speakers and certain crossover capacitators benefit from long term burn-in. Speaker cables vary quite a bit since you have enormous power, current and phase considerations so burn in there is rational.

I find that balanced line level (XLR) cables are the least variable interconnects while unbalanced low level cables (phono cables) display more differences. With that in mind then it makes some sense that break-in of sensitive components: Tubes, Capacitators, Speakers and, to a lesser extent, solid state devices, switches and even some kinds of wire is rational. The differences are, however, variable.