Cable Burn In

n80

There is a lot of dubious "wisdom" in the audiophile world.

You’ll hear people claiming "break in" is required for literally everything to sound right...even an equipment rack, or a set of isolation feet for your component. It’s a sort of self-perpetuating mythology, because when people listen for differences they *hear* differences, even if there isn’t any in reality.

So you’ll see lots of claims that things like cables need "burn in." But what you will have a hard time finding is actual objective evidence for the claim (e.g. measurements showing audible-levels of difference between a new vs burned in cable).

The Burn-In mantra has of course lots of use for manufacturers to encourage you to keep their product as long as possible. "Not impressed by our product? Don’t just return it; Keep listening...it takes hundreds of hours until it sounds right!" That’s plenty of time to acclimate, listen carefully and over time come to believe you are hearing something new.

Others will likely chime in defending cable burn-in. Meanwhile, here’s a bit of reading for the skeptical side:

https://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/audio-cable-break-in-science-or-psychological

Is burn in absolutely a myth? I don’t know. But most Electrical Engineers that I’ve seen discuss this over the years, who aren’t part of a company trying to sell boutique cables, tend to dismiss the idea.

You might consider that Belden, for instance, one of the world’s most experienced manufacturers of cable, and who supply to the professional market vs just honing marketing at audiophiles. You won’t find any "our cables need burn in time" from them. (And it would be to say the least awfully inconvenient for all the pro industries if burn in were the ’problem’ audiophiles think it is. Remembering that cables are used not only for high-stakes professional audio and must perform essentially right-out-of-the-box. But cables are involved in countless sensitive technologies, from medical imaging, to NASA. If cables really didn’t hit their specs for hundreds of hours and needed all this burn in time, that is a whole host of potential problems that...funny enough...you never really hear those industries worrying about.  It's like capacitors/resistors burning in.  If those didn't hit their values essentially right out of the box, that could be hugely problematic given the incredible number of highly sensitive instruments that use those passive parts.  And you don't see industry leading manufacturers like Vishay warning for any of their product heading to sensitive industries like medical imaging etc "warning...100 hours BREAK IN TIME needed before these reach their proper specifications! ).

n80,

You can see some examples of what I was talking about in this thread.

For instance the link to claims by cable purveyors regarding break in.First of all, going to the people who seem to be making dubious or controversial claims for products they sell might not be the best place to get objective information on cables.  I don't know about you,  but I try not to derive a true picture of the world form advertisements ;)

Second of all, note in those links to Nordost and Cardas simply bring you to claims made by those manufactures, wherein they supply no objective/measured results to support their technical claims of burn in (or that it is audible even if something does change over time in the cable).

And the other link morrowaudio is essentially a link to their cable burn in services.  I leave it to you to conclude the wisdom or not of appealing to someone trying to sell you a service as evidence of their claim.

Again, my position on cable burn in is not that I know it doesn't occur.  But rather, when I look at the basis on which those claims are typically presented, there's a fair amount to be skeptical of.

clearthink,

Then why don’t you buy some actual audio cable and conduct some experiments for yourself you seem to be a vocal advocate and promoter of what you seem to think is the "scientific" method you could acquire your own set of verifiable data rather than just to continue to challenge, question and oppose those who have actually acquired, installed and evaluated what they discuss rather than just imagine, theorize, and speculate what might happen were they to actually measure, listen and verify. Of course if you did that you would be subject to the same sort of criticism and ridicule you heap on other’s here with disregard for actual data.

^^^^^ It’s somewhat hard to answer (or be motivated to answer) such strange and opaque posts.

Actually, the "ridicule" tends to come from folks like yourself, in the posts you are making directed to me. If you actually care to notice, my posts didn’t "ridicule" they just applied some critical thinking to claims in the audiophile world. It’s not "ridicule" to point to the fact there are a lot of dubious claims in high end audio, and it’s not "ridicule" to point out the method typically used to vet those claims in the audiophile community are often unreliable.

Why don’t I do these measurements? Because I don’t have the measuring equipment (which can be very expensive) nor the electrical engineering expertise.


This is why I have made no such claims for myself.


But of course you don’t have to be an expert in a field to be able to say reasonable things about claims relating to a field. You can appeal to the consensus of people with relevant expertise, and with an understanding of good empirical principles, recognize when one group is appealing to poorly justified arguments/evidence over others. You probably haven’t the expertise in every science related to understanding the shape of the earth, but critical thinking allows you to weigh the type of evidence and reasoning flat earthers give for their claims, vs scientists, to have a reasonable claim on being skeptical of the flat earth claims.

And this is why, if you just want to point out I’m not a scientist or electrical engineer, that says nothing about whether anything I’ve written is unreasonable or untrue. For that....you’d have to actually address the arguments, not go ad hominem.


And btw, as an obsessed audiophile since the early 90’s, I’ve listened to countless high end systems, which included practically every big cable maker you can name. I’ve also been able to check out very expensive, highly regarded cables - speaker cables, interconnects, AC cables etc - both in my system and friend’s systems over the years. So, no, I’m not coming at this from some total inexperience with high end cabling.

What is it about asking questions about these claims that so frustrates you? Should we as consumers simply accept whatever manufacturers claim for their products? What’s so wrong with applying critical thinking to these areas?

hifiman5,

OP - shadorne and the other measurers insist that if you can't measure it you won't hear it...you might convince yourself you did, but what the hell do your ears know?  I mean really who are your ears to tell your brain what sounds are entering them.  Much better to have a man-made device measure sounds which your inferior organic listening devices can not perceive.  Sheesh!

I assume you wouldn't scoff at the idea of a carbon monoxide detector for use in your home, on similar grounds? "My senses have served me fine, I mean who is your nose to tell your brain what substances are entering them?"   (But of course, carbon monoxide detectors are there because your senses WON'T likely detect odorless Carbon Monoxide in your environment).

Obviously, we invent measurement devices because our senses are limited at detecting what is actually there.  The same goes for our hearing.  So we know we can measure many things we can't sense, including that we can't hear.   We can know "something is there" even if our senses can't detect it.  And of course we can also measure plenty that we hear.

If you are suggesting you can hear things that can't be measured, the question is:  how do you know?


The reply "Well...I heard it!" doesn't take in to account how your perception can be mistaken.

Also, think of it this way:  Expensive, boutique audiophile cables purport to "fix" problems found in other cables.  But if instruments can't detect those problems...how would you know they are there in the first place?

Notice that most cable companies start of with TECHNICAL claims about a problem, alluding to phenomenon known from having been measured by instruments in the first place.  Look for instance at the Cardas link where in describing issues with cables they reference:

microphonics dielectric characteristics of  insulators
high input impedance
Piezoelectric effect
uneven distribution of the charge
Mechanical stress

And yet, despite appealing to a set of measurable problems, they do not produce measurements showing they fixed those technical problems.  You go directly from technical sounding descriptions...to marketing and subjective anecdotes.    If it was a technical measurable problem with cables in the first place, and they fixed that technical problem in their design, where are the measurements showing this to be the case?

(And there is also the issue of how they have drawn the line between any of those technical "problems" to their audible consequences in the first place).

@almarg

Thanks very much for the kind words, Al.

Having observed many (and occasionally participated in) on-line discussions of the more controversial audio topics, I’ve found a very common, almost completely reliable trend. Many people (especially those in the highly subjective camp) interpret skepticism not only as a "bore," but as an almost personal insult. "How can you come here and tell me that I’m not hearing what I know I hear??!!" (This is a trend in virtually every area where there seems to be an "objectivist/subjectivist divide).


The weird thing is the skeptic is paying the most attention to human fallibility, including his own. The whole critical thinking thing is based on "I’m quite fallible and could be wrong...so how do I come up with ways of accounting for my fallibility?" And yet it is those who have unshakable belief in their own perception, who can not be budged by evidence their perception isn't as reliable as they think, who are often the ones accusing skeptics of dogmatism.And who end up name-calling and taking pot-shots at the character of the skeptic.

aalenik.

And one you get guys like Prof & Clearthink going, forget a logical straightforward conversation.

If you are implying my posts are "illogical" I haven't seen you demonstrate that.  (Unless I'm misunderstanding what you meant there).

One last point; the notion of burn-in as a marketing ploy is nonsense. In 40+ years of this hobby (obsession?), I’ve never heard a dealer or mfgr. tell any dissatisfied customer to "wait for burn-in"

.

If the "burn in" claim has not been used to mitigate your or anyone’s expectations or impressions of a piece of gear, you have somehow led an amazingly fortunate audiophile life.

Burn in is used all the time by, for instance, high end audio salesmen to mitigate either the impressions, or the expectations, of people auditioning gear. I have auditioned plenty of speakers over the last couple of years and, especially if the speaker was new, I was often cautioned "now, we’ve just got these this week, so they aren’t BROKEN IN, so keep that in mind."

In other words, if you hear something you don’t like...hey...maybe it’s not that you don’t like the speaker...it’s just not broken in yet, so don’t give up on it.

Similarly, similar statements may come after the audition. When asked "what did you think?" I will usually, politely, say what I heard. And if anything like "bright" or other issues come out of my mouth, often enough THEN I’ll be told "Well, the speakers ...(or some other component being used in the audition, cables, amp, DAC or whatever)...were not broken in yet. (This was the case just this month - I mentioned a few issues with a speaker I was interested in during an audition, and the "well of course but we just got the speakers and they aren’t broken in, so you shouldn’t write them off because of that" response came right back).

I doubt many here, who have frequented high end audio dealerships, would never have encountered anything like the above, where the "break in" issue isn’t brought up by salesmen.

Secondly, every manufacturer who claims to the consumer their product requires a "break in" period is, de facto, setting up an excuse for why the consumer may be dissatisfied upon initial set up. That’s the POINT, otherwise there wouldn’t be a point in mentioning it. They may not declare "no, KEEP the item longer, past the break in period" (though in fact, I’ve had one or two speaker manufacturers tell me that), but they ARE setting up an excuse to explain any initial dissatisfaction - "well, the people who wanted early returns hadn’t got past the break-in period, so this discounts their assessment to some degree." That’s the spoken or unspoken scenario set up. And it’s often given voice by audiophiles all the time, even here "Did you allow X to break in? If not...then you didn’t REALLY have a valid assessment of that gear."

As to your own listening tests, if you did indeed to blind testing of burned/not burned in cables and reliably detected a difference, well done! And I can understand why that experience informed your own decisions. Unfortunately we can’t really determine from here how well your tests were conducted.

It’s the same for my own claims for blind tests. They shouldn’t be definitive for anyone else, especially as they weren’t there to oversee the process. (That’s one reason why replicability of results is an important tool in science).

If I could see a report of cable burn in trials, showing objectively measurable differences between a new and burned in cable, with a variety of subjects, the blind test procedure documented and seemingly well run, and if the results were positive for identifying between the cables, I’d certainly take that on board as some evidence for cable burn in claims.
But what we tend to get, even from the Big Cable Manufacturers, are examples like Nordost’s pages on cable burn in. They say it’s required, make some technical claim about what happens...but (as far as I’ve seen) provide NO objective, measured evidence of this happening.

But, nonetheless, once they’ve prayed on your audiophile worries about your cables and endorsed the issue of burn in....the DO have a cable burn in device to sell you to "fix" this. Lucky us! ;-)

Finally, there has been mention of blinded studies. I’m not sure why the audio magazines aren’t full of them. A panel of experts. Same room, same system, equipment not visible. Various songs played at various volumes but only one physical element changed. Experts fill out a check list of important qualities, each one on a 1-5 scale. Then you repeat the whole test 3 times. That’s how you test subjective elements. I’d say panels would need 5-10 experts. Maybe the magazines do this. I suspect most would rather not.

It's interesting also that Stereophile provides detailed measurements that you can compare for speakers, amplifiers and digital audio components. 

But they produce no measurements for any interconnect/speaker cable/ AC cable/power conditioner reviews.


I suspect John Atkinson, who does their measurements and generally likes to see how things tick by looking at differences in objective measurements,  knows something when he's not bothering to measure those things  ;-)

@nonoise

Is this "engineer" who used to work for a cable company who all naysayers say is good enough for audiophiles and who appears to make little on his cables wrong?

I don't know.  He might be.  Again...the company he left does not see it necessary to make any such claims.  That an engineer who left Belden makes claims about burn-in doesn't mean it's true.

Has he offered anything other than anecdote or opinion on the subject?  Like, showing measurable differences between his cables when new vs burned in?  


@blueranger

I have a Duotech cable burner that has a setting for interconnects and speaker wire. Earlier this year I was burning in some new interconnects and after 2 days had realized I had used the speaker wire setting. I hooked them up to my stereo and they sounded horrible. No dimension and flat sounding. I knew they would settle back in like the exact other models in my system and they did. What's the point is that cable burn in does change the sound. I had some silver cables that sounded strident and I finally just burned them a week. When I plugged them in they sounded much better.

Yes there are many such anecdotes from audiophiles.  But I'm left wondering: what in the world do you think is actually *happening* to the cables to "ruin" the sound in your scenario?    What could the technical explanation possibly be?

@butch01

I listened to at least 15 minutes of that CD and 45 minutes to 2hrs of others, every day. I kept a daily journal. The change was not to be denied!

But our perception changes too.  Many of us have commiserated on how our systems can seem uninvolving or flat one day, but fantastic the next day.   The fact is our perception is very elastic and subject to all sorts of factors, from mood, state of mind, our expectations, what we are concentrating on at the time when listening, etc.  Your journal may well have simply detailed changes in your own mind, not the wire.  The problem is with these anecdotes, these variables are left tangled.

fleschler,

Just curious:  What do you mean you are a "cable tester" for a small manufacturer?

Do you mean you are an electrical engineer and you are part of production, and take various measurements of the cables and find an objective measurable difference?  If so, can you pass on to us what measurable differences you've observed between the same cable new vs burned in?


Or do you mean a small manufacturer gives you cables to listen to and report on?

fleschler,

Right, so you listen to cables. Ok.

I don’t care that a machine will tell me that they all test the same other than for capacitance, inductance or resistance. The manufacturer tests for the basics. What we do is determine if sonically, we prefer the current version or the new version, usually its the current version.

So what puzzle me here is:

If the cables need burn in, how are the manufacturers determining what is causing this phenomenon? As we aren’t talking about magic, presumably manufacturers identify some "pre-burned in" state they can measure, vs post burn in, where the measurements change. Otherwise...how do they know what’s going on at all?

That’s what I’m not seeing yet in this thread, including in your post.

What exactly do you think is technically happening to cables when you "cook" them, and have you, or the manufacturers you work with, any actual data showing these differences?